Academy of Shifters: Werewolves 101

by Marisa Claire

  So why do I feel so sad?

  “So it’s pretty serious then?” I asked, hoping I sounded truly interested and not, you know, interested.

  Victoria smiled just as a cloud covered the moon, and the sudden darkness made her smile seem nervous, not coy like I knew it must be. “I think… I think it might be going somewhere.”

  “That’s great.” I made myself smile, but it felt too big and too false, so I quickly added, “If you’ve acquired that taste.”

  She laughed lightly and tucked her dark hair behind her ear. “I sure have.”

  We fell quiet for a moment, watching the wispy clouds float across the starry sky. I hugged myself against the chill creeping into my hoodie.

  “I understand if you don’t want to let Laith help you,” Victoria said after a while, breaking the silence. “And I know you two will probably always rub each other wrong.”

  I cringed at the unbidden image of Laith rubbing me right.

  “But Laith had a bad first year too,” Victoria continued, oblivious to my internal struggle. “Being the only lion in his class was like having a target on his back. I mean, my first year wasn’t great either, but it’s different for girls. Name-calling and stupid rumors.” She shot me a knowing smile, but it didn’t last. “But for guys, it’s like, anything goes, you know? The wolves that year made his life hell. And honestly, last year wasn’t much better. Robert Borden… well, he was just nasty.”

  Laith? Bullied? That didn’t add up. Xander and Kanze, sure, but Laith was… Laith.

  As if reading my thoughts, Victoria continued, “He was like a scrawny stray cat when he got here. He doesn’t talk much about before, but whatever it was, wherever he came from…” She shook her head. “It wasn’t good.”

  “It’s hard to picture Laith scrawny.” My face flushed as I realized I’d just admitted to checking out her maybe future husband’s body.

  “He’s worked really hard,” she said, either not noticing my faux pas or choosing to ignore it. “On his body. On his mind. Some people find freedom in shifting, but for Laith… I think he finally found a way to be in control.”

  Control. That was something I could understand. Hadn’t everything I’d been planning before two wolves and a bear kidnapped me been about finally becoming the master of my own… fate?

  “We should head back so you don’t miss your meeting.” Victoria shifted into a crouch, facing the entrance between the boulders. “But Remi?”

  “Yeah?” I asked, still staring up at the moon.

  “You don’t have to be an ass about it like Laith, but do be in control.”

  I turned, furrowing my brows. “Of what?”

  “Situations.” She shrugged. “Choices. Once you let someone else decide what kind of person you are, it’s hard to…” She swallowed thickly, like she was holding some emotion back. “Find your way out.”

  ***

  The clock above Ms. Shirley’s counter read eight-oh-five when I arrived at the bookstore completely out of breath and aching from head to toe from the long, claustrophobic crawl back to the cavern and then the cross-campus sprint back to Therian Hall.

  I peeked over the counter to see if Ms. Shirley was hiding back there like usual, but found only a note in Professor Helms’ neat handwriting telling me to come on up. Nerves crackled in my stomach. When I had agreed to this meeting, I had still been desperately clinging to my belief that this was all just a dream. And in dreams, it’s totally fine to let your hot professor become your private tutor in a subject that involves nudity.

  But when it’s real?

  I shook away the suspicious thoughts. Just because Dean Mardone was a creeper, didn’t mean Professor Helms was up to something shady. He was always so careful and polite with his female students. So conscientious. It was totally unfair for Laith and Victoria to imply he had ulterior motives for this meeting. They didn’t even know him. He was a good man.

  And besides, even if there was something more to the way he batted his eyelashes at me earlier, was it really that wrong when there was definitely something more on my end, too? We were both adults, and like five years apart tops.

  I climbed the winding stairs to the attic, ducked under an extra layer of cobwebs someone had set out for Halloween, and found Professor Helms beaming at me from the other side of the glass faculty door. Instead of the stuffy faculty uniform, he wore skinny jeans and a T-shirt with an image of a giraffe wearing giant headphones and standing on top of a record player.

