Of Wolves and Witches: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Arcane Arts Academy Book 1)

by Elena Lawson

  The cat stopped, sitting back to listen. “They’ll be punished if they do, and I—I’d never forgive myself.”

  Gato growled, turning to hiss at the men still waiting at the wall.

  I hushed him, dropping my voice lower to make sure they couldn’t hear. “I’ll be alright. And I’ll be back as soon as I can. Now go.”

  The cat jumped back up onto the trash can and then up to the roof, turning back to look at me only for a moment before he vanished from sight. I hoped they’d understand.

  “Let’s go—”

  Before he could finish, I crossed my arms, bent my head, and stomped down the alley and through the portal. My jaw clenched tight to stop the stinging in the back of my throat.

  The Arcane Authority guys had just finished explaining to the Council delegate—a man with graying brown hair, kind eyes, and a thick southern accent—what I’d done.

  “Given that she’s underage with no guardians, we thought it a matter best handled by the council directly.”

  The older man huffed from the other side of the ornate wooden desk separating us. “Yes, yes,” he said, waving them off, never once taking his milky gaze from me. “Thank you, that’ll be all.”

  Thick Brows stiffened. Likely, they weren’t used to being so easily dismissed. But they left without another word, closing the large double doors to the office behind them with a solemn click.

  “Now then,” the delegate of the Arcane Council smiled, showing two rows of yellowed teeth between his thin lips. “Are you often able to produce magic in such… magnitude?”

  I tucked my hands between my knees to stop them from vibrating as I spoke. Did my best to meet his gaze with a steady one of my own. “No. I don’t know what happened.”

  “You needn’t lie to me, girl,” he said, cocking his head to one side as he considered me. Something in his expression, or maybe in the way he’d said it made me believe him. Maybe if I told him the truth, he’d understand it wasn’t my fault I couldn’t control it.

  “Sometimes,” I amended, not able to decide one way or the other if I should trust the old man. There were twelve delegates that made up the Arcane Council, and a Magistrate that had the final say on the important things. My mind was still reeling with the fact that I now sat in the office of one of the most powerful men in the witching community.

  He could have me imprisoned. Killed. The most likely thing to happen would be to be stripped of all my powers, which, honestly, wouldn’t be all that bad.

  “Thought so,” he mused, making a clucking sound with his tongue as he rolled the information around in his mind.

  Sweat beaded at my hairline despite the cool air in the dusky office. It was so silent you could hear a pin drop. As though all the sound in the universe had been vacuumed up, blocked out by the insulation of hundreds upon hundreds of tomes lining thick wooden shelves all around the space.

  I shook off the miasmal feeling. I wished he’d just get on with it. There was no sense in dragging this out. I was sure he’d already decided on what my punishment would be. But you didn’t rush an Arcane Council member.

  “Who were your parents?” he asked after a time, and I flinched at the question, sucking in a quick, sharp breath.

  “I’m not sure. They died when I was very small,” I said, giving a small shrug. “I never knew their names.”

  It wasn’t total bullshit. I didn’t know my mother’s name, but I knew my father’s. Alistair was his name. I only knew it because it was inscribed on the inside of the ring my mother left with me. A gawdy golden thing with a great bird on it. An orange colored stone where its eye should’ve been. His last name began with an H, but the engraving was worn down from too many years of wear. I glanced down at it, twisting it round my thumb—the only finger it fit.

  The delegate seemed intrigued by the ring but snapped out of his glazed over stare when I shoved my hands back between my knees. He cleared his throat. “A pity,” he began, pursing his lips. “A natural ability such as yours is wasted—and dangerous—if left unchecked on the streets. We cannot risk that kind of exposure. You understand?”

  I did. Ever since our kind left the dying lands of Emeris and arrived here, we’d been persecuted. Bordeaux. Salem. London. It didn’t matter where we were. If they thought there was magic in our veins, they burned us. Buried us. Or let us starve.

