Claimed And Marked By Her Stepbrother Mates novel Chapter 400

Chapter 400: 400-Professor Norman Is Impressed

Helanie:

I could tell Gavin wasn’t very happy, and I couldn’t blame him. They had arrived a few seconds late to Kaye’s team. Sydney was all smiles, happily hugging her sister, who barely showed any excitement.

Lucy looked like she couldn’t be bothered to be here, but since she had to, she stopped rolling her eyes.

Now that the teams had all made it to the finish line, my friends started to gather together. We had already celebrated our victory, but now we were upset for Gavin—he was bummed out.

"What happened, dude? You guys were doing so well," Lamar whispered to him as we stood in a circle.

"I don’t know. Lucy started complaining about leg pain at the end. We all offered to carry her, but she was being so—" Gavin looked down and bit his tongue to stop himself from saying more.

"Do you think she did it on purpose so Sydney would win?" I suggested, and they all turned to look at Lucy, who seemed way too happy for Sydney instead of being upset for herself.

I was surprised that she had gotten so close to Sydney.

"Whatever it was, I lost," Gavin sighed, shaking his head.

"Take this," I quickly untied the scarf from around my hair and wrapped it around his bloody palm. We were all injured, and while others would heal quickly, I would have to rely on my own strength.

"Helanie—come here, please." However, we were interrupted by Norman calling out for me and snapping his fingers to get my attention.

I looked around at my friends, who seemed concerned too, and then walked out of the crowd to go stand with the brothers.

"Sydney—you too." Norman then raised his hand and snapped his fingers again, this time calling for Sydney.

I felt so awkward standing among Kaye, Maximus, Emmet, and Norman.

I got there first and noticed how they stood around me in a circle. There were times when I wanted to tell these brothers that standing around their students like that was intimidating. But they always did their meetings that way.

"You said something out there," Emmet recalled, referring to the earlier event.

"About what?" I asked, slightly confused about which moment he was talking about.

"Wait, why did you carry Jenny on your back?" Maximus interrupted, making Emmet sigh at being cut off.

"She was injured." I didn’t see why it was a problem since others were carrying their injured teammates as well.

"Others did it too," I quickly added when I felt like maybe I had broken a rule.

"She was hiding in plain sight, thinking she was safe. A scared person would actually hide and let others help them, not attack everyone helping them. Jenny kept covering her face and eyes, thinking that would protect her. Her body also gave off weird energy—" I stopped talking because Norman narrowed his eyes at Emmet as if the two were speaking silently and had caught onto something I said.

"That—" Sydney had to shut up when Kaye spoke up.

"Okay, both of you go back to your places and stand beside your team," Norman stepped away to break the circle and let us go.

Sydney scoffed at me and turned around, flipping her hair. I followed after her, and right before she could join her team and we parted ways, she muttered, "Go cry about it."

I was so annoyed with her. She was so calculated. She tried to sabotage my team by poisoning Jenny and then influencing Lucy into delaying so her own team could win.

"What a coward," I hissed, standing with Jenny and Hans.

"Okay, everyone," Emmet said, gesturing for everyone to make space between themselves and the other teams.

"So, everyone did an amazing job today. I expected just this much enthusiasm and hard work from everyone," Norman stated, his hands on his waist, standing broad and tall before us.

"But of course, there will only be three winners today," he said loudly. "The first team that won the test was pretty obvious to me. It isn’t possible that Helanie is in a team and it doesn’t come first."

It was a shock to hear that from him.