  See? Just a normal twenty-something guy.

  Who’s a little more hipster than I expected, but fine, whatever.

  Helms pushed the door open and waved me in. As I squeezed past him, he let the door close and for a brief second, I felt the brush of his arm across my shoulders. A warm shiver—not a prickle—ran down my back.

  “Is this too weird?” Helms gestured at his clothing. “I thought my uniform might cause, ah, undue pressure, but now I fear I’ve gone too far in the opposite direction.”

  My eyes traveled down the length of his body, admiring the way the jeans fit him, the way the T-shirt subtly showed off the ridges of muscle underneath. “No, you look great,” I said in a breathy tone that made me cringe. “I mean, you look really chill.”

  He grinned with his dimples. “I see. Very good. And you as well.” He swallowed. “I mean, you look really chill.”

  I shrugged inside my cavernous hoodie and tucked a strand of hair behind my ears. “I assure you it is a carefully constructed act.”

  He laughed. “Mine too.”

  Our eyes met. We were standing very close, but it was a tiny stairwell after all. He cleared his throat and stepped back, gesturing to the spiral stairs.

  “Let’s go down to my office and chill, shall we?”

  My stomach tensed. He was British. He probably wasn’t up to date on American slang. He was definitely not asking me to come down to his office and, you know, chill.

  I followed him down the spiral stairs into a large open area on the tower’s second floor. The curtains were drawn, but there were several warm lamps lighting the space, one for each desk lined up along the walls.

  “Only Deans get private offices. The rest of us have to share,” Helms said, leaning against a desk with a framed photo of the golden wolf I’d seen him shifted into during Wolf Music. I couldn’t decide if that was vanity, or curiosity. Would I keep a picture of my wolf around once I got her back?

  “It’s nice,” I said, hugging myself awkwardly because I suddenly didn’t know where I should stand or sit or if I was going to have to take any clothes off.

  He smiled, and then all the spirit seemed to go out of him and he sagged against his desk. He ran a hand through his tousled hair. “Remi, darling, I have a confession to make.”

  My face tingled pleasantly when he called me darling. It was nothing at all like the possessive way Mardone called Laith kitten. It was just polite. And British. It took me a moment to remember to be concerned about his confession.

  “Sir?” I asked.

  He grimaced. “Oh, no, don’t do that. Not when I’m dressed like this! It’s Daniel. Please.”

  Daniel. I rolled his name around inside my head. It was a nice name.

  “Do you remember the day we met?” Daniel asked, and I wondered why he phrased it that way, instead of saying the first day of class.

  “Of course,” I said. “I guess we’ve come full circle, huh? I needed you to save me from my shift, and now I need you to save my shift.”

  His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Yes. Well. About that, darling. You see, I’m afraid…” He paced away from the desk and then back. “I was only trying to reverse that one shift. But it seems I may have…”

  Realization struck me like a slap from Dean Embry’s grizzly paw. The way my skin would feel like a million hairs were trying to crawl out, the way my muscles felt like they would explode from the wolf’s frantic pressure, the way every time I tried to let it out, it immediately vanished.


  “Reversed them all,” I whispered.

  “I am so sorry, Remi.” He moved closer, hands clasped in front of him. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  My mind raced and my stomach twisted. All this time I thought I was broken… and I was. But it wasn’t my fault.

  “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  He ran both hands over his head, tugging at his hair. “I just… I didn’t put two and two together. I supposed I was overly confident in my skills. Remi, I feel terrible. To think you might have been…” He turned away, shoulder slumping. “I’ll understand if you want to tell the Gladwells what I did.”

  What would happen to him? It was an accident, but what if they thought he’d done it on purpose? That was absurd, of course. The man was clearly racked with regret. But would they see that? What if they sent him to the pound?

  “No,” I said quickly. “I’m not going to do that. As long as you can fix it.”

  His shoulder lifted and he turned to face me. Relief made him look even more boyish, maybe even five years younger. “Yes, of course. That’s why I asked you to come here. Obviously.”

