by Alexis Davie
“Wait a minute,” the security guard called out, and Erik stopped. Aubrey held her breath and tried to stay as still as she possibly could, ignoring that her legs were shaking. “Who are you?”
Aubrey held her breath.
Erik came to her rescue. “Officer, you know who I am. You even told me to get back to my dorm!”
“Don’t be a smartass with me, Carter. Who’s that with you?”
Aubrey resisted the urge to cover her face with the scarf wrapped around her head. It would do nothing but increase Officer Kane’s suspicions, even though it would protect her from feeling so exposed.
“My girlfriend,” Erik replied, squeezing Aubrey’s hand. Her heart pounded wildly inside her chest. Her joy at Erik referring to her as his girlfriend was short-lived, because Officer Kane didn’t seem convinced by his answer. In fact, she touched something on her belt—probably a radio or walkie-talkie of some sort—and spoke into it.
“I’ve got Erik Carter near the entrance with an unidentified student—”
“We were just leaving!” Erik tried to drag Aubrey away, but Officer Kane was not having it.
“Don’t move!” she ordered.
Just when Aubrey was about to start panicking, Erik let go of her hand. Standing in front of her, he morphed into an enormous golden dragon, his glistening scales covering his whole body, from his elegant snout to the end of his tail. The transformation was nearly instantaneous, and although Aubrey had seen it happening at his party, she had thought it would take a little longer. But in the blink of an eye, Erik had gone from his jock self to a giant, magnificent beast, smoke coming out of his nostrils with every breath he took, snarling through his gritted sharp fangs.
Officer Kane’s radio call had been enough for five other security guards to show up, and they all took out weapons that looked suspiciously like guns and pointed them straight at Erik.
“Erik Carter!” one of them yelled. “Return to your human form!”
“I won’t let you touch her!” Erik growled, standing defiantly in front of Aubrey.
“The human must go!” shouted another guard. “She cannot remain here!”
“Over my dead body!”
“Erik!” Aubrey gasped.
“I repeat,” said the first guard, “return to your human form now! We will take care of the—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Erik opened his mouth and unleashed an inferno upon the security staff. Aubrey covered her eyes, not wanting to see what happened next, but contrary to what she was expecting, she didn’t hear the anguished screams of people being burned alive.
When she lowered her hands from her face, she saw a woman standing in front of the security guards, her arm outstretched in front of her and her palm facing Erik. Between them, Erik’s flames were extinguishing, as though the woman’s hand were a hose.
“Erik Carter,” she said, and her voice boomed with authority. “Do transform back into a human. Now.”
To Aubrey’s astonishment, Erik immediately did as he was told, though he remained standing protectively before Aubrey, his arms held out to his sides.
“Professor—” he began to say. The woman held up her hand to stop him, cutting Erik short.
She turned to Aubrey, and her gaze made her want to simultaneously do two things: hug her like she was an old friend and run away in the opposite direction as fast as her legs could take her. The professor’s eyes were green, like Aubrey’s and Erik’s, but the color was darker, somehow wiser, as though she had lived through and seen things that Aubrey couldn’t even imagine. She didn’t look much older than Aubrey, though—if she had to guess, she’d say the woman was in her late twenties, early thirties. Her dark hair was tied into a tight braid, and she carried herself with an air of power and elegance different from Erik’s yet similar at the same time.
“I’ll take care of this.” The woman addressed the six security guards around them, sending them away with a wave of her hand. “You may go.” Once they had left, she turned her attention back to Aubrey. “I assume,” the woman said, “you are the human.”
Well, there was no use in lying now.
“Yes, ma’am,” Aubrey confirmed.
“How did you find Elite Magic University?”
“I don’t know.”
The professor raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
It wasn’t a question. It sounded more like an accusation, and Aubrey’s blood boiled in her veins. She hadn’t asked for any of this! All she had wanted was to have a decent twenty-first birthday! Not even the best birthday, just a decent one. One she could remember fondly when she was old and gray.
