Lyan
I spent the rest of the weekend avoiding Orus as much as I could, which meant I entered my room and stayed inside. I only came out when I knew for sure the guys were gone, and only to drink and go to the bathroom, then I went back to my room.
I spent a few hours deciding if I could go get food, I was ravenous, but decided against it. Any steps out of this room only increased the chances of me meeting Orus, and I wasn't going to let that happen.
After the incident in the forest my body had felt weird, and still did. It was like something in me was screaming there was something out of place, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. All I knew was that this feeling dimmed when Orus was nearby, but I would never get close to him after he had attacked me that way.
Besides, losing all my stuff that I had bought with my hard earned money only fueled my rightful rage.
That night Orus had come to my room and begged me to let him speak, but I just played some music on my phone and ignored him, just like I had been doing all weekend.
Unfortunately, today was Monday and we had classes together, so when the alarm went off I got dressed and placed my ear in the door to eavesdrop.
After not hearing anything for a while I slowly came out and breathed a sigh of relief when I didn't see anyone outside. I repeated the same process in the door that led to the common room and once I was sure they were all either in the cafeteria or in class I finally relaxed.
Now I had to decide if I went to the cafeteria or not. After pondering for a while I decided that it would be what it would be and I started walking to the cafeteria.
Once there, as always, there was almost no one left. I picked a heavy breakfast, I was starving, and eat everything in less than four minutes.
At 7:00 exactly I entered the first class, looking everywhere for Orus, but the guy was nowhere to be seen, which was a relief.
The teacher entered and gave her class, all the while I had one eye constantly looking for Orus, but he didn't show up at all, which I appreciated. I was beginning to think that today wouldn't be so bad. Jack was still in full paranoia mode, side eyeing Mark more often than not and Orus, my newfound source of problems, wasn't here.
But life never gave me what I wanted. In combat class the original teacher had come back, and to my dismay she seemed like a pretty strict teacher. Good thing was that I would get to hit something and release some of my energy. The worst thing though was that Orus had come back, and he was just looking at me with pleading eyes. He seemed like a man pleading for mercy, not that I was going to give him any.
Making a conscious effort to ignore him, while everything in my body seemed to scream to do the opposite, I focused my attention on the new, strict looking teacher. A young woman who I could consider beautiful, she had shiny black hair and blue eyes and seemed to be in her thirties wearing a black shirt and black pants identified herself as teacher Maura.
" Since I was gone for a week, today we'll do an ability evaluation. Don't worry, it won't count towards the ranking" She added when the groanings intensified.
" Now everyone, go change. I heard there's a new student, but there should be enough sports equipment for everyone"
I was officially and utterly fucked.
Walking like a woman walking to her own execution, which I would be if I was ever found out, I followed all the guys into a narrow corridor near the training area, where we'd been having all our classes, and later into a locker room with quite a few pants and shirts fit for doing sports with them on.
Most of the guys just started taking all their clothes off and I couldn't help but admire their lean muscles and almost perfect abs. None where as good as Orus's, but that didn't mean they weren't noticed and appreciated.
I may have been glaring a little too openly because a guy with awful pink hair, red eyes with red eyeliner, an awful decision in my opinion, and an attitude turned to look at me.
" What are you staring at?"
" Nothing" I muttered, and looked away,. Luckily the pink guy I was officially naming punk, just huffed at me and continued changing.
Just when I thought I was home free a very angry Orus appeared in front of me. His eyes were filled with fury and his muscles bulging from anger under his shir..forget that, he was naked from his hip up. His muscles were just like I remembered, his abs, the best in all the class, or so I thought. I couldn't really judge because I'd been caught before I could check everyone out.
My mouth started watering seeing his muscles, my lower stomach tingling, but then I remembered I hated him, but that did little to calm my raging body.
" What were you doing?" He whispered, very clearly pissed, thought why he was pissed was anyone's guess.
