Dammit. I hated when other people were right.
“Watch where you’re going!”
My shoulder bounced off something solid and I found myself facing a trio of girls, the blonde in front looking decidedly irked about my clumsiness.
“Oh, sorry, I–”
“Oh, my God,” the pretty blonde cut me off, raking me up and down with her eyes. “What is that awful smell?”
Great. Of course I’d have to walk right into the gang of stereotypical bitches on my way back to my dorm. Wait. Was bitch a racial slur now?
“It smells like something died around here,” she sneered, tossing her hair and looking back to her pair of friends, who smirked and tittered in amusement. Fuck’s sake.
“Something’s going to die around here,” I told her, “if you don’t get out of my way.”
“Jade,” a voice said loudly from behind the trio. “There you are.”
I looked past them to Dean, who stepped out of our dorm.
“Madison,” he said, nodding a cold greeting to the blonde. “Tiffany, Victoria.”
“Please,” Madison said. “Don’t tell me you’re friends with this… cur. I know your taste isn’t what it used to be, but this is a new low, even for you.”
“Cur?” I snapped. “Who are you calling a cur?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, looking down her nose at me. “Do you belong to a pack? Because you smell like a mundane. One who rolled in something dead.”
“Madison,” Dean said. “Shouldn’t you be checking in with Alpha Blake? And Jade, I’ve got your schedule. Come on.”
I glared at the bimbo a moment longer, then pushed through the middle of the trio, slamming my shoulder into her as I passed. I could practically feel her boring holes into the back of my neck as I sauntered into my room.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Dean said. “Madison has a lot of friends. If you get on the wrong side of her, she could make your life difficult round here.”
“Like it isn’t already,” I said, rolling my eyes and tossing my hoodie on the end of my bed. “You know her, then?”
“I, uh, used to.”
Something about the way he said it made me look at him, and then I got it.
“Oh. You dated.”
“Last year. She’s the daughter of her pack’s alpha, I’m my alpha’s only son… our families encouraged it. The whole thing was a massive mistake.”
He dropped down on the end of his bed and tried not to look bothered, but he was fooling no-one – probably not even himself. But if he didn’t want to talk about it, who was I to pry?
“Well,” I said, grabbing a clean set of clothes, “if you think you can resist her allure for an hour, I’m going to take a shower. Call me if she tries to seduce you.”
“Thanks,” he said, with a short laugh. “I’ll be sure to be on the lookout for that.”
I hit the shower room and took my frustration out with a scrubbing brush, sawing at my skin until it was pink and glowing, and hopefully, didn’t smell of dead shit anymore. Shame I couldn’t fix smelling like an outsider so easily.
I pulled on the clean uniform and unwrapped my hair from a towel, leaving it tousled around my shoulders.
“Hey, Dean,” I called as I barged back out into our room. “You better not be getting busy with any daughters of–”
I lifted my head, and my eyes caught on a pretty, dark-haired, Asian girl.
“…alphas,” I finished belatedly. “Shit. I was joking. Want me to clear out for a bit?”
Dean laughed.
“I’m Mei-Ling,” the girl said, with a slight accent. “Call me Mei.”
“Mei is our roommate,” Dean said.
“Oh. Hey. Good to meet you.” I stretched out a hand and shook hers. I’d have hugged her, but I didn’t want to risk covering her in outsider stink.
“Dean says you’re a troublemaker,” Mei said, only the way she said it, it didn’t sound like a bad thing.
“I did not say that,” Dean protested, holding his hands up. He gave me a look. “I just might have mentioned you have a bit of a tendency to climb out of bathroom windows.”
“Same difference,” Mei said, shrugging easily.
“And I know you had your reasons,” Dean said.
“Yeah, well, only because no-one told me the wall was spelled.” I shot him an accusing look.
“How was I supposed to know you were going to try to climb the damned thing? And we call it ‘warded’.”
“It’s called, ‘it would have been nice to have some warning.’ Anyway, that’s all in the past.” For now.
Dean eyed me like he didn’t believe me, then shrugged it off.
“Well, if you’re sticking around, then you’d best dry your hair or whatever. Alpha Blake is giving his start of year speech soon.”
Chapter Nine
“Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the start of a new semester at the Sarrenauth Academy of Therianthropy.”
Blake stood behind a small lectern, which was positioned on a stage at the front of the vast hall we now occupied. It was the same hall we’d been dining in since I got here, but the tables had been pulled aside, and rows of chairs laid out, which were now occupied by shifters. I glanced around. There had to be a couple of hundred of them – us – all wearing cuffs like mine. Exactly how many shifters were there roaming this green and pleasant land of ours?
“Each of you has your own loyalties and pack bonds, but I remind you that within these walls, those pack bonds no longer exist. Your loyalties are to this academy. To the student on your left, and the student on your right. Within these walls, you are all equal.”
I snorted under my breath. Equal, my arse. Madison had already made it perfectly clear what they thought about outsiders round here. Curs.
Blake locked eyes with me across the hall, and it took me a moment to realise that he’d probably heard me snort. Shifter senses. Oops.