“Yes, that is so!” she snapped. “I was walking with my friends, and I saw these weird sparkle thingies, and then I turned around and my friends were gone! And I saw the entrance—” she pointed to the stone archway behind her, “—and thought I could find someone to help me!”
Erik reached out to take her hand again. His touch calmed her down somewhat, and she reminded herself to breathe deeply and let it out slowly. Pissing off this incredibly elegant professor was probably not the best idea.
The woman stared right into Aubrey’s eyes. “What’s your name?”
“Aubrey.”
“Just Aubrey?”
Aubrey held back an irritated sigh. “Aubrey Hawthorne.”
“May I ask you a question, Aubrey?”
“I think you’re going to, regardless of my answer,” she said, which made the professor smile.
“Are your parents James and Denisse Hawthorne?” she asked.
“Um…” Aubrey felt her throat dry up all of a sudden, and she had to let out a small cough to clear it. “Y-yeah, why?”
“Is your paternal grandfather named Joseph, by any chance?” the professor went on. “Perhaps you have two great-uncles, Robert and George?”
“Wh— How do you know so much about my family?” Aubrey demanded. She hadn’t spent much time with her great-uncles as a kid, but she had visited her Grandpa Joe quite a lot, and she remembered the stories he’d told her of all the trouble he and his older brothers had gotten in when they were children.
The woman in front of her laughed.
“Because, my dear girl,” she said, “it’s my family, too. I’m Margaret Bramwell, your great-grandmother.”
If Aubrey had felt, at some point during the night, like she was living a fantasy, fairytale-esque fever dream, she was absolutely sure of it now. She couldn’t possibly be standing in front of her great-grandmother, whom she’d had only pictures of, and more importantly, said great-grandmother couldn’t look a few years older than Aubrey instead of looking eighty or ninety—maybe even older than that.
Next to her, Erik was staring at her with wide eyes, his mouth slightly open in shock.
“There’s no way—” Aubrey replied, and the professor laughed again.
“I see why you might not believe it,” she agreed. “But I assure you it’s true.”
“How?” asked Erik before Aubrey could. Good thing he did, because she didn’t think her vocal cords were working at the moment.
“You see, dear,” said Margaret, “I’m a witch. Usually, we marry other immortals, if we decide to get married, but I fell in love with your great-grandfather, my darling Charlie, who was a mortal. I loved the life I had with him, and I loved raising our sons, but I couldn’t let them realize that I wasn’t aging alongside them, so I used a spell to make it seem like I was growing older, too. When my dear Charlie passed away, I decided it was my time as well, and so I faked my death.”
Aubrey was at a complete loss for words. Her great-grandmother was an immortal witch—an immortal witch who had faked her death and then retired to be a professor at a magic university for other immortal creatures. Did her father know? Had her great-uncles known, or Grandpa Joe? Had anyone?
It suddenly dawned on her that Margaret had only had three sons. Aubrey wasn’t all that familiar with her distant relatives, but she knew that Grandpa Joe had only
had two sons, and only one of her great-uncles had had children, all of them also sons.
Was Aubrey the first woman in three generations of her family?
Margaret smiled kindly at her. “You may have already realized this, but you’re the first woman to be born in our bloodline. Ergo, you’re the first witch to be born in our bloodline. After me, of course.”
“Wait.” Aubrey shook her head, attempting to make sense of what her great-grandmother had just told her. “Are you—are you saying I am a witch?”
“That’s correct,” said Margaret.
“That’s why you were able to cross through the barrier,” Erik muttered beside Aubrey. “But then why did the security system recognize her as a human?”
“Very good question, Erik. Tell me, Aubrey, how old are you?”
“I—I turned twenty-one today,” she replied. Had the day really not ended yet? Had she really gone through this entire ordeal in the span of 24 hours? It seemed almost impossible, and she wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t experienced it herself.
