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“I can color-code them.”
I bite my cheek and take an emotional step back before I fall deeper into attraction. Stupid soulmate bond. Stupid pretty black-and-red monster eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid… “If notes help you on the test, you are welcome to take them. I do not need to check your work.”
Pollux’s expression turns confused. “Test?”
“I should head home before my parents worry.” I march past him, toward the exit.
“Kassandra. Why do I need to take a—”
“Bye!” I slam the door closed behind me and ignore Alexios when he snickers from the shadows nearby.
?
Pollux had been invited to chaperone twelve children in ice skates. With Kassandra.
He’d never faced nerves quite like the ones he was experiencing now. Needless to say, he was very glad he had a little bee friend that smelled like his mate to help him through what was swiftly becoming a harrowing concept.
Crushing the bee, he took a long drag of water—not alcohol—then a breath, and plunged onward through the child safety quiz.
It kept painting scenarios that chilled him to the bone.
And then it kept asking him questions that were harder than he’d anticipated when he’d seen the title. He had assumed common sense would make a test like this one easy. He was wrong.
It wasn’t just the humanity that made each question difficult. It was the detail.
Bad humans could be bad in very subtle ways.
He was no stranger to the horrors of humankind, but, before now, he was not entirely aware there was a list of precise mistakes that could appear this harmless to onlookers. The art of evil came sketched in flawless outline before it was filled with furious brushstrokes.
His mind spun as he made it through the questions and continued to come to the horrible realization that Andromeda’s experience could be plunked right into the case studies.
Child comes to school every day without a lunch in the same clothes, swears, and appears to act too mature for her age.
Please check the boxes of the possible forms of abuse this child might be experiencing.
It’s all of them.
Just…all of them.
Pollux was going to be sick.
This explained a bit too much about why Kassandra had treated him with such thinly-veiled aggression when they first met. She had quantifiable lists of his errors, which suggested he was abusing his daughter in every way.
But, also, despite her knowing that he was notoriously unfamiliar with what abusing a human child even remotely looked like, she had invited him to help monitor eleven of them. While they wore blades on their feet. In public.
Someone was going to get injured, and while he and Kassandra were preoccupied with managing the wounds, the rest would be kidnapped.
Why did any humans ever go outside?
It was worse than wandering through dark parts of Faerie with no natural defenses.
At least in Faerie, most anyone could growl at the redcaps to make them back off.
Pollux was uncertain whether or not that would work on humans.
Well, assuming it was a human-to-human interaction. Likely it would work if he growled at a human. Outside the range of Kassandra’s influence. Which he would not be in during this trip lest he risk terrifying numerous children.
This was a bad idea, and she had to know it was a bad idea.
