I didn’t answer that, because I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
“What did you hear?” I asked him.
“Nothing, not at first. Not until they took the suppressor cuffs off me. Then I heard screams – like the sound of someone shifting. And I heard Blake talking to them.”
“Them? As in, more than one?”
He nodded.
“Jade, there are others like us, locked up in the dungeon.”
“No, there can’t be,” I said, slumping over the chair. I didn’t seem quite able to support my own weight. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would they keep them there? And why wouldn’t they tell me? They told me about you.”
“Maybe they don’t want to integrate them.”
“They integrated us.”
“I don’t know, Jade,” he said. “But I know what I heard.”
“Alright then.” I pushed myself up from the chair. “Let’s go and ask Shaun.”
He caught my arm and spun me around.
“Are you crazy? You heard what I said, right? He’s in on it, he has to be. There’s no way he knew about us and not the others.”
“Shit.” I exhaled a trembling breath. “You’re right. What do we do?”
“We need to get into that dungeon.”
“Are you kidding? You haven’t long been out of it.”
“Right. And they’ve been there this whole time.”
My shoulders sagged, and a memory pounded into the front of my mind, knocking the fight from me.
“Longer,” I said. “I saw Fletcher heading down there with a bundle not long after I was let out. It must’ve been clothes or food or something. Shit. No wonder he wasn’t happy about me hanging around while you were down there. He thought I’d stumble across them. That’s why Blake insisted I had a chaperone. That’s why he locked me in with you the last day you were there. They’re trying to keep us away from the others.”
“So, how do we get to them?”
I chewed my lip for a moment, then shook my head.
“I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t. I mean, this doesn’t change anything, right? If they let us out, but not them, then there has to be a reason. There has to be.”
“Maybe they just didn’t want to conform,” Ryan said bitterly, plucking at his Fur ‘n’ Fang hoodie. “Don’t you think we should at least find out?”
I thought about it for a long moment, then nodded slowly.
“Shaun and Fletcher have keys. Blake, too.”
“I don’t like our chances of getting anything past Blake,” Ryan said, and I had to agree, barely suppressing a shudder just at the thought of trying to pick the alpha’s pocket.
“Fletcher, either,” I said. “Pretty sure that’s the fastest way to get thrown back in the dungeon, permanently.”
“If they ever found your body,” Ryan agreed. “Shaun it is, then.”
I didn’t like it. Shaun had done a lot for me since I got here, and even thinking about helping myself to his key felt like a betrayal. But if he was involved in this, and he was keeping it from me, then he’d betrayed us first.
“Alright. He probably keeps it in his desk.”
The corridors were deserted – it was rare we got a clear and sunny day in February, and most of the students were probably outside making the most of it. I had no idea where Shaun was, but I couldn’t hear him inside, and there was no recent scent by the door.
“You search his office,” Ryan said. “I’ll keep watch.”
“No chance. This is your dumb idea. You search, and I’ll keep watch.”
“Fine. If Shaun comes back, distract him long enough for me to get out.”
Clearly, Ryan had far more faith in my ability to keep anyone distracted than it deserved, but I wasn’t about to argue.
“Just be quick.”
He tested the handle and let himself inside, clicking the door shut behind him. I leaned back against the wall, scanning the corridor up and down every few seconds. A minute passed before I started to get restless. What the hell was taking him so long? Just open the drawer and find the key. It was a whopping great brass key, for crying out loud. It couldn’t be that hard to spot.
I heard footsteps echoing along the stone walkway and jerked my head up.
“Hurry up,” I hissed through the door. “He’s coming!”
Shaun caught sight of me and frowned.
“Jade, what are you doing here? Is everything alright? I don’t think we have a session scheduled today…”
Crap. The distracting part. Here went nothing.
“Um, no, we don’t. I just, um, I was hoping we could have a chat.”
“Of course. Let’s step inside my office.”
“No!” I took a breath and tried to wipe the panic from my face. “I mean, I can’t sit still right now. Can we walk?”
If Shaun thought I was acting weirdly, he made no comment on it. Maybe he always thought I was acting weirdly.
“Sure. This way. What’s on your mind?”
“It’s, um, it’s this whole thing with Ryan.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I didn’t understand why I acted so differently around him when I was shifted, and honestly it scared the hell out of me. “We had another session with Brendon today, and I was the same again. It’s the only thing my shifted form seems to respond to, and I don’t understand why.”
Shaun shook his head as we rounded a corner.
“I wish I had answers for you, Jade, truly. I’ve spoken to the alpha pack, and none of the alphas have any record of anything similar occurring. It could be that it’s normal for Bittens to react more calmly around each other. Or it could be that you’ve shared a common trauma. There’s no way to know for sure.”
“But do you think…” I hesitated, and then pressed on, letting the words tumble out of me before I could think better of it. “Do you think I’ll ever be able to control my wolf without him being there? Maybe I’m flawed. Maybe we both are. What if I can never control myself on my own?”
“We have no reason to think that. You’ve made great progress in your control over the last months. But if you think it would help for your extra sessions to be private again, I can arrange that.”
