House of Night 09 - Destined

blinked hard. I was not going to cry. Again. I was just going to sit out here in the moonlight until it was time for me to go to drama class second hour.
    As if I didn’t have enough drama in my life already.
    “Well,” I told the moon. “At least my soul isn’t shattered anymore and I’m not a sleepless Otherworld almost-ghost.” Right on the heels of that cheery thought I spoke aloud the very next thing that came into my mind: “I miss Heath so much.”
    The words were still in the air around me when the small place in the middle of my chest began to warm. With a terrible sense of rubbernecking at an accident my gaze was pulled from the serene moon to the wall that framed the House of Night. Aurox was jogging along the school side of the wall. Even from this distance I could see that he was alert and searching for possible trouble, his gaze scanning around and up. He even looked like he was sniffing the air. He was coming toward me, though not directly so. My bench was several yards closer to the school from the wall and hidden in the shadows under the big trees, and he hadn’t seen me. But he wasn’t sticking to the shadows. He jogged in the open and even though the moon was not full, the night was clear and the fat crescent gave off enough silver-blue light that, as he approached, I could see his face.
    Aurox was definitely what any girl would call hot. Well, any girl who didn’t know he was some kind of killer creature in a boy skin suit. Then I remembered how a bunch of the fledglings had made over him after he’d killed the Raven Mocker. Guess they didn’t care whether his skin was a suit or for real. It felt like something was crawling up my spine and I gave a little shudder. I cared. I cared a lot about what was beneath the skin.
    His eyes were super strange. I’d noticed them before. Ironically enough, in this light they reminded me of the moon, or at least of those rocks called moonstones—only his eyes glistened, almost glowed.
    My hand went slowly to my seer stone. I could feel my heartbeat speed up. What was it about Aurox that scared me so badly? I didn’t know, but I did believe that I needed to defeat this fear. I needed to look through the seer stone and see whatever the rock revealed to me—Dark or Light, evil or good. I began to lift the stone and it was then that I noticed it.
    His shadow, cast against the rocky wall of the school, did not mirror the tall, muscular body of a human guy. Aurox’s shadow was that of a bull.
    I must have gasped—must have made some little noise because his glowy eyes found me immediately. He changed the direction he was jogging and headed straight for me.
    I slid the seer stone under my shirt and tried to keep my breathing normal and stop my heart from beating out of my chest.
    When he was just a few yards away I couldn’t help myself. I stood and moved around behind the wrought iron bench. I know it was silly, but somehow it felt better to have something, anything between us.
    He stopped and looked at me for a few seconds without speaking. His expression was bizarrely curious, like he’d never seen a girl before and was trying to figure out what the heck I was—even though that analogy was ridiculous.
    “You do not weep this night,” he finally said.
    “No.”
    “You should be in class,” he said. “Neferet has ordered all fledglings to class.”
    “Why do you cast the shadow of a bull?” I blurted the question like a moron and then I wanted to smack my hand over my mouth. What the hell was wrong with me?
    His brow furrowed and he looked to the spot on the ground beside him where his shadow—his very human and very normal looking shadow—turned its head in time with him.
    “My shadow is not a bull,” he said.
    “It was a bull, before, while you were jogging beside the wall. I saw it,” I said, wondering how I could sound so calm and certain when even to my own ears I seemed totally crazy.
    “The bull is part of me,” he said, and then he looked as surprised by his answer as I’d been by my question.
    “The white bull or the black bull?” I asked.
    “What color was my shadow?” he countered with.
    I frowned and glanced at his dark, human shadow. “Black, of course.”
    “Then my bull is black,” he said. “You should return to class. Neferet has commanded it.”
    “Zoey, is everything okay out here?”
    Stark’s voice made me jump. I turned my head to see him walking quickly toward me, a bow with a notched arrow held