" Nothing" He didn't seem to believe me. Points to him, he was slightly sharper than I thought.
Although not convinced, he left the subject drop and since I knew what he was going to say I quickly excused myself to the bathroom but before I could go, and hopefully change my clothes there, he grabbed my arm and turned me around to face him.
" I'm sorry about the other day. I wasn't on my right mind"
" No shit" I deadpanned.
" I'm a shifter and sometimes our instincts can get out of control and harm others. I'm really sorry Arun"
That made sense. In the forest he had seemed really out of it. His instincts taking control was actually a plausible explanation for his behaviour if he was a shifter. They tended to be very volatile and acted on instincts and feelings, but there was something that didn't add up. I'd understand him attacking me, or hitting me, but what had happened was extremely weird.
" Why did you bite me?"
He didn't have an answer to that, or didn't want to answer, but his grip on my arm tightened.
" I forgive you" I said, because it was true. He hadn't done it on purpose and I needed to keep the peace. The last thing I wanted was a shifter stalker. I had enough with Jack, thank you very much." Now please let go. I have to go the bathroom"
He finally let go, looking relieved. I quickly picked up my clothes, which he didn't seem to notice, and went to the bathroom. There I got changed and wisely hid my clothes behind the toilet. They wouldn't be the cleanest, but at least that way I wouldn't have to explain why I liked to change in the bathroom.
Luckily nobody seemed to notice I had changed in the bathroom and I followed the remaining of the guys into the training area.
" Today we'll do a physical test. It will consist of three parts. First sparing using a wooden sword. Then sparing without weapons and lastly a training course you have to complete" She said pointing while she talked to some chalk circles painted on the floor, one for sword sparing and the other for no weapons sparing and the course, which were a few tires on the floor, a rope tied to a ramp and some monkey bars. This didn't seem so hard.
Boy was I wrong.
The course challenge was easy enough. I jumped through the tires, hanged onto the rope and scaled the ramp. Then I hung from the monkey bars and kept my balance while jumping from one to another. Overall I didn't do badly. It was just that the boys did better, and my time of one minute thirty seconds looked ridiculous compared to their worst time of forty seconds and their best one, which was from Orus, of fifteen seconds.
I was just happy I didn't fall from the monkey bars and instead just burned my hands a little bit with the rope.
The next challenge, though, was harder and to make things worse Orus was my opponent for both the sparing challenges.
" Here are your swords" The teacher gave each of us a wooden sword with a dull edge, so that even if we tried we couldn't harm our opponents.
Once I had the sword in my hand I knew swordsmanship was not for me. The sword felt to heavy, even though it was just wood, and kept throwing me off balance.
We moved to the circles on the ground and I held my stance, which was just a crouching stance I had seen in martial movies, meanwhile Orus just looked at me as if I had the knowledge to all the secrets in the universe, which was ridiculous. At the age of 21 I had never gone to university and had barely passed highschool. It wasn't because I was stupid, but rather because I had never really cared about anything they taught, and also the fact that I kept moving families, states and schools all the time didn't help.
Seeing Orus underestimate me made me mad. Launching forward without any kind of strategy I raised my sword and tried to hit him in the head, but he just parried it with a gracefully move, barely even bothered.
I continued attacking for a while, but the difference between us soon became patent. I was panting, exhausted, not having managed to graze him even once, much less hit him.
He, on the other hand, was perfectly fine, not a single hair out of place and looking as rested as if he had just been laying on the couch all day.
The no weapons spar just ended in a similar way. Already very tired I just swang without considering anything else and he just blocked me effortlessly.
After a while of this back and forth it was finally the end of the class.
" Everyone go shower and then change" The teacher screamed from where she had been observing the whole class. I was sure she wasn't happy with my performance, but I couldn't care less.
'Shower?' I thought. She must've meant the common showers in the locker room. Now I was definitely screwed and this time I didn't see a way out of it.