  Thousands of us were killed because of human ignorance. But that was a long time ago. Before cell phones, social media, and Twilight. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t exactly keen to risk it either, but I understood why some of our kind believed it was time to ‘come out’ to our human neighbors.

  “I understand.”

  “Good.”

  “I can’t go back, then? To… to where I was?”

  His forehead creased. “I’m afraid that isn’t possible.”

  Kalzir, then. I could already feel it—the cold bite of iron shackles on my wrists and ankles. The oppressive weight of the bindstone woven through the walls of my cell, supressing my magic, slowly driving me to madness.

  I watched him from the corner of my eye as he gathered a quill, ink, and a sheet of parchment. My mind wandering, not quite settling on any one thing. My body light. Gaze blurred.

  The metal quill-tip bit into the ink, coming out coated in the shimmery black substance. In a state of total disbelief, I read the words as he wrote them, For Headmaster Sterling, and then I watched as they disappeared into the paper, seeming to evaporate before my very eyes. Unbothered, he continued writing his letter, the words vanishing seconds after being written.

  “Have you heard of Arcane Arts Academy?” he asked, pausing the scratching of metal on paper to glance up at me, a small smile pulling at the corner of his thin lips.

  Of course, I had. How could I not? Arcane Arts Academy was a school hidden deep in the Allegheny Mountains of… West Virginia, I thought. A place for the children of great and wealthy witches to study. To develop, grow, and hone their natural abilities without the prying eyes of humans.

  In other words—no place for a girl like me. A vagabond without a home or a penny to her name had absolutely no place within the hallowed halls of AAA.

  He couldn’t be serious.

  “Are you surprised?” he asked, continuing before I could pick my jaw up off the floor and attempt to formulate a response. “You’re welcome.”

  Thank you? He really wanted me to say thank you? They’d eat me alive in a place like that. Spoiled rich kids. Know-it-all teachers. Curfews. Exams. I wouldn’t last a damned day. “But how long will I have to stay there?” I began, trying to keep the sour taste in my mouth from tainting my words. “Is this your sentence for what I did?”

  “If you choose to see it that way, then I suppose it is. And I expect you to stay there until formal graduation.”

  AAA students graduated at twenty-one… he expected me to stay there for four years! Students there started at sixteen, how would I ever catch up? My mouth went suddenly dry.

  I’d rather he sent me to Kalzir.

  “I’ll have someone escort you to gather your things, we’ll have you there by nightfall.”

  My things? Did he mean my one lousy suitcase of clothes and headbands? Or my hairbrush and toothbrush. It didn’t matter because I wouldn’t be going back to Leo and Lara’s caravan. If I did, I might get out of going to AAA, but they’d be sitting where I am, and in much deeper shit. I couldn’t imagine what the consequence would be for their ‘negligence,’ but I knew it would be far worse than the fate that awaited me.

  I shook my head, letting the tension in my shoulders release. “There’s no need,” I told him. “This is all I have.”

  He clucked his tongue, his gaze roving over my tank top, torn jean shorts, and frayed headband with a look somewhere between distaste and pity. “Very well.”

  3

  He sent me through the portal alone.

  I turned to watch it close behind me, the old man nodding to me as the portal evaporated, leaving me staring at
cream colored wallpaper.

  “Yes, what is it?” A throaty bellow called from the other side of the room. I spun, tripping over a chair to land sprawled face-first on the plush oriental rug. My palms burned where they scraped across the carpet. I clutched them to my chest, finding the skin red and raw.

  Damn. I jumped to my feet, a violent blush blooming red in my cheeks. Inflaming my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, brushing invisible dust off my knees to avoid meeting Headmaster Sterling’s heavy stare. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you. I was sent by—”

  “I know who sent you, and I know why you’re here,” he interrupted, and my jaw flexed, holding in a retort. “Is there something of interest on the carpet, or are you being purposefully rude?”

  I bit my lip and raised my head.