I shook my head. I didn’t think that would help, at all. And I didn’t want to give up the only control I had over my beast, even if it was only for two minutes at a time.
“No. Um, thanks. I’ve gotta go. Thanks, Shaun.”
I made to spin on my heel, and Shaun reached for me, then pulled his hand back when I stiffened.
“You can talk to me, Jade. About anything.”
Something about the way he said it made me think that I’d been a whole lot less convincing than I thought. I nodded.
“Thanks, Shaun.”
I hurried down the next corridor before he could ask any more questions, and as soon as I was out of sight, I made for the dungeon. Fresh scent told me Ryan had been this way only a minute or two before. It was laid over older scents, too. I guess he’d been this way before.
I caught up with him outside the dungeon.
“Well, did you get it?”
He reached a hand into his pocket and fished out the brass key.
“Ready?”
I nodded, and he let us inside. I slipped through, and he shut and locked the door behind us. It was eerie here without the instructors, and I hurried down the stone steps as quietly as I could. We went past the first door on the left, where we’d both been held during our time here, and on to the next door along.
We shared a long look, then he slotted the key in the lock, and opened it.
“Back again, Blake?” a voice snapped from off to one side. “I already told you–”
She cut off as we stepped inside, and I stared in horror at the woman locked in the cell that shared a common wall with the cell I’d occupied at the start of the year. No wonder Ryan had been able to hear her once his suppressor cuffs were off.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, pushing herself
to her feet. She glared at us with undisguised hostility from behind a wave of mousey-brown hair that sat around her shoulders in a scruffy mane. How long had she been down here?
Ryan clicked the door shut behind us, and the sound snapped me out of my stupor.
“We’re like you,” I said.
“Like them, you mean.” Her lips curled back in a snarl, but I cut her off with a shake of my head. I could see the ring of scar tissue on her arm – a single bite, probably.
“Like you,” I repeated, and rolled up my trouser leg, so that the circle of pink scar tissue glistened in the light. “Both of us.”
“If you’re like me, then why aren’t you in cages?”
“The better question is, why are you in one? They let us out ages ago.”
“Bully for you. You’ve got a key, right? Let me out.”
Ryan took a step forward, but I barred his path with my arm.
“We can’t do that.”
“Why not?” Ryan asked. I dragged him back out of earshot.
“We don’t know anything about her.”
“We know she’s like us!”
“Great. So we let her out, then what? Don’t you think someone’s going to notice?”
“We’ll help her escape,” he said. “And us, too. We can get out of here. All of us.”
I rubbed my temples.
“There is no escape,” I said. And even if there was, I wasn’t sure I’d want to go. I needed to be here. I had friends here, and I was learning to control my shifting power. Sure, it might not have been how I envisioned this year playing out, but I was determined to make the most of it. And that meant sticking around.
“What’s your name?” I asked the woman.
“Laura,” she said.
“I’m Jade. This is Ryan. We want to help you, but this isn’t the way. I’m sorry.”
“Bitch!” she screamed, and threw herself against the cage bars, rattling them and snarling. Her hands trembled and blurred around the bars, then she burst out of her skin and clothes, hitting the floor on four legs, snarling and snapping her jaws.
I took a step back. Bloody hell, that was a quick shift. And her aggression made both me and Ryan look tame. I turned to him.
“We need to get out of here. Now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
We put the key back in Shaun’s office, and I tried to put the whole thing from my mind. Laura was locked in the dungeon? Well, maybe she needed to be. She sure as hell couldn’t be let loose to roam the academy and its grounds.
It was days before Ryan broached the subject again, but of course he was never going to let it lie.
…And neither could I, not really. Like it or not, deserved or not, there was someone locked in a cell beneath our feet. I was on my way back from one of my now twice-weekly sessions with Shaun one evening when he ambushed me.
“Let’s just… let’s just talk to her again,” he said.
“I already told you. We need to leave well enough alone. What’s going on down there is none of our business.”
He stepped in front of me, blocking my path. I stopped, exhaling heavily and staring at a spot on the wall behind him.
“We both know you don’t mean that,” he said. “If you did, you’d be able to look me in the eye right now.”
“Look, just because I feel sorry for her doesn’t mean we can let her put people at risk. You saw her, she tried to kill us.”
“No worse than what we’ve both done in our shifted forms. And she’s been down there for months. What do you think that does to a person’s mental state?”
“Exactly. She’s dangerous.”
“Right.” Ryan nodded and shot me a sarcastic smile. “And sitting in a cage is how she’s going to get better.”
I dodged his eye again. I knew I wouldn’t get better if I stayed in a cage, and I couldn’t imagine it would be different for anyone else. Hell, if they locked me up, and the first people I saw who wasn’t one of my captors refused to let me out, maybe I’d have acted aggressively, too.
“I’m not suggesting we bust her out,” he said, holding his hands up. “Just… let’s talk to her, okay? Her and Brad.”
I frowned.
“Who’s Brad?”