“Ah!” Margaret clapped her hands together. “That explains it. Your powers only came to be today, but it’ll take them a few days to be fully calibrated into your system.”
“Wait, I have powers?” Aubrey nearly shrieked.
“Of course you do; you’re a witch!”
She was about to argue that she didn’t think she had any powers when she remembered two things that had happened to her that morning: the cup of coffee that had magically materialized, and the white pedestrian light that had lasted a few seconds too long. She had craved a cup of coffee so much, and she had wished for that white light to last a little longer so she could make it in time to her birthday picnic.
Aubrey’s powers had changed the world around her to her wishes, and she hadn’t even been aware of it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “does that mean I can stay here?”
She noticed Erik squeezing her hand and turning his head to her.
“If you want to,” Margaret answered. “There’s always room at EMU for anyone who wants to learn more about themselves and their abilities.”
Aubrey turned to Erik, a giddy grin overtaking her mouth. She could actually stay with him. She could stay here and go to school with him and be part of this incredible world she had accidentally come across. Erik grinned back at her, and the only reason Aubrey didn’t kiss him right then and there was because she felt weird doing so in front of her immortal witch great-grandmother.
“Well, I’ll leave you to make your choice.” Margaret clasped her hands behind her back. “Whatever it is, I look forward to hearing back from you on Monday. Goodnight, Aubrey. Your Highness.”
With that as her goodbye, the professor turned on her heels and walked away from the pair.
As soon as she was out of sight, Erik wrapped his arms around Aubrey and pulled him to her, kissing her on the mouth.
“You unbelievable witch,” he murmured, his smile clashing with hers.
Aubrey would have to return to the human world to set her things straight. She would have to keep working in order to pay EMU’s tuition, probably—hopefully, though, it wouldn’t be as expensive as human colleges were—but she’d be able to move out of her apartment and into the university’s dorms. Maybe she would even join a sorority! There had to be one for witches, right? And she hadn’t forgotten that she still had to explain her absence to her friends and apologize for having been gone the entire day.
Almost as if on cue, her phone vibrated with a text message for the first time that whole evening.
“I need to get that,” she said.
“No, you don’t,” Erik argued, and she pushed herself away with a laugh and pulled out her phone from her purse.
BITCH, Chelsea had texted her. WTF I AM EXPECTING A GODDAMN MESSAGE FROM YOU LIKE YESTERDAY!!!
OMG I KNOW, I’M SORRY, Aubrey texted back, making sure to add the two pluses at the beginning of the number and realizing that the girl’s comments about the ‘mortal’ number finally made sense. I’m OK, so don’t worry. Parents showed up unexpectedly and took me to lunch. I’m gonna crash at their place, but I’ll talk to all of you tmw, k?
To both her surprise and relief, her text messages were sent without any issues, and Chelsea replied almost immediately.
OMGGGGG you couldn’t have just TOLD us that??? LMAO just don’t ever scare us like that again!
I won’t!!! Love you, Chels!!! Aubrey pocketed her phone again, and the moment she did, Erik was kissing her again, his mouth soft and gentle before it pressed harder against hers with an urgency that Aubrey felt in her bones.
“I don’t mean to be bold, Your Highness,” she whispered, letting out a pleased hum when Erik growled, spurred on by her calling him that. “But do you want to maybe get a room?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said, taking her hand to lead her back to the building of the Dragon Fraternity.
As it turned out, Aubrey’s gut feelings had both been right, just at different instances and in different ways. The day had gone from bad to worse before ultimately becoming the best day of her life, and EMU had, indeed, contained all the answers she hadn’t realized she was looking for.
Aubrey didn’t know what the future had in store for her, but there was one thing she knew for certain: Erik would be by her side through whatever came, and as long as he was holding her hand, she could face anything.
Shifter’s Turmoil
1
As soon as Sadie felt the stomping reverberating in the hallway outside her room, she knew that her roommate had returned from her weekly trip to her parents’ place, and she also knew it hadn’t gone well. She sat up on her bed, where she had been reading a few articles on her computer for a history assignment, and braced herself for the door to be slammed open with a thunderous roar.