  The man before me was regal looking in a pinstripe tweed suit, with salt and pepper hair, thick black brows, and a shocking silvery white beard that climbed up the sides of his face to meet his hairline at his temples. His eyes were dark and wide as they took me in. The crinkles at their corners stretched with the motion.

  His lips parted, and my instant reaction was to look away. Look anywhere but at the man staring at me like I was a ghost, or maybe a monster.

  Headmaster Sterling schooled his features back into something more like a drawn scowl, leaving me to wonder what it was he saw that made him startle. But then again, why wouldn’t someone of his stature look at someone like me with anything but mild shock? As if they don’t know the state of the world outside their plush office chairs, warm stone hearths, and fine fabrics.

  Ignorance really was bliss, wasn’t it?

  Sterling lifted a sheet of paper from his desk, handing it out to me while reading something else in front of him.

  “Generally, if I hold something out for someone, it means it’s for that person.”

  “Oh,” I said, breaking out of my trance-like state and scurrying over to pull it from his calloused, ink-stained fingers. “Thank you.”

  I moved back away from the desk, peering at what looked to be a schedule of classes. Potions. Incantations. History. Alchemical Science.

  “Your dorm room number is at the top,” he said. “That’ll be all.”

  I nodded, finding where he’d written the number 427 in the top corner of the page.

  I supposed I’d be made to find my own way around, then.

  Moving toward the door, I froze in place when he added. “And Harper…”

  I didn’t dare turn around, afraid I’d lose my nerve.

  “I don’t want any trouble from you. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Headmaster Sterling.”

  “Good.”

  I rushed out the door, gasping when my body collided with another, and I fell hard on the tile floor. Pain shot up through my tailbone to leave stars dancing in my peripherals.

  I moaned, trying to stand. Noticing I’d scattered the papers of the person I’d hit all over the floor. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I ever stay on my own damned feet?

  Clumsiness really was a curse.

  Forgetting the dull ache now radiating up from my backside, I rushed to pick up the documents, muttering an apology to scuffed brown leather shoes.

  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—I mean, I just wasn’t paying attention—”

  I cut myself off. Not wanting to sound even more pathetic than I probably looked. I clamped my mouth shut, holding my breath——my cheeks inflaming with mortification.

  Could this day get any worse?

  “It was an accident,” he said, crouching down in his navy slacks and vest, tossing his loose burgundy tie over his shoulder. “Here, give those to me. Are you alright?”

  I pushed the papers into his waiting grasp, sucking a breath through clenched teeth when his fingertips brushed the back of my hand. He tucked his reclaimed papers beneath his arm and offered me his hand. His grip was warm and firm as he helped me to stand.

  A jolt ran through me, like a static shock, but stronger, racing through my veins, shooting sparks from my nerve-endings.

  He watched me with a curious gleam in his eyes. Eyes the color of dark denim, or the sky just before a storm. A whisper of scruff defined his already strong jaw. Full lips perched, smirking, above a dimpled chin.

  His jaw tightened and his eyebrows pulled together. I watched as his adams apple bobbed.

  I snapped my jaw shut, releasing the hand I didn’t realize I was still holding and resisted the urge to check if I was drooling or if I’d managed to keep it all in.

  Had he felt it, too?

  Like calls to like, Lara’s voice whispered in my mind, magic to magic.

  I blinked rapidly, shaking my head to clear the phantom voice still ringing in my ears.

  He tilted his head and the dying light from the tall stained-glass window at the end of the enormous hallway hit his face—setting his light brown hair ablaze with streaks of copper and something close to gold.

  Damn… he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  Another charged moment of silence passed before I realize I still hadn’t answered his question.

  “Fine,” I blurted at the same time he almost imperceptibly shook his head and said. “I’m Elias. Elias Fitzgerald.”

  Say something. Don’t just stand there!

  “Harper,” I choked out, composing myself. Painfully aware of how I must look in comparison to his vest and tie. With my ratty attire and messy mane of hair.

