Alpha Island: My Enemy Mate

Chapter 12

DARREN



A million thoughts went through my mind as Skylar looked at me without blinking. She believed she was reassuring me about how great her friend Emrys was, only proving to me that I had to kill him off as soon as possible.

They did not travel together for a year. No chance in hell! We would have been able to detect Sky and Ava with the millions of tracking spells we made Loki use while we searched for them. But they were nowhere to be found; we weren’t delusional about that. Which could only mean one thing, they were hidden from us all somewhere safe. They definitely were not visiting the most famous tourist places around the world together.

My heart clenched, thinking of what could happen to Skylar during this year. She clearly did not remember a thing, and the way this guy looked at her… he didn’t even try hiding his desire for my mate.

The dragon roamed inside me, igniting flames of inner fury.

“Are you okay?” Skylar’s voice brought me back just like the last time and I breathed out, meeting her amber eyes.

It didn’t matter what happened to her during that year, we would deal with all of this later together. The important thing was that she was back in my life, and she was in one piece. She was still my mate, and she would always be mine. They could take her memory away from her, but they couldn’t break us apart no matter how hard they tried.

“Skylar, I am concerned,” I crossed my arms over my chest, sighing and her brows went up.

“W-why?” She looked nervous.

“You are missing my classes for this,” I waved at the training field she just used. “It did not look impressive.”

“What?” she pursed her pretty lips, and it took all my willpower not to stare at them. “I… I train privately to improve faster. The thing is–”

I suddenly got it. For Skylar, everything that happened two years ago did not happen. She was still hiding the fact that she was a phoenix and that her life prior to Alpha University was far from normal.

“What is it?” I stepped a little bit closer and noticed how she hesitated to respond. “Sky, you can tell me.”

Her eyes darted at me, probably because I used her nickname, but I didn't even flinch, trying to make her believe that this was absolutely normal.

“I need to catch up a lot with the rest of my year,” she said, eyes downcast. “I didn’t get a proper education and I am a scholarship student. Private training is filling the gaps and the headmaster approved it, so–”

“Well, let me tell you, you are not going far with this kind of training!” I scoffed and her head snapped in my direction as if she was offended. She probably was.

“Emrys is very good!” She clenched her delicate fists, not knowing that she was stabbing my heart with her every word. “I told you, he saved my life in numerous battles!”

Yeah, imaginary battles that he made her believe in. What a hero!

“You're training with him for a year, right?” My lips curled into a smirk as I watched her cheeks flush under my gaze.

“Yeah,” she replied hesitantly.

“So you must have learned a lot.” My grin widened and I noticed her gulping. “If Emrys is this great, you should have improved already.”

“I did, but–” Skylar rubbed one of her shoulders. I could feel her pulse quickening.

“Then we can put it to a test,” I suggested with a smile. “A little combat. Just you and me. We fight three times and if you manage not to lose at least once, then you can go on training with your friend. If you can't, you go back to my classes.”

Fortunately, I knew Skylar too well. She would never walk away from a challenge. She was a leader by nature and loved to be right. On top of that, she was always very defensive about her friends, so she would try to defend that punk’s honour. And today, I was going to exploit that.

“Fine,” she nodded, and I gestured for her to go back to the training field. A few students gathered around us to watch the show and I did not plan to disappoint.

I noticed her wiggling her fingers and knew that she was about to summon fire to create a fireball, so once she threw it at me I already had a shield on in one hand and a fire whip in another, using it to capture her legs and pulling it to make Sky fall down.

“That’s one!” I counted and saw her standing up angrily, My girl hated losing. Unfortunately for her, I knew her every weak spot. I was planning to work on that before she was missing, and she was learning fast, but the abduction ruined our plans.

She charged at me, trying to distract me with her fast movements. This was something I taught her and it made me chuckle, because I also knew that she would forget to cover her back. She always did in the heat of the moment. When she reached me, I was already in a different place, and at the same time I sent a small fireball that wasn’t able to hurt her into her back.

“Two!” I announced my second victory and this time, when she turned to face me, her eyes were filled with fire.

Sky screamed as she attacked me again and again, I was blocking her fire element attacks at a very high speed, but this time I let her believe that she was so close to winning. However, her combat skills still had to be worked on and I wasn’t going to have my girl trained by some fake mentor!

