The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 477

Callum’s POV

I was halfway across campus when Zane caught up to me.

“Hey,” he called out. “Wait up.”

I stopped and turned. Zane jogged over, slightly out of breath, and stopped in front of me with his hands on his hips.

“What?” I asked.

“I could ask you the same thing.” He straightened, crossing his arms. “What the hell was that back there?”

“What was what?”

“Don’t play dumb. You saw what Bianca was doing to Liora. You saw her standing there in that ridiculous dress while everyone wrote shit all over it. You could have stepped in yourself, but you came to me and Mia instead.”

My jaw clenched. “I had my reasons.”

“Yeah? What reasons could possibly justify drawing out Liora’s torment like that?”

I looked around. Students were walking past, some glancing at us curiously. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have in public.

“Come with me,” I said.

I led him back to my dorm room, where I shut the door behind us and gestured for Zane to sit. He dropped into the chair by my desk and watched as I pulled a notebook out of my backpack, flipped it open, and tossed it onto the desk in front of him.

“Read that,” I said.

Zane picked it up and scanned the page I had opened it to. His brow furrowed more and more with each line, and after a minute, he looked up at me.

Which meant that Liora could shed her blood during combat.

“This is insane,” Zane muttered when I was finished, tossing the notebook onto my desk. “Liora can’t fight Bianca. I mean, she can, but she won’t win. Not without her wolf.”

“Bianca’s wolf strengthened since being named heir,” I pointed out, “but she’s not invincible. Liora was always more skilled in combat than Bianca, even when wolfless. She knows how to take down opponents bigger and stronger than her. If she can land one good hit, draw blood, her wolf should come back.”

“Emphasis on should,” Zane said. “That’s a pretty big gamble.”

“It’s the only option we have right now.”

Zane rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, thinking for a moment, and sighed. “Okay. Say you’re right. Say this actually works. How are you going to get them to fight?” He wiggled his fingers. “Bianca won’t willingly put herself in a situation where she could break a nail.”

I hesitated. This was the part I wasn’t sure about. The part that required me to play a role I hated playing.