New Moon (Alpha Wolf Academy)

by JJ King

  Bash stared down at me unblinking, his gaze so intense I wondered if he could see into my soul. I was about to lean up again when the scent of decay and rot caught my nose. I grimaced and darted my gaze to the side, looking for the source of the stench.

  It seemed to glow, I thought, as surprise and shock dulled my logic for a moment. Then the details began to sink in and I saw what I hadn’t before. The pale flesh sticking out of the rushing water, reflecting the light of the moon I had stared longingly at just a short time ago. There was no life in this hand anymore, no life in the body attached to it.

  I scrambled to my feet next to Bash, joined my voice to his, and howled.

  Chapter 5

  I ducked my head, letting my hair fall over my face a little, and walked faster to get away from the stares and whispers of my fellow students.

  I’d been hearing my name on lips that had never uttered my name before all morning and wished I could spend the day in my dorm room but my growling stomach wouldn’t allow that to happen. Since I hadn’t been able to feed any of my other rising appetites last night, I wouldn’t deny my actual appetite a moment longer. Besides, they had a right to be curious, Old Ones knew I was.

  As far as I knew, though, the body Bash and I had stumbled across at the most inopportune moment of my life hadn’t been identified. Or, that was the rumor anyway. It wasn’t as if I were Donahue’s confidant. I was just as in the dark as everyone else on campus, despite what they believed.

  It was a mystery, one that had piqued the interest of almost everyone on campus, especially since the email had gone out. I’d heard the special ding of an Academy email and had opened it immediately, expecting some kind of announcement about the body. It had been an announcement, I’d gotten that part right, but it had been to tell the school body about a curfew that was being instituted immediately for the “protection of all students while the investigation continues.” That was what had really gotten everyone interested in talking to me.

  I had more on my mind than death and curfews. I’d spent the entire night tossing and turning, falling into dreams of Bash’s hot mouth on mine the moment I’d drifted off. Parts of my body that I’d ignored for far too long were becoming annoyingly uncomfortable and needy.

  The cafeteria was crowded with students looking for answers, so when I walked in it felt as though every set of eyes turned to look at me. Ignoring them, I moved through the line, grabbing sandwiches, pasta salad, fruit, and a bottle of water, anything I could stuff in my bag and take on the go.

  I needed quiet, solitude, somewhere people wouldn’t annoy the shit out of me by whispering my name under their breath. My dorm room would work, I thought, but it felt like defeat to retreat to my room and lock myself in just because I was feeling singled out. No, I turned toward another fortress of solitude… the library.

  I’d been to the library once, the day before classes started, but I hadn’t been there since. I hadn’t needed any obscure books for my courses, which was what the library was mostly good for these days. I had all my textbooks in both print and eBook for easy access and my laptop was a life saver. I literally loved it more than most of my belongings.

  Still, I conceded as I stepped into the dark wood and high-ceilinged room where a lull of reverential silence filled the air, the library had its own benefits. It was gorgeous, for one, and for two, it felt… homey.

  I made my way to the back of the library where a ceiling of glass windows created a spacious solarium decked out with larger than normal comfy chairs. A few students sat curled like kittens in their spacious cushions, quietly reading or taking naps in the sun.

  They called to me.

  A sign on the wall told me that food was allowed in this area and this area only, a fact that was a relief since I was starving and had planned on sneaking food if need be. Not breaking campus rules would be much better. I took a bite of my sandwich and reveled in the taste of peanut butter and raspberry jam.

  “Did you hear that the body was a student?” One of the students behind murmured too loudly for a proper library whisper. “I heard it was one of the first years, a scholarship kid from out East.”

  My stomach twisted painfully.

  “No, she’s the one that found the body,” another voice whispered too loudly. “And I heard it was one of the teachers.”

  “Maybe it was Grimes and we won’t have that test on Friday.” The irreverent comment was apparently met with a slap because a moment later I heard a muttered apology and, “I was just joking.”

