Reclaimed and Restored

Distracted

Marcus had seriously started to question his sanity after the events of that morning. He’d always known he wasn’t going to be winning any awards for being an upstanding citizen, but this was a line that he had never thought he would cross.

Sure, he’d never noticed the black-haired hazel-eyed woman before she’d bumped into him a week earlier, and Marcus had immediately dismissed her that day because of her young age, but that didn’t make him feel much better. Not when he’d felt much more than just a flicker of desire for her when he’d watched her take on a man double her size, only to overhear one of her brothers saying it was her eighteenth birthday.

A day sooner and Ava would have been a minor, so why in the hell had he had such a visceral reaction to the fierce tray-wielding woman, whose baby blue sneakers and oversized white blouse made her look like the least likely person ever to swing a tray at someone’s head?

It was wrong, so very, very wrong, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about the sound of her soft voice or the way she had slammed that tray into the side of that asshole’s head, her eyes wild with fury and her pillowy lips tight with anger.

For the last twenty years of his life, Marcus had thought of little else but getting revenge on the man who was responsible for his parents’ deaths, leaving no room for relationships of any kind, yet here he was mooning over a goddamned eighteen-year-old. It made no sense. He was so close to being able to kill Master Gold he could almost taste it.

A man in Gold’s position could escape true justice easily, but Marcus wasn’t looking for the Master to be put under trial and get locked up for his crimes―no, he wanted the man dead and buried.

He’d come to the Council a naïve boy bent on killing the Master as soon as he got the opportunity, but it had quickly become clear that it wouldn’t be that easy. Gold was never alone, whether he was at home with his mate, Dorothy, and his son, Liam, or surrounded by guards and other Masters.

So, unless Marcus was willing to kill others or risk getting caught and killed for his crime, which he wasn’t, he was forced to wait until he was trusted enough that he could get the Master alone.

So, he would wait, and one day, Master Gold would get what he deserved. Thankfully, he was kept sane in the meantime by the fact that he actually liked his job. When Marcus was at the Council headquarters in Boston, he got to train, and when he was sent out on missions, he got to help people. The Council was essentially the police force of the werewolf world, and Marcus had somehow come to love his role within it.

He’d devoted as much time and energy into being a Council member as he had into his plans for Master Gold, and his focus had never wavered. Until that morning, of course, when a raven-haired young woman had gained the attention of the entire dining hall, him included.

“You’re distracted,” Silas noted with narrowed eyes, pulling Marcus from his thoughts as they walked upstairs to the training rooms. “You’re never distracted.”

Considering Silas was the closest thing that Marcus had to a friend, and they spent most evenings sparring together, it wasn’t that much of a surprise that he had picked up on Marcus’s lack of focus, however annoying it may have been.

“I’m fine,” Marcus growled.

“Sure,” the other man drawled. “Is it a woman?” he asked with raised brows.

“No,” Marcus gritted out quickly―too quickly.

“Ah, so who is she?” Silas pressed with a s**t-eating grin.

“No one.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Silas chuckled.

As if the universe was mocking him, a girly giggle sounded as they reached the top of the stairs, and Marcus’s eyes found its source as Ava. She must have rushed up to the third floor of the building shortly after Master Kennedy had handed out her punishment. Her two brothers, who looked like slightly older male replicas of her, were laughing with her as they helped her clean one of the weight machines in the gym area.

Community service was probably the last thing she wanted to do on her eighteenth birthday, but she had gotten off pretty easy, all things considered. Most Masters would have given her at least a week working in the training rooms and wouldn’t have even bothered punishing Ben.

Master Kennedy was an enigma in that regard. He was surrounded by men, most of whom were older than him, that thrived on tradition and unchallenged power, but he had somehow maintained his decent personality. Marcus couldn’t tell if it was genuine or just another lie that one of the Masters hid behind.

“Marcus?”

One of the twins pulled out his phone, and shortly after that, the brothers said their goodbyes and left Ava to it. Marcus hated himself for it, but when she bent over to wipe down the bench, his eyes instantly went to her ass.

“Marcus? Hello?”

Silas’s voice penetrated the fog surrounding his mind, and Marcus’s eyes flew away from Ava to meet the other Council member’s gaze. “Huh?” God, he sounded like an i***t. A distracted, no-longer-in-control i***t.

The man frowned. “What were you looking at?” he asked, his voice trailing off towards the end when his eyes landed on Ava. He blinked several times before returning his wide-eyed gaze to Marcus. “Her?” he asked in a hiss. “The chick from the dining hall. She’s the one who’s got you all distracted?”