“This academy has much to offer you,” he continued, allowing his eyes to rove amongst the others. I slumped back in my seat. “I urge each and every one of you to take full advantage of the time you spend here.”
I rolled my eyes – because I figured not even he could hear that. Dean’s elbow nudged me in the ribs, and I shrugged. I’d agreed to give the place a fair trial. That didn’t mean I had to buy into all the BS Blake was spewing.
“Meditation will take place by the lake each morning before breakfast. I remind you that these sessions are compulsory for first and second years, and recommended for third years.”
Meditation classes? He had to be kidding. I shot a glance at Dean, but he didn’t look surprised by this revelation. Not kidding, then. Great. Just what I needed. I’d been cursed into a damned cur, and they wanted me to go all new age.
Blake droned on for a while longer about the academy’s history, and the unity of the packs. I probably should have paid more attention, but honestly his voice had a dreary quality and I couldn’t have cared less about why the founding fathers erected this neutral territory and decreed that each shifter would study here until they learned to control their inner beasts. It was all I could do to keep from drifting off, but I figured even Blake might lose his composure if I started snoring.
“Classes will begin tomorrow. You will each receive your schedules, and you may spend the rest of the day getting acclimated.”
People had already started moving before I’d processed the fact that we were dismissed. Great. Another afternoon kicking around inside my gilded cage. Or not-so-gilded cage. I got up and traipsed in the general direction of the door.
“Hey, wait up!”
I turned around to see Dean hurrying after me. I rolled my eyes.
“There are hundreds of shifters around,” I said to him. “And the walls are warded. I don’t think I need a damned chaperone anymore.”
A look of hurt flashed over his face, and I couldn’t quite bring myself not to care. It wasn’t his fault everything about this place chafed,
and it wasn’t his fault Blake had asked him to keep an eye on me when I got here.
“That wasn’t….” he started, and then trailed off again. God, I was such a bitch. Like I was the only one with problems round here. I was going to have to work on getting over myself.
“Sorry,” I said, exhaling in a heavy sigh. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Yeah, you did. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Wait,” I called, as he joined the masses and disappeared through the door, ignoring me. Bollocks.
There was no sign of Mei, either, so it looked like I was on my own. I decided to head for a walk outside, see if I could clear my head. If I could remember the way, that was, because I didn’t fancy climbing down another drainpipe. It was painfully clear that I wasn’t cut out of that sort of behaviour. And besides, if Blake thought I was trying to escape again, I’d be back in a cell in the dungeon faster than you could say, ‘false imprisonment’. Nope, I was going to have to do it the old-fashioned way, through an actual door. Only, my tour hadn’t been real big on highlighting ways out.
I emerged into the corridor with the last students, and weighed my options. I didn’t much feel like roaming the hallways endlessly, and I got the feeling that if I got lost here, it might take a long time to get unlost.
“Hey, excuse me,” I called to a uniformed guy and a girl leaning against the walls, chatting to each other. They broke off from their conversation to look at me.
“I’m looking for the door onto the grounds,” I said. “Any idea which way?”
“Uh, sure. Keep heading down this corridor right to the end, take a right, then you want the third left, and the second right.”
“Thanks.” Right at the end, third left, second right. This bloody castle was a maze.
I headed off, following their directions through the stone corridors, lit with a jarring mix of wooden torches and electric strip lights. I guess running wiring through an entire castle took some time. So did cleaning it, if the state of the walls and the cobwebs hanging by the ceilings were anything to go by.
Then again, I’d come from Uncle Bob’s farmhouse, and this was practically the Ritz by comparison. Except for the warded wall surrounding it.
I paused, looking around me. This corridor was even darker than the last. They had said third left, and second right, hadn’t they? Or had it been second left, and third right? Crap.
No. No, it had definitely been third left, and second right. I think. Well, whatever. If it led me nowhere, I’d just turn back. It wasn’t like I had any place to be in a hurry. Still, something about the deep, flickering shadows made me uneasy. I laughed at myself, and the uncertain sound echoed back at me from the dark, ancient walls.
Maybe it was time to turn back.
…But how stupid would I feel if the door was at the end of this corridor? I’d been bitten by a damned werewolf and survived. I wasn’t about to go running from a few shadows and cobwebs.
And then I saw it – the heavy wooden door set into the wall at the very end of the corridor, with a large ring of iron for a handle. There was something familiar about it, about the whole eerie corridor, actually, now that I thought about it. Maybe Dean had shown me this as part of his grand tour. It wasn’t like I’d been paying much attention back then, seeing as I hadn’t been planning to stick around at the time.
I gave a shrug, took hold of the handle, and twisted. The door didn’t budge. I rattled it again – the damned thing was locked. Surely there wasn’t a rule about students not going outside? Blake hadn’t said anything about that, at least, not while I’d been listening.
“Ms Hart, what are you doing? Get away from that door!”
I jumped and twisted round, and found a compact, muscular figure advancing on me, a small sack in one hand, and the mother of all scowls on his face. Something about the way he moved, and the way my heart squeezed painfully in reaction to his scent, told me exactly who this was. Of course, last time I’d seen him, he’d been in his shifted form, and he’d been threatening to yank me out of a tree with his over-sized teeth.