  I sunk deeper into my chair and hoped the loud whisperers wouldn’t turn around and see me, the “scholarship kid” eavesdropping on their conversation. I didn’t need to worry long, thankfully. A nearby student who was actually studying shushed them one time too many and they got up and left with exasperated sighs.

  I let my head loll back against the cushion and closed my eyes against the endless frustration I was feeling. I’d always had a place back home. I’d always had people and places that were mine. Now, here I was, alone, displaced, and feeling sorry for myself.

  “Don’t pay attention to the jerks,” a soft smoky voice said quietly, so close my eyes popped open expecting to see a face an inch away.

  She wasn’t an inch away, more like two feet, but she was watching me intently with eyes so dark they looked like buttons in a pixie shaped face that matched her petite frame. I took in her Nirvana t-shirt, which had seen better days, her ripped jeans and worn Converse sneakers, and short chopped hair. When she spoke again, it was like hearing an old Hollywood starlet through the mouth of this tiny fairy-like girl.

  “Which might be a problem for you, considering this place is full of jerks.”

  Her statement, delivered so matter of fact from such an unsuspecting source, caught me so off guard that a bubble of laughter worked its way up my throat and almost exploded in the silent space. I caught it just in time and disguised it with a cough that still earned me a few side-eyes.

  The pixie held her hand out and I was unsurprised to find her fingernails painted a dark navy blue. “Hey, I’m Rory.”

  My hand moved out automatically, taking hers. “Elena,” I paused, then added with a wry grin, “the scholarship kid,” as if that were my official title.

  She grinned back. “Nice to meet you, Elena of the scholarship fund. My full, fancy pants title, is actually Aurora Genevieve Dumont, of the shameless liberal snowflake Dumont’s.” She arched an eyebrow in what looked like defiance and explained. “My mother is kind of outspoken about her role in The Sisterhood and some of the,” she raised her voice enough so those straining to hear our conversation could hear easily, “brown nosing backwards thinking families can’t handle that.” Rory shrugged. “So, they shun us basically. I’m expecting a very uneventful year. Lots of Netflix and pizza in my dorm room.”

  “I love Netflix and pizza,” I said with a grin.

  Her eyes sparkled with warmth and humor. “Then we’ll have to figure out if you have good taste in tv or not.” She narrowed her eyes. “Shadowhunters, yay or nay?”

  I pictured my favorite characters on the show and pretended to be uncertain. “It depends,” I mused aloud, “on if you have a thing for Jace, because I’d slap a bitch for him.”

  Rory’s giggle got us a few new shushes and filled my chest with relief. I’d just made my first friend at Alpha Wolf Academy. Maybe life here wouldn’t be so horrible after all. We exchanged numbers and made plans to binge a few episodes tonight.

  “You’re in Xavier’s creative writing class, aren’t you?” Rory climbed into the chair next to me, pulling her legs up so she was curled into a neat ball that barely took up any space. Next to her, my long legs and torso looked gangly.

  “Yeah,” I said hesitantly, wondering if she was a safe outlet for my frustrations there. “Are you in the class?” I hadn’t noticed her, but I sat in the front and she barely took up any space.

  Rory nodded. “I was really looking forward to his class. I’d only heard goo
d things.” She leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “But rumor has it he’s going through a rough divorce and isn’t himself. Maybe that’s why he crucified my paper with red ink.”

  “Holy crap, he tore mine to shreds, too!” I exclaimed in a loud whisper as relief flooded through me. If Rory had gotten into the class, which required a written application, she must have talent. Besides, from what I’d seen of her so far, she was smart as a whip and saucy as one. I liked her. “And I’m here on a writing scholarship.”

  She made a low whistling sound of commiseration. “That sucks. You must have been freaking out.” She waved her hand graciously and said, “Please, take my utter failure as a sign that his bad mood is the problem, not your writing abilities.”

  I nodded smartly and affected a snobby tone, one I’d heard come straight from Daniella’s own mouth. “Not only will I take it, Madame, but I’ll hold it near and dear.”

  Rory unzipped her expensive looking backpack and pulled a container of hummus and snap peas out. “So, have you made any allies here yet?” She crunched into a pea. “Other than me, of course.”