“No, of course not,” Marcus said through gritted teeth.

“I’m pretty sure she’s in high school,” Silas whispered with eyes the size of dinner plates, clearly not believing his denial. “Is she even eighteen?” he asked.

“Yes,” Marcus clipped out, realizing too late that he should have kept his mouth shut.

“She is?”

“As of this morning, yes,” Marcus said. God, he sounded like a p*****t.

“Are you telling me that the great and noble Marcus has the hots for an eighteen-year-old?” Silas asked with glee. “Oh man, this is priceless,” he wheezed out through his laughter.

“It’s not funny,” Marcus said. “It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting.” His words only made Silas laugh harder.

“Hey, whatever floats your boat, man. I’m not gonna judge as long as it’s legal and you’re not planning on taking advantage of her and breaking her heart.” He paused before pinning Marcus with a serious look. “She doesn’t seem like the kind of girl you’re used to.”

Marcus winced. Since joining the Council, he might not have had any relationships, but he hadn’t been a saint either, and he was pretty sure Silas was right that Ava wasn’t like the others. She would want more than just a one-night stand―much more.

“You don’t need to worry because it’s never going to happen,” he assured Silas. “She’s practically a child.”

“No, she’s a woman,” Silas argued. “And a sexy one at that,” he added.

Marcus had to stop himself from punching the man in the face, settling instead on an icy glare.

“Alright, alright. Let’s get to training, you grumpy ass,” Silas said. “You know, I’m pretty sure she’s the one who told Heath that he should shut his mouth and go to hell when he was picking on that gay kid a few months back,” he added.

“That was her?” Marcus’s gaze returned to Ava in surprise.

Being nice wasn’t exactly a prerequisite for becoming a Council member, and Heath was one of the many assholes who had unfortunately managed to pass the required training and become a member. So Marcus had been particularly pleased when he’d heard all about him being put in his place by some random teenage girl.

“Yep. Pretty sure. Your girl is kind of a badass,” Silas teased.

“She’s not my anything,” Marcus gritted out before spinning on his heel and heading to the training room that their class had been assigned to.

He could feel eyes on his back―probably drawn by Silas’s loud snickers―and he was almost certain those eyes belonged to Ava, but he willed himself to keep walking instead of turning around and seeking out her green-brown eyes like he wanted to.

“Marcus, Silas,” the Medial in charge of their training called out when they entered the room. “I need you two to go to training room three. Medial Stewart has a family emergency, and I’ve been taking over most of his lessons. I assume you can handle his next one? They’re an eighteen to nineteen group, so it should be a cakewalk for you two.”

Marcus hid his surprise before saying, “Of course, sir.” Asking Council members to lead a class was practically unheard of, and he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.

“Thank you, sir,” Silas added before the two of them left to go train a group of young and hopefully not too undisciplined trainees. “You go ahead,” Silas said, lagging behind as Marcus strode toward the training room.

“Why? What are you doing?”

“You’ll see,” Silas replied with a wink that spoke of trouble.

Instead of going ahead as he’d asked, Marcus waited to see what the other man was up to, and he wanted to kick himself for letting Silas walk off when the man approached Ava. Marcus froze as the traitor pointed to him mid-sentence, and Ava’s hazel eyes flared as they moved to him.

Marcus wasn’t the type to get nervous, but his throat tightened, and his palms grew sweaty at the thought of what Silas was telling her. If he had even whispered a word about Marcus’s lapse of judgment and inappropriate staring session, Silas was going to end up with a black eye and maybe a few loose teeth.

After a moment, Ava nodded uncertainly and followed Silas back to where Marcus was standing with his arms crossed. “Hi,” she said timidly, sounding nothing like a woman who’d bashed a guy’s head with a cafeteria tray that very morning.

“I thought Ava could help us with our class,” Silas explained.

“Is that so?” Marcus asked, trying to keep his tone civil in front of the young woman.

“Yeah, you saw what she did this morning. We could use some of that… enthusiasm. And it will be good to show the class how to handle a fight if they’re smaller and weaker than their opponent. No offense,” he added in Ava’s direction.

“A little bit taken,” the woman responded, and Marcus had to fight a smile as she grinned cheekily.

Silas’s reasoning was technically sound, but Marcus knew they could easily demonstrate those techniques with one of the students instead. The choice to bring in Ava had nothing to do with showing how a smaller combatant could win a fight―the man was doing this solely to mess with him. Yep, Silas was a dead man.

“Fine,” he gave in, knowing Silas wasn’t going to let it go. “But I need to have a word with you first,” he said to his training partner, unable to keep his anger hidden any longer.