A COURT OF SHIFTERS AND SECRETS

T W E N T Y

He hitched his finger behind him and I didn't even have to look over to where Atlas stood to know that he was shooting us a scathing look.

Nikos didn't even bat an eyelash "You won't hurt her. I promise."

Even though Charlie still looked unsure at his words, he lunged hesitantly towards me.

Nikos' grip on my hips tightened as he did some kind of maneuver that had me moving at a dizzying speed.

Charlie stumbled slightly before righting himself, turning towards us with a surprise look in his eyes.

"How did you do that?"

"Redirection" Nikos grinned, releasing his grip on my hip and taking a step back "Like I mentioned, is a particular skill we use in order to gain the upper hand on our opponent."

"When do we use it?" I questioned "Because from where I stood, he had to get pretty close before we even moved."

"Good question Nova" Nikos sent another flirty smile my way "The downfall of this particular move would have to be the proximity in which your opponent must be."

"What's the proximity?"

"About five feet and a small reaction time" Nikos said "And about a ten second window for you to decide if you want to use this move or not."

"Why so small?" I asked, ignoring Charlie's snicker from behind me.

"Because you have to decide if it's the best course of action to use on the particular opponent in front of you" he said "And while this move works on a majority of those who try to attack us, there is a small percentage of people in which it doesn't work on."

"So there's no guarantee that this move will work when we need it?"

He shook his head "Guarantees aren't something we consider in our world."

"Then what do you do in case this doesn't work on someone?"

"You use anything you can in order to survive."

The moment his hands moved to gripped my hips, presumably to go through the move again, was the moment all hell broke loose.

The shattering of glass was the last thing I heard...

~🌙~🌙~🌙~🌙~🌙~🌙~🌙~

Atlas

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Phoenix bitched at me from his perch on Headmaster Cortez's Desk "You nearly killed one of the Lupine shifters and injured a shit load of our own Pack Members. And, according to my Third, Nikos Alexandris was fucked up so badly, he had to be shipped out to a specialty shifter medical facility two hours away."

"He should have never touched her then" I grumbled, crossing my arms over my chest "What was I supposed to do? He was pawing at her like she was his. I couldn't just stand there and not do something."

Phoenix rolled his eyes, scoffing at my words.

"Both of his arms and legs were broken" Kass frowned as he scanned the incident report that Coach filled out after he pried me off of that little shit's body "Nearly torn from his body and ripped out of their respective sockets."

"You're an Heir for gods sake" Phoenix said, pinching the bridge of his nose "You can't be acting like this."

"Just because I'm an heir doesn't mean I don't have some kind of emotions" I glared at him "Didn't those alien leaders of yours teach you about them before they left you here to enact their plan of world domination?"