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( Bonus Chapter )
"Is that so? Well, whenever you do get interested, come find me at the Discipline Committee." Nobody had expected that, least of all the ones bracing for a scene. Kellan hadn't gone the least bit red. Instead he'd said the sort of thing that turned every head in the hall, Luke's and Iris's included.
"Hold on. Is this the Kellan Frost I know?"
"Did the man swap out his whole personality? Since when is his temper this good?"
"What?" Kellan cast a bored glance around the ring of onlookers settling in for a show, and his lip curled. "You thought I'd lose my temper and start swinging? I'm a reasonable man. The Committee isn't some shady operation. If you don't want to join, I'm not about to strong-arm you into it the way some people do."
You've got the nerve to call yourself reasonable?
The older students in the hall who knew Kellan felt their blood pressure spike as one. The hell. You were always the first one charging in, scared to death you'd miss a fight if you blinked, and now you're standing there saying this?
The Discipline Committee was supposed to be a serious outfit, and somehow it had produced Kellan Frost, the one exception to the whole tone of the place. His idea of reasoning with a man was to do it with his fists.
Out with it. Who are you really, wearing Kellan Frost's face?
But the ones sitting worst with it were the Magus Society members, because there wasn't a soul in the room who couldn't hear it. When Kellan said shady operation, he meant them.
No. Worse.
That last part, about not strong-arming people the way some do, wasn't even hinting anymore. He'd said it to their faces.
The trouble was, the Society members could seethe but not answer, because not one of them was a match for a lunatic like Kellan. Being polite to Luke didn't mean he'd be polite to them, and there was a real chance the whole thing was bait. If they took a swing and got flattened for it, they'd have nowhere left to go and cry about it.
With his temperament, he'd absolutely do it. The man had a rap sheet.
Couldn't out-fight him, couldn't out-talk him. It made the Society members want to spit blood. What were they going to do, tell him the Committee had no right? More likely Kellan would come knocking with some invented complaint the very next day.
"If the chance comes up." This time Luke didn't turn Kellan down, though he didn't agree either.
At that, a small smile touched Kellan's mouth. Background aside, on the strength Luke had shown flattening Wesley in a single stroke, the Committee would take him without a second thought.
"What's so great about the Committee? Grim, gloomy, a whole crowd of people scowling around the clock. If you're joining anything, it should be our Student Council." Zane Ferro had turned up at some point too, and dropped another line that blew the roof off the room a second time.
"The Council's here as well? What is going on?"
"That's Zane Ferro! Another heavyweight. One of the Student Council's top dogs."
"At first I figured Kellan only asked Luke to spite the Magus Society. But now Zane Ferro's shown up too. There's something under this."
"Don't tell me Luke's got another identity, or some secret the rest of us don't know about."
"Zane, you looking for a smack? Who told you the Committee scowls all day? Do I not look like sunshine itself to you?" The moment Kellan saw Zane, he'd more or less guessed the man's angle, and while he was cursing him out inside, his mouth had already gone straight for the throat.
He didn't have to guess why Zane was here. The little snake was up to nothing good.
Kellan hadn't forgotten that not long ago Selene had gone in person to bring Luke up to her place on the back mountain, and that he'd stayed there more than ten days. If those two had no connection, Kellan would eat his own boot.
Never mind the rest. The way Luke and Iris carried on with each other only made Kellan surer he had it right.
Other people might not know what ran between Iris and Selene, but as one of the Committee's top dogs, there was no way Kellan didn't.
He'd come to the hall today on a whim, just to grab a bite, and walked straight into Luke and Iris in the middle of it.
The way Kellan saw it, anyone Iris would sit and rib like that came from no ordinary place. He was no fool, whatever Wesley had been.
"You're the exception, you jackass!" Zane rolled his eyes and, deep down, jabbed a furious middle finger at Kellan. He knew perfectly well what Kellan was after, and fine, let it come down to who was stronger.
"You really are popular." Iris pressed two fingers to her forehead and looked Luke over again, slowly, something odd creeping into her face. "So this is what they mean by attracting your own kind?"
Wasn't it, though. First Wesley, then Kellan, and now Zane. Since the day he enrolled, every last person to come after Luke had been a man. If that wasn't attracting your own kind, what was it?
Attracting your own kind, my foot!
Luke's face went dark. His hand came up and rapped a knuckle down on the crown of her head. "Watch your mouth."
"Ow! You brute, that hurt..." Wincing, Iris fixed him with a glare, and if the hall weren't full of people she'd have launched herself at him and given him something to remember. Her composure had cracked around him a while back, though, so in front of Luke she simply let it go to ruin.
There it was.
To anyone else in the room, the exchange might have read as a bit of playfulness between two people who were close. To Kellan and Zane, it read as something else entirely.
In that moment both of them were dead certain: whatever lay between Luke and Selene was anything but ordinary. However you cut it, there was Iris standing right there in the middle of it.
"Luke, if the Committee doesn't interest you, how about our Student Council instead?" Zane took the opening. "The Council's a lot more fun than the Committee."
"Your Council's buried in busywork start to finish. You'd have to squeeze time out like the last of the toothpaste just to sit and think a card through. Nothing like the freedom you get in our Committee."
"Besides, once you're in the Committee, anybody with designs on you thinks twice before he tries anything."
"Get lost, you cold-blooded creature." Zane snorted. "Luke didn't agree to join your Committee, so what's stopping him from coming to the Council?"
"And don't act like joining your Committee is the only thing that keeps the riffraff off. Let's see who'd dare touch a Council man!"
Christ.
Every face in the hall turned strange, because the two of them were plainly talking around something, and with Luke at the center of it, the something could only be the Magus Society. One after another, every eye in the room slid to the Society members present.
First Kellan had run them through with mockery, and now Zane had opened a second cut. Some of them had gone as pale as a face could get.
A few Society members had already given up and walked out.
And in that moment, everyone came around to the same thought again: whatever Kellan and Zane were really after, tormenting the Magus Society was somewhere near the top of the list.
Because otherwise, two of the top dogs of the Student Council and the Discipline Committee had no earthly reason to square off like this over a single freshman.
EXTRA CHAPTER FOR EVERY 500 POWERSTONES.