  The man named Elias tucked his papers into a neat bundle. “You must be new,” he said, his gaze lazily roving over my less than proper clothes, settling on my flip-flops before finding my face again.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  He snort-chuckled, nodding, and his expression was so unguarded. Not filled with judgment, or pity, or condescension like all the other stares I’d had to endure that day. I let out a small laugh, surprised to find I remembered how to smile.

  “Do you need help finding anything?”

  Right. I still had the now-crumpled time-table in my hand. “Actually, yeah. Could you point me toward the female dorms?”

  “Ah,” he said, looking slightly deflated. “Yes. Of course. I’m headed that way if you want a half-assed tour?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Elias spun around as though trying to remember where he was. I wondered if he was new here, too. “Right, so, you know where the Headmaster’s office is—obviously. Did you portal in?”

  “Yeah. Right into Headmaster Sterling’s office. I haven’t seen anything else.”

  “Well this is the west wing of the academy. Faculty rooms and living quarters are down there,” he said, pointing back the way he’d come. “Student dorms are in the east wing. And all the space in between are classrooms.”

  We started down the hallway, and I made a point to look around, trying to find the exits and lavatories. You know, the important stuff. But there were no exits here, instead I found walls of wood and stone. Painted portraits of Headmasters with their familiars. One with a crow. Another with a… mountain lion? Now that was badass. I wondered who he was.

  “So, where are you from?” Elias asked, blowing out a breath.

  I shoved my hands into my pockets. “No where, really,” I finally answered, not really sure what else to say. “But I came here from New Orleans.”

  “Ah,” he said, cutting me an approving glance. “I love New Orleans this time of year,” he slowed, his gaze settling on my near-bare feet again. “I hope you have some proper shoes. It’s a lot colder in West Virginia than it is in the south in April. And the mountains have their own weather. It snowed just a couple weeks ago.”

  I cringed. Ugh, another thing to look forward to.

  We passed through a main atrium, lit by an impressive crystal chandelier that seemed to float in midair. The light was near blinding if you stared at it too long. From the atrium, which I gathered to be the heart of the building, four hallways broke off, forming the main
arteries of the academy. Each labeled with their direction. North, East, South, and West.

  I scrunched my face, stopping in the middle of the room. Elias’ footsteps still echoing around us. “Where is everyone?”

  It occurred to me then we hadn’t seen, heard, or run into anyone else yet.

  He gestured to the hallway marked North. “They’ll all still be in the dining hall,” he told me, and I thought I could hear the faint sounds of laughter, music, and chatter drifting from the hall. “Have you eaten?”

  “Yes,” I lied, not wanting to go anywhere near the dining hall in the prestigious AAA while in rubber sandals and a baggy tank top.

  Elias seemed to sense the lie, his lips pressing into a thin line before he started off down the corridor marked East. I wondered why he wasn’t in the dining hall eating with everyone else, but thought it best not to ask. I didn’t want to seem nosey.

  I walked a little ways behind him, making a show of trying to catch up to his lengthy strides when really I was marveling at his broad shoulders and the way he walked tall, without even a hint of slouch. He seemed a little older than I thought the students would look. But then again, I supposed they did attend until they were twenty-one.

  “That’s Ms. Granger’s classroom to the right,” he said, pointing out a wide wooden door. “Incantations.”

  “And what’s in that room?” I asked him, pointing to another down the hall and to the left.

  “History,” he replied.

  As we neared the end of the hall, he stopped, pointing up a flight of stone stairs to the right of the dead-end in the corridor. “Female dorms are up to the right,” he said. “And male dorms on the left,” he continued, pointing up a staircase opposite the one he stood beside.

  I expected to find a bunch of elitist types in the academy. You know, the kind of people who looked down on someone like me. Looking at Elias as a small smile quirked up at the corner of his mouth, I considered the possibility that I’d been wrong.