Sang's Freedom - The Song Of Ghosts

9:

Chapter 9

North Taylor's POV:

  I spent the hour slumped in my seat. We shouldn't have to put on a stupid play just because Sang can't find out we are Academy.

   After all, if we didn't want Sang to find out, we could just stop talking to her. It annoyed me that Dr. Green had already slipped up in front of her. Kota, too. We had just met her. She was a pranker like Luke, and Gabriel was right to call her trouble.

   I looked over to where she was seated beside Victor, batting her lashes as they played with the orange cat she had intercepted.

   The others glanced at her with that same unspoken interest.

   This was supposed to be a team meeting, dammit. Not an hour of, let's see who can get the blonde girl's attention. Sang shouldn't even be here. She didn't need our help, and she was pretty enough to get whatever she wanted from the world, but instead of using her powers for good, Sang had turned her charms on my brothers, and I was not going to fall for it.

   Victor already liked Sang. I could see it in the way his eyes lit up when she smiled, not to mention in the three giant bags of clothing she had walked out of the mall with yesterday.

   Victor was like that. Too generous.

   He couldn't see that Sang was taking advantage of him. It drove me mad, and if Victor didn't stop with this soon, I would have to step in.

   Silas was worse, because I understood all of those Greek nothings he whispered as he watched her. He was freaking head over heels in love in less than 24 hours!

   Kota whispered with the others. Luke grinned ear to ear and Nathan kept casting me wary looks. What the hell are they plotting? Damn Luke for announcing I was the lead of this bullshit play... I could hear them now, discussing the possibility of holding auditions and making time between our missions for rehearsal, as if we weren't busy enough.

   And all for what?

   Sang?

   Some girl who would inevitably tear our family apart?

   Victor was spending money on her. Gabe was picking out her clothes. And Luke, after that day he found Sang in a tree, all he did was daydream.

   Yesterday at work, Luke was up so high in the clouds he managed to burn a customer's order four times, and the charismatic little bastard didn't even get scolded.

   It was a miracle Kota hadn't fallen for her yet. Nathan already flashed lovey eyes, and Silas was beyond help. Even now I could hear him whispering in Greek. "Ω, αν γνώριζα μια Άγκελε με περίμενε στην Αμερική, θα είχα πλεύσει εδώ πριν από μια ολόκληρη ζωή." (Oh, if I had known an angel was waiting for me in America, I would have sailed here a lifetime ago).

   I could puke.

   Sure. Sang was cute. Beautiful, even. But no girl was worth throwing away our team. We were a family. These were my brothers. Sang could go home to her cat-hating mother because she already had a family that was just fine.

   We were the ones who knew what it was to struggle. To starve. To be beaten. To be hated by the people who created us. We were the ones who knew pain, and some little green-eyed girl wasn't going to put an end to the comradery we had built.

   She wasn't Academy material. So what if she had managed to distract me once? So what if she could climb trees? It didn't mean anything.