“Fletcher.”
“That’s Instructor Fletcher to you,” he snarled, stalking closer until he was towering over me. “Answer the question.”
“I was just going to go outside,” I said, shrinking back against the door. “Just for a walk.”
“Do you take me for a fool? Get away from the dungeon door, right now.”
Dungeon door? I spun around and stared at it. Shit. That was why I’d recognised it. It was the door Shaun had let me out of when I’d agreed to give this whole dumb academy a try. I so did not want to go back down there.
“Sorry, Instructor Fletcher,” I said, pressing myself against the wall and squeezing past him under his glare. I turned and hurried back along the corridor. I heard the door open and shut behind me, but didn’t dare linger in case he decided to throw me right back in there. If I never saw that place again, it’d still be too soon.
I was halfway back to the first year common room when the realisation struck me. I’d followed the directions I’d been given to the letter. Third left, second right. I hadn’t ended up at the dungeon by accident. I clenched my fists into balls by my sides. They’d sent me there on purpose. Shaun hadn’t been wrong when he’d said I was going to have it tough as an outsider.
It was official: Fur ‘n’ Fang sucked.
Chapter Ten
“My name is Instructor Davis, you can call me Brendon, and this is, without question, the most important lesson you will attend here at Fur ‘n’ Fang.”
I straightened a little in my seat. It was Monday morning, first day of the semester, and this was our first lesson, if you didn’t count the meditation session out by the lake before breakfast – which I didn’t.
Shifting 101.
This was where they were going to teach us how to shift – or hopefully, how not to – and once I mastered this, I might actually have some hope of getting my life back. That alone was enough to make me take what Brendon was saying seriously. There were twenty of us in the old stone room, all dressed in our stupid uniforms – about a quarter of the first years.
I’d grabbed a table near the back, and Dean and Mei were sitting with me. Dean seemed to have forgiven me for being a self-centred bitch yesterday, and whatever the reason, Mei was sticking with us. Maybe because I was the only person in the room Madison was sneering at even more than her. I guess the blonde wasn’t just a bigot; she was a racist, too. Figured.
Even now she was darting disgusted looks in our direction. Whatever. I had more important things to worry about.
“If you pay attention in my lessons, you will achieve ultimate control over your shifted form. If you choose not to pay attention, you’ll find yourself repeating a lot of classes. No-one passes this year without passing my class.”
“Without passing all the classes,” Dean said from the corner of his mouth. I laughed, and quickly turned it into a cough. Brendon’s head pivoted in my direction. Ah, shit. Great start, Jade.
“Some of you will learn control faster than others. Discipline, patience, and determination are the cornerstones of control. Those who exercise them will achieve their goals faster than those who do not.”
He turned and wrote the three words on the board behind him. I scribbled them down in my notepad. Discipline, patience, and determination. If that’s what it took, that’s what I’d do. I was going to learn to stop myself shifting, even if it killed me. And hopefully in time to get my university plans back on track.
“You will have lessons with me every day,” Brendon continued. “These lessons will be primarily practical in nature, and I expect nothing less than your absolute focus when you are working. Anyone acting irresponsibly will find themselves on report. Am I clear?”
His eyes roved the room, and everyone nodded.
“Excellent. Then let’s get started. Pair up.”
Madison leaned in close to her pair of cronies and eyed the three of us, her lips tw
isting into a nasty smile, and then she rose from her seat and sashayed over to us.
“I’ll work with you, Dean,” she said, twirling her hair around one finger and giving him a smile that was all teeth and bad intentions. “You shouldn’t have to work with… lesser students, just because Blake saddled you with her.”
“Uh, I’m fine, thanks,” he said.
Anger flashed over the blonde’s face, but she quickly recovered.
“Fine. I’ll work with Jade then. Since you can’t work in threes.”
“On second thoughts,” Dean said, “I’ll partner with you. Since we already know each other.”
I gave him a grateful smile. Not that I wasn’t up for dealing with that bimbo, but it was my first lesson, and I really wanted to focus. The sooner I mastered this, the sooner I got my freedom.
“Today we will be focussing on transitioning from your human form to your shifted form. Cuffs will remain on, to assist those who struggle to return to their human forms.”
“Brendon,” Madison said, her voice saccharine sweet, “What about those of us who don’t need cuffs to control themselves?”
“Everyone will keep their cuffs on,” Brendon repeated. “Decide who will work first, please.”
“I don’t get it,” I said to Mei. “You guys were all born shifters, right? You must be able to control it by now?”
She shook her head, her straight, blue-black hair cascading around her face.
“Many shifters do not manifest their powers until their mid to late teens. Those who receive them early are required to wear cuffs until they attend Fur ‘n’ Fang – to prevent accidental exposure to the mundane population. Though there are some who suspect that not all the local packs,” she broke off and eyed Madison, “adhere to the law.”
Madison laughed; a high-pitched tinkling sound that made me want to punch her in the throat.
“Some of us,” she said, “are above the law.”
“No-one is above the law,” Dean said firmly. “Not even your family.”
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