  “Of course,” I replied, loving how comfortable I felt around her already. It was the way I’d always felt around Sara and Bethany. I’d just always figured our connection came from growing up together in such a small community. A twinge of uncertainty churned in my stomach as I thought about how they’d feel with me making a new friend. I pushed it away almost immediately. They were my best friends in the entire world. They would be happy I’d found someone to talk to.

  “Not really.” I took another bite of my almost forgotten sandwich and wished I’d grabbed a milk to wash it down. I took a swig of my water, instead. “I did fall face and eyes into a really cute guy my first day here if that counts.”

  Her eyebrows shifted up and down. “Cute boy, huh? What’s his name?”

  “Bash Reeves,” I murmured, trying to pitch my voice low so others wouldn’t hear. They were definitely listening in on our conversation, I decided.

  “No shit!” Rory’s excitement burst out. We got lots of shushes for that one but she looked unperturbed. “That boy is a hell of a lot more than just “cute” and he just happens to be the single most eligible bachelor on campus. Did he happen to fall face and eyes into you, too?” Her eyes sparkled so brightly it made my cheeks flush.

  My first instinct was to deny everything, I wasn’t exactly experienced in this type of thing. Then, I remembered Sara and Bethany sharing the details of their crushes and how that vulnerability had made them all so much closer. I bit the bullet and nodded. “Yeah, he’s definitely interested but his freaking sister…”

  “Daniella?” Rory hissed, her eyebrows pulling down in sharp vees. She made a sound of disgust. “I hate that…” she seemed to search for the right word and settled on, “snaggle toothed bitch,” which made me giggle. “What’d she do?”

  I huffed out a breath and shook my head. “Well, she broke into the headmistress’s office and stole my confidential file, for one.”

  “No fucking way!” Rory’s eyes were as round as saucers. “It’s insane what people like her can get away with. And I bet you didn’t even report it did you? Because you know she’d get nothing more than a slap on the wrist, if that, for breaking, entering, and theft.”

  I nodded. “Chances are she got one of her bitch pack to grab it for her. Keep the paws clean and all that.”

  “Bitch pack,” Rory repeated slowly as if sampling the words. “I like that.” She took another bite of hummus then choked and motioned with widened eyes toward the main library.

  I turned, expecting to see the queen of the bitch pack herself come striding toward us, pack in tow but, instead, I saw Bash moving steadily toward me with a sexy half grin on his face. I nearly choked on my sandwich and prayed I didn’t have peanut butter on my face.

  “Hey.” He stopped a few feet away from my chair and just smiled at me. He might as well have climbed into the chair with me for all the punch of pheromones that preceded him, hitting me like a wall of sexy temptation. I lifted the bottle of water to my lips, needing to wet my suddenly bone-dry throat, and saw his eyes flicker to my mouth.

  “Hey,” I managed to respond like one of the great orators of history. Nothing more came to mind as I pictured making out with him in the book stacks.

  A hand that wasn’t Bash’s touched my arm and I jumped out of sheer surprise that anyone other than the two of us existed in the world right now. I darted my gaze away from his piercing emerald eyes and over to Rory, whose eyes were still huge and filled with glee. “Um,” she whispered under her breath, “I’m going to go check out the stacks. I’ll text you later, cool?” She hopped up, grabbed her bag, and took another bite of hummus covered snap pea.

  “Cool,” I murmured, watching her as she passed Bash with a brilliant smile then spun around once she was behind him. Her thumbs shot up and she did a little dance to show how awesome she thought this meeting was. When she’d disappeared into the stacks, I shifted my gaze back to Bash and saw that he was watching me with more than a little amusement. “Hey,” I repeated as a slow heat started at my core and worked its way quickly to my cheeks.

  He crossed the distance between us with long strides that brought my attention to his legs. They were fine legs, long and lean. They’d looked good when he was his wolf, too, I remembered.