Finally, I saw her getting tired and decided that it was enough, catching one of her hands to her surprise. She really did not expect this and when she tried to hit me with her elbow, I countered and captured her second elbow, pressing her as tight against my torso as I could. Her scent was all around me and I could get lost in it. It was magical, and I inhaled it as deeply as I could while she was this close to me.

However, something felt wrong in just a few moments, as I felt Skylar’s skin heating up. The realisation came to me abruptly that she was furious with me. When an all-destructive wave of fire exploded from her skin, burning everything in its way, I barely managed to put a protective dome barrier around us so that the students who were watching us didn’t turn into a barbeque. All while I held Sky in my arms as tight as I could. I knew she did not plan this, this was probably the fire getting out after a year of being suppressed. At least, that was what it felt like. She needed this outburst, and I provided it to her.

It all ended in a blink of an eye, and we stood there together, me stroking her hair gently as her breath tickled my skin. It took her some time to realise that I didn’t have a t-shirt on anymore and she lifted her head to lock her shocked eyes with me.

“I’m sorry!” she muttered in panic, “I didn’t mean to… I… What have I done?!”

“Sky, it’s okay,” I gestured at the barrier around us that withheld her outburst. “You are fine and everyone is fine. It was contained.”

She yanked her hands away from my body, leaving me feeling so empty and cold all of a sudden. As if all the warmth was gone from my life again. Just like back then…

“You are–” she stared at my abs just like the first time she saw me shirtless. And yes, it wasn’t a coincidence that my pants and shoes were enchanted to protect them from fire, but my t-shirt wasn’t. I knew what I was doing and it worked out better than I thought.

“That’s three,” my lips curled upwards and Sky’s parted in surprise.

“What?!” she gasped. “Impossible! I won that round.”

“No, you didn’t!” I answered nonchalantly. “You lost your focus and control. If that was a real fight, I would have snapped your neck before you could do any of that and it would be game over.”

“That’s not fair!” she practically shouted at me and once again I saw my feisty Skylar.

“Life is not fair,” I shrugged, flexing my muscles “accidentally”. “See you in class, Sky.”

She was fuming and this was just the way I liked it. Now she would spend the rest of the day thinking about me. And hopefully the night too.

“This is–” She couldn’t even find words to describe her emotions.

“Oh yeah,” I decided to rub it, “you were right, by the way, and you do need private lessons. So, I am going to take over those too. Meet me right here every day after classes. And don’t be late, Sky.”

“You can’t!” my little phoenix tried to protest.

“I already did!” I answered holding back another smirk that threatened to escape me.

She turned on her heels and left, making some angry noises on the way and passed Loki who was already here, of course, watching our little exchange while leaning over a metal fence.

“You had to take your shirt off on day two, didn’t you?” the warlock rolled his eyes at me and I stopped right next to him.

“Can you blame me?” I met his gaze.

“I guess not,” he admitted lazily. “At least, now you are officially the worst professor here. Can you believe that they called me that after day one?”

I really could, but it wasn’t the time to piss him off.

“What about this Emrys guy?” I changed the subject to what was really important. “Can I kill him?”

“Sadly, not now,” Loki sighed and in his eyes I saw that if it was indeed possible, he would have already done it himself.

“Why?”

“I need to explore their connection more,” the warlock confessed. “I think that the girls are regenerating, and the two guys are making sure their amnesia is still working, but that’s just a theory for now.”

“Just more reasons to kill them. I bet Dylan’s hands are itching!” A little dark laugh escaped me.

“The thing is, I am afraid that if we kill them, the explosion curse would start its timer,” Loki looked serious when he said that, and I had no reason to doubt his words. “And we are not ready for that.”

“We need to speed up the preparations then,” I told him, “because if that guy touches her like that again, I am going to erase him from the face of the Earth.”

~***~

KAYDEN

We watched the fire show from a distance with a few other students from our group. I could see that Rory was worried about her cousin and Skylar, tracing their every move with her gaze. She was invested in their fight and I couldn’t blame her.

The dome around the dragon prince and his mate filled with fire and a few people gasped.

“Gosh, what kind of dragon is she?!” Some girl from our group exclaimed loudly. “This is nuts!”

“So, we have two weird dragons this year!” Another girl sneered.

“Two?” Someone else asked. “Who is the second?”

I liked it less and less.

“The renegade princess right there!” That same girl replied. “Aurora the Traitor!”