“The other one. You knew that.”
“No, I didn’t. Wait, how did you know that?”
“She told us.”
“No,” I shook my head emphatically. “She didn’t.”
Ryan’s face creased impatiently.
“I must’ve heard someone speaking about him, then. When they took my cuffs off. I don’t know.” His shoulders dropped. “To tell you the truth, the whole time I was down there is a bit of a blur. I just… I get flashes. Of that, and of the attack. Do you get them?”
I swallowed the painful lump sitting in my throat and nodded.
“Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “I get them. Not as bad as I used to. You should talk to Shaun. It helps, I promise.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Right now, he’s not the first person I want to talk to, what with the people he’s keeping caged.”
It was hard to disagree with that, desperate as I was to try.
“Look, we won’t let them out,” he said. “You can have the key, if you don’t trust me. I just want to hear their side of the story. Because we’re not going to hear it from anyone else round here.”
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
For a moment, I thought he was going to keep pushing, but instead he nodded.
“Do that. But don’t take too long. I’m worried about what being down there is doing to them.”
And I was worried about what letting them out would do to us.
*
I did think about it. I thought about little else. February became March, and the guilt gnawed at me a little more with each day that passed.
“Jade.”
I jerked my head up to look at Lewis. He was standing at the front of the lecture room, looking at me expectantly.
“Sorry?”
Laughter sounded from somewhere behind me: Madison, I was sure. I ignored the urge to flip her off while Lewis went through the charade of pretending to be disappointed I hadn’t been paying attention.
“Someone else, then. Madison.”
“Execution of a pack member without the explicit order of the Alpha of Alphas was outlawed by the druids in 1831, but the Pack Hierarchy Accords of 1833 allows for an exception by the pack’s own alpha acting against a pack traitor,” she said at once, flicking her hair.
“Yes, good. Jade, it wouldn’t hurt you to try paying as much attention as Madison.”
I was pretty sure doing anything the same as Madison would be the death of me, but I decided to keep that to myself, and sunk a little further into my seat until Lewis continued with his lecture. Honestly, I usually enjoyed these lessons – the way the druid and shifter laws intersected and interacted with each other fascinated me – but I was having a hard time getting Laura’s face out of my mind. I dreamed about being stuck in the cell again last night. And it wasn’t like I could even talk to Shaun about it, because he’d want to know why I was suddenly so obsessed with the dungeon.
“Alright, that’s all we’ve got time for today. I’ll see you next week. Finish reading up on the Pack Hierarchy Accords before then. Remember, you have your end of year exams in two months.”
Two months? How the hell were exams only two months away?
“Jade, are you coming?”
Dean, Mei, Cam and Ryan were already on their feet, books shoved back in their bags.
“Did he just say two months? Tell me I misheard him,” I said, cramming my own notepad back in my bag.
“Yer’ll be fine, lass,” Cam said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. I wished I had his confidence. Two months. I was still behind on half my subjects, and honestly the whole Laura thing hadn’t exactly helped with my focus – and I still couldn’t control my shifted form.
“Yeah,” Dean said with a smirk. “Yo
u’ll be fine. As long as they don’t ask you any actual questions.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Don’t worry,” Mei said, as we headed down the corridor a little behind the rest of the students – on account of the fact they hadn’t been stunned into a stupor by the announcement of exams, presumably because they’d actually been paying attention to the date. “We’ll help you get caught up.”
“I’m not sure you can. I mean, I can put in more study hours for the theory stuff, sure, but how am I supposed to pass a shifting exam?”
Mei didn’t have an answer, and nor did anyone else – including me. I knew one thing, though. I was never going to get caught up with Laura’s face haunting me every time I closed my eyes.
“You know what? No time like the present. I’m going to find Brendon and see if he’ll schedule me a couple of extra lessons. Ryan, you should come, too.”
“Maybe later. We’ve got a lesson with him tomorrow, anyway. It’s not like one day is going to make any difference.”
I didn’t roll my eyes only through a Herculean exertion of will.
“No, really,” I said, trying to catch his eye. “I think it’s better we talk to him now.”
“Do yer want me to wait for you?” Cam asked, as I slipped out from under his arm. I shook my head.
“Go ahead and grab some lunch. We won’t be long.”
“This better be good,” Ryan grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest as the others headed off for the main hall.
“I thought it might be a good idea to visit Laura and Brad while the rest of the academy is busy. But hey, if you’d rather be off stuffing your face, be my guest.”
He dropped his arms immediately and stared at me.
“You changed your mind?”
“I’m still only going to talk to them. We’re not going to do anything reckless.”
Any more reckless than sneaking into the castle’s dungeon and visiting people we weren’t supposed to know about, that was. Ryan nodded quickly and grinned.
“Let’s go, then.”
He set off, and I grabbed his arm.
“Uh, where are you going?”
“The dungeon.”
“Don’t you think it might be a good idea to go and borrow the key first?”
Moon Bitten (Fur 'n' Fang Academy Book 1): A Shifter Academy Novel Page 16