  Bash grabbed the big chair Rory had been curled in and pulled it closer to my chair with what seemed like little to no effort at all. My mouth went dry.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” he said simply, leaving out small talk, which, oddly, made me feel a little more surefooted. This place was so fancy and filled with rich wolves that I felt like a yokel more often than not. Bash didn’t make me feel like that. His sister, on the other hand, did.

  “Yeah?” I tilted my head slightly and watched him watching me.

  “Yeah.” He smiled and casually reached out a hand to trace the top of my thigh. I held back a gasp as his fingertips lit fires along my uncovered skin and kept my gaze on his, unwilling to back down from the unspoken challenge flashing in his emerald greens.

  “What’d you want to talk about?” I forced my system to slow down and inhale oxygen, knowing I’d keep coming off like a ditz if I didn’t breathe.

  He leaned in even closer and all sound in the library stopped. I wasn’t sure if it was happening in my imagination or if literally everyone around us had stopped so much as breathing to listen in on what had to be juicy gossip. My lips curled up in a smirk. Daniella was going to hear about this within minutes and be so pissed.

  Fuck her.

  I leaned towards him, closing the small distance until we were so close that I could feel the heat of his breath and smell the coffee he’d drank earlier. I pulled his scent in through my nose and held it, savoring it, savoring him. My lips parted.

  His gaze flicked from my eyes to my lips for an instant, pausing there long enough to make my heart skip a beat then begin galloping. He inhaled, closing his eyes for a moment, then a knowing smile lifted his lips and he closed the distance between us.

  He tasted like dark roast, chocolate, and wolf. My hands reached for his neck without coherent thought and delved into the thick mass of midnight colored hair to pull him nearer. This wasn’t my first kiss, I was inexperienced not innocent, but I might as well have been. None of the boys I’d kissed back home had ever made me feel this longing to nip and bite, to tear and howl. I opened to the gentle pressure of his tongue and deepened the kiss.

  I’m not sure how long we were in each other’s arms when a librarian saw us and cleared her throat loud enough to have me jumping back and Bash grinning impishly with a glint of wolf in his eyes. I turned my head, suddenly aware of our audience, but stopped when Bash reached out and brought my face back to look at him. Only him.

  He leaned in again and I thought he would kiss me but, instead, he laid his forehead on mine and murmured quietly, “I think you’d better give me your number so we can do
this again without all the voyeurs.”

  My stomach flipped at the thought of touching him, kissing him, and more, in private without a librarian or peeping Toms to stop us. I took his offered cell phone and programed my number into its memory. I passed it back to him and prayed to the Old Ones he’d use it soon.

  Bash stood up, leaving me cold where his body had touched mine, and tucked his cell into a back pocket. “See you soon?”

  I nodded without saying a word, unsure I’d be able to speak, and watched him turn and walk away.

  When he was out of sight, I collapsed back into my chair and let loose the sigh that had been building inside me since the moment I’d seen him. All around me hushed voices burst into conversation and I heard frantic texting. I should have been upset at the breach of my privacy but I couldn’t manage to feel anything but self-satisfaction. Let them gossip, I thought, smiling at the intricate atrium ceiling.

  My phone dinged a moment later, and I grabbed it, thinking it had to be Rory looking for an update. Shock and pleasure surged when I saw a short message from a new contact, one that simple asked, “Be my date to the party tonight?”

  Chapter 6

  I stared at the screen for what seemed like an eternity, then began to pace.

  I reread the text a few times, committing the seven words to memory, trying to read them in different ways to tell what Bash had been feeling when he’d sent it. It seemed pretty casual, I thought, he hadn’t even included “Will you” in his question. Then again, he’d sent a text less than a minute after getting my phone number. I bit back a squeal of excitement and just let myself vibrate silently.

  I agonized over what to write back. He’d seemed pretty flippant and cool, so I should probably do the same, but I wasn’t sure and without my best friends here to help me through this crisis, I began to panic.

  I forced myself to take a few deep breaths and gave myself a stern talking to. I was a writer, why was I freaking out about a simple text? He’d asked me out, he was flirting with me. I just had to calm the fuck down and flirt back.