Chapter 49: Allies [3]

She stared at Cane as if she were finally adding up a column of dirty numbers that had been bothering her for three days straight. He could practically see the logic clicking into place behind her golden eyes. The unannounced disappearances. The endless hours spent lounging away from the tents. The way he would return from the southern tree line with dead leaves in his hair, scuffed boots, and absolutely no firewood or gathered supplies to show for it.

To Yelena’s aristocratic, faction-obsessed mind, Cane Valerian was not an incorrigible layabout. He was a mole. A deep-cover saboteur selling Dragon Group out to a rival bracket for private gain, playing some dirty, underhanded game outside the rules of the academy.

Cane sighed, long and theatrical.

Then, because honesty was a terrible tool when dealing with hysterical women in a forest, he did what he did best. He started to lie.

The words tumbled out of him, smooth and rich as warm butter melting over hot bread.

"Yelena," he began, softening his posture, his hands dropping to gesture with open, earnest candor. "Look at me. I know exactly how this looks. Really, I do. If I were standing in your dainty little shoes, I’d be thinking the exact same thing. But I swear to you, it’s not what you think."

Yelena didn’t budge an inch, her arms remaining locked across her chest, squeezing her exposed tits into tight, pale mounds. "Convince me," she hissed. "Before I scream for Marcus."

"Marcus couldn’t find his own cock with both hands and a map," Cane dismissed easily. "Listen to me. I want Dragon Group to win. I’m invested in this team. Shocking as it might sound coming from a guy who’s spent the last forty-eight hours sunning his abs, I actually have a vested interest in walking away from this exam with top marks. And Raven happens to be the single best weapon we could ever hope to recruit."

Yelena’s eyes stayed narrowed, but her jaw loosened by a fraction of a millimeter.

Across the clearing, Raven watched him with intense, guarded stillness. The rigid set of her shoulders dropped an inch, a microscopic flicker of relief softening her dark eyes. She had caught the scent of the lie. She realized he was steering the wagon down a road that didn’t lead anywhere near Alexander or the Ashen Talons, and being a professional survivor, she immediately began measuring her steps to match his stride.

"I didn’t sneak off to meet an enemy," Cane continued, his voice projecting bright, sunny confidence. "I called Raven out here deliberately. On purpose. Right here, near our camp, while you were close enough to see it. Think about it, Yelena—if I were selling you out, would I arrange the rendezvous fifty paces from our own supply cache where anyone could walk in on us?"

He didn’t wait for her to answer. He turned, flashing a proud, brilliant smile, and closed the distance to Raven in two long strides.

Before the dark-haired girl could read his intent, Cane reached out, clamped his broad hands firmly around the flare of her hips, and yanked her flush against his side.

"Eep!"

The sound ripped out of Raven’s throat before she could stop it—a high, sharp, completely undignified squeak of genuine shock.

Her hip slammed hard against his bare flank. The impact was purely physical, a shockwave of heat through her thin uniform, pressing her curves directly against his ribs. She was solid, all lean, wiry muscle and toned, athletic curve, but the suddenness of the maneuver knocked the breath clean out of her lungs.

Yelena’s jaw dropped all over again, hitting a brand-new low in an afternoon already overflowing with indignities.

Cane kept his arm locked tight around Raven’s waist, pulling her in like a prized heifer he had just purchased at a county fair, grinning ear to ear as if he were presenting a birthday cake.

"Behold!" Cane announced, his voice booming with unhinged cheerfulness. "The newest asset of Dragon Group! Raven has agreed to betray her own bracket and act as our personal inside spy! Isn’t that fucking incredible?"

The silence that followed was heavy enough to suffocate a boar.

A wood thrush called somewhere high in the green canopy above them, two bright, mocking notes that sounded exceptionally rude in the dead stillness of the clearing.

Yelena looked from Cane’s grinning face to Raven’s rigid, paralyzed profile. Her mouth twitched once, twice, before she let out a venomous scoff.

"There is no way in the seven hells I am going to believe that."

Raven, for her part, looked completely derailed. Her dark eyes flicked upward toward the sharp angle of Cane’s jaw, her mind visibly scrambling to read the script he had just shoved into her hands upside down and backwards. Her cheeks were still faintly pink from the undignified yelp he had wrenched out of her, and her expression was one of profound, murderous displeasure directed entirely at the heavy, warm hand currently gripping the meat of her hip.

Yet, she didn’t deny it.

She didn’t pull away from his side. She didn’t reach for the daggers hidden at her belt, and she didn’t attempt to shatter his ribs with an elbow strike. She simply stood there, locked against his bare, warm skin, her athletic thighs pressed flush against his trousers.

Cane mentally awarded himself ten points for bravery and fifteen for sheer survivability.

When the denial failed to come, the absolute certainty in Yelena’s posture began to crack. Her golden eyes darted between them, the suspicion mutating into bewildered calculation. Her voice dropped, low and hesitant.

"Are... are you two actually serious?"

Cane gave a breezy, unbothered shrug, his arm casually tightening around Raven’s waist.

"Easy as breathing, commander," Cane said, weaving the fiction with effortless grace. "We struck a deal before the proctors even sounded the first horn. Everyone knows Raven’s background. She’s a scholarship student, a commoner among bloated noble scions. And as anyone with an ounce of sense knows, academy scholarship stipends barely cover the cost of ink, let alone decent rations. Her pockets are completely empty."