Chapter 118: A Serpent In Her Room - 1
"Never enter a woman’s room uninvited. You may not like the arrangements she makes for your stay."
~ Rebel Beast
------------------------
"If she’s right about one thing, though," Alek said, "we need the rest too. You two..." She pointed between Trisha and Brittney. "Especially need it. We’ve already experienced enough madness for one day."
"Ahh, you’re so right," Trisha said, rising to her feet and stretching her arms above her head. "See you guys later." She was already heading toward her room before Alek could say anything else.
"Later, everyone." Brittney pushed herself to her feet and headed toward her own room. Without a second thought, she swung the door open, took one step inside, and froze.
There was a body sprawled across her floor.
"What the fuck?"
The words slipped out before she could stop them. Brittney stood at the entrance, shocked beyond words as she stared at the motionless figure lying several feet away from her.
"Is something the matter?" Alek, who had already reached her bedroom, peeked back out with concern.
Brittney reacted immediately, forcing brightness into her voice. "Oh, everything is alright. I just nearly slipped, but I’m good now."
Alek shook her head sympathetically. "Be careful, Brittney. This is definitely not the time to get injured. Anyway, see you later."
She disappeared into her room and shut the door.
The sound seemed strangely final to Brittney. She was alone now, with whatever the hell she had just discovered lying unconscious in the middle of her bedroom. For several seconds, she remained frozen at the entrance until the possibility of Aria suddenly coming out of her room occurred to her.
Brittney quickly stepped inside and locked the door behind her.
She leaned against it for a moment, trying to collect herself. Okay. There was no reason to panic. The entire purpose of setting those traps had been to catch any rat shifter stupid enough to sneak into her room again.
And there was absolutely no reason to fear a rat. They were just tiny, disgusting, annoyingly pesky creatures with four horrible little legs and an irritating habit of climbing over things they had absolutely no business touching.
A shiver ran through her.
Of all the beasts in this academy, why did rats have to be the ones that revolted her the most?
Gathering her courage, Brittney pushed away from the door and cautiously approached the unconscious intruder, carefully stepping around the traps that had already been triggered.
Then she noticed the uniform. Green.
Brittney stopped. "What the fuck?"
Her eyes widened as she finally took in the deep green jacket covering the intruder’s body.
Therion wore navy. Ophidian wore green.
She had been expecting a rat shifter, what the hell was a serpent doing inside her room?
Her earlier disgust disappeared, replaced by something much colder.
The rat shifter from before had only wanted to prank them. This was different. A student from House Ophidian had deliberately broken into her bedroom while she was away.
Why? Had he come to kill her? Or worse, all of them?
Brittney’s stomach tightened. From everything she had heard about the previous Concordia Programs, snake bites had been responsible for more than a few human deaths. Some victims had died before anyone even realized they had been poisoned.For all she knew, this serpent had intended to deal with her first before moving on to Aria, Alek, and Trisha.
Her first instinct was to scream for the others. Brittney almost did only to stop herself. The girls had only just gone into their rooms after one of the most chaotic days of their lives. They needed a moment to breathe, and the intruder was unconscious for now. She could raise the alarm later.
First, she needed to make sure the bastard stayed exactly where he was because tranquilizers wore off eventually. And when this serpent woke up, she had every intention of making sure he regretted choosing her room to break into.
Brittney carefully dismantled the tranquilizer trap she had rigged near the entrance. The last thing she needed was to accidentally drug herself while trying to deal with an unconscious intruder.
She moved slowly, releasing the tension from the trip wire before removing the launcher from where she had concealed it, taking extra care not to make enough noise to alert the girls in the other rooms.
Once she was finished, Brittney placed the entire setup carefully on the bed. She really needed to be more conservative with her supplies from now on. She had no idea how easy it would be to replace any of this stuff in Bestial City, especially when every delivery entering the academy was probably inspected.
Back home, she could order whatever she wanted without anyone asking too many questions. Her family’s influence had also made sneaking her stuff into the Concordia Program considerably easier than it should have been.
Here, however, nobody gave a damn who her family was. She was human, and worse, a participant in a government program where their movements were probably monitored more closely than she realized.
If someone decided to inspect a suspicious package addressed to her, Brittney had absolutely no intention of explaining why an eighteen-year-old girl needed tranquilizer darts, trip wires, restraints, and enough trapping equipment to concern the average police officer.
She crouched beside her bed and reached beneath, pulling out a compact black case she had deliberately hidden underneath it. Brittney entered the four-digit combination into the locks, one after another. Two quiet clicks followed before she pressed both releases with her thumbs.
The lid sprang open.
Everything inside had its own compartment. Several lengths of thin trapping cord were wound into perfect coils along one side, secured beneath the narrow elastic straps.
Four remaining tranquilizer darts rested inside individual padded slots, while beside them lay the compact tranquilizer pistol they belonged to. A few smaller tools occupied the remaining compartments, everything arranged with the kind of meticulousness that would probably make anyone who saw it question what kind of childhood Brittney had experienced.