Just like she had expected, Ellie threw the door open so hard that it almost bounced off the wall, with enough strength that it made a tiny crack close to the doorknob, along the many other cracks she had left on the poor entrance of their room. Sadie often wondered if it was some sort of competition in Ellie’s family, though practicing here didn’t seem to be worth the hassle. This was their third door in as many months, and the faculty had told them, loud and clear, that they wouldn’t be getting a fourth one.
“I’ll just have to replace it myself,” Ellie had said to Sadie afterwards, like she saw no issue in slamming the door open hard enough to break it.
“You’d better,” Sadie had warned her, “because I’m not having a stupid privacy curtain or some crap like that in our room.”
Ellie had laughed and playfully shoved Sadie’s shoulder with her own, but she had promised that they would never have something as ridiculous as a ‘privacy curtain’.
“No matter how many doors I have to replace,” she had added. Besides, neither of them thought that would go over well with the faculty, anyway.
Now Ellie seemed to be nearly smoking with anger, her two bags at her sides. If this had been a cartoon, Sadie wouldn’t have been surprised to see her face go red and smoke whistle out of her ears.
“I ask for one weekend of peace and quiet,” Ellie began, her voice strangely calm. “One single weekend of ‘how about we don’t treat Ellie like she’s an idiot who got lucky and instead treat her like a member of the pack’. That’s literally the only thing I ask of them. And what do I get?”
“I’m assuming not that,” Sadie said.
“None of that!” Ellie yelled, slamming the door behind her, although with considerably less strength than when she had opened it. She grabbed her bags and threw them into her side of the room before she sat down on the edge of the bed opposite Sadie’s. “It’s the same thing every single goddamn weekend! I’m not going to apologize for not being the student with the best grades in the entire school because I still bust my ass and I still get good grades, and the one thing I’m sorry for is that that’s not enough for them!”
“Did they
ask you to apologize?” Sadie wouldn’t put it past Mr. and Mrs. Hanson. She had never been unlucky enough to meet them in person, but she had heard the way they talked to their daughter a few times, either through video calls or from Ellie herself.
“No, but they didn’t have to,” Ellie answered. She flopped dramatically onto her bed, accompanying it with a long, deep, loud sigh. “Can’t wait until I don’t have to keep going back.”
“Only four more years,” Sadie mumbled in an attempt to make her friend feel better.
Two months into the semester, after Ellie had returned from her trip in tears one Sunday, Sadie had asked her why she kept going back, why she put up with her parents’ harassment and awful treatment. They already had enough on their plates as freshmen in the prestigious Elite Magic University to worry about family issues on top of that.
Ellie had wiped her tears with the collar of her shirt and smiled ruefully.
“Because I don’t want to get banned from my pack,” she had replied. “I wouldn’t care if they disowned me, but one word from my dad to our alpha, and I’d have to leave. I wouldn’t be able to handle being cast out of my home.”
Sadie couldn’t even begin to imagine what that must feel like. Her parents weren’t that high in the hierarchy of her own pack back in Wyoming, certainly not high enough to be able to get her banned with one word to the alpha, though they were well accommodated. She didn’t know how Ellie could stand that pressure. She supposed it was because her friend didn’t have many other options.
“Only four more years,” Ellie repeated quietly. Her fury was apparently diminishing, as she looked calmer and more thoughtful rather than bent on rampaging through their dorm building. Then she pushed herself up to a sitting position, her legs crossed underneath her, and turned to Sadie. “You know what I need? A girls’ night out. Like, right now.”
Sadie raised an eyebrow. “Right now?”
“Why not? Give me one reason why we can’t have a girls’ night out.”
“How about I give you two?” For each of her two reasons, Sadie lifted a finger. “Because it’s Sunday, and therefore we have classes early tomorrow?”