  I nodded, letting out the breath I’d been holding. “Okay. How do we do this?”

  He moved closer. “I’ll need to go inside your head again, if I may?”

  “Whatever you need to do.” I squared my shoulders and lifted my jaw.

  He moved even closer, until the air between us sizzled with anticipation. I was going to get my wolf back.

  “I’ll need to touch you,” he said softly. “Will that be alright?”

  I laughed softly. So polite. “You don’t always have to ask.” I bit my lip. “Daniel.”

  His fingers closed around my skull and warmth spilled down my neck and shoulders. He flashed his dimples, just inches away from my face. “Right then. Can’t be too careful about these things.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The monster stared out of the mirror, its bright green human eyes panicking between its large, pointed ears and long upper snout while its lower human jaw grimaced in pain.

  I lifted the pewter-gray mask onto the top of my head, wincing at the mean red lines it left along my cheeks.

  Now that’s what I call sexy.

  Aside from that the fact that I was never going to wear one anyway, all of Xander’s goofy group costume ideas had been rendered moot three days ago when every student on campus received a gift bag containing formal evening attire and a stylized animal mask to match their inner beast.

  The Halloween Ball would be a masquerade, and even though the nerds had at first been aghast at the prospect of wearing tuxedos instead of wizard robes, they had quickly cheered up when they realized my anti-costume stance had been thwarted by the mandatory masked attendance policy.

  At least the rest of me looks great.

  I twirled in front of the mirror, admiring the way the silver ball gown billowed around my ankles. And I had to hand it to the ravenous wolf still trapped inside me—I was doing a much better job filling out the low-cut bodice than I would have eight weeks ago after scraping cold beans out of a can all summer. A smile spread across my face.

  If he hasn’t noticed me yet, he will tonight.

  But I knew he had noticed me.

  I just didn’t know what to do about it.

  Nothing, Remi. He’s your teacher.

  But he wouldn’t always be my teacher. And, actually, he was my professor, and wasn’t that really a totally different thing? Even the Chancellor himself had said that we were both adults when he signed off on our private lessons. If you listened to those words just right, didn’t they even sound a little bit like permission?

  We’d met every weeknight since that first session, each one ending with his agonized apologies. None of his attempts to reverse the reverse shift had worked yet, and, frankly, that was fine by me. The fear of failure still fluttered somewhere in the back of my mind, but shifting would bring an end to our private lessons, and that would mean no more long talks about his own academy days, no more dimpled smiles after my jokes, no more gentle hands massaging all the tension right out of my head.

  I wasn’t ready to let go of that. I mean, I’d almost completely forgotten to prickle when I felt Laith’s hazel eyes judging me from across Mardone’s classroom.

  Almost.

  Sighing, I pulled my mask down over my face, slipped on the heels that had arrived with the gown, and left the quiet of my room. The second-floor hallway was empty, but the sounds of laughter and running water from the community bathroom told me I wasn’t the only one running late for the Ball.

  Black and orange streamers spiraled around the banister overlooking the Great Hall, and I paused there to take in the view. The furniture had been pushed to the edges of the room, creating a massive dance floor that swirled with colorful dresses and silk capes as couples waltzed to the classical sounds of a string quartet. Every face was hidden behind a mask, some of which were incredibly realistic with sculpted fangs and tufts of fur, while others were wildly impressionistic with feathers and sequins. Magical had never been a word I put any stock in, but even I had to admit there was really no other adjective that fit.

  A man in a champagne tuxedo stood near the white-clothed buffet table, his shoulders draped with a royal blue cape that shimmered under the warm glow of the giant chandelier. His normally tousled blond hair was slicked back, away from the ornate golden wolf mask that obscured the upper half of his face.

  My breath caught. Somehow my absent-minded professor had shifted into a dashing prince. As if sensing my gaze, the golden mask tilted upward, and Daniel lifted one hand in a beckoning wave.

  Does he know who I am? My heart hammered against my ribs, or maybe it just felt that way due to the snugness of my dress.

  Hiking up the skirt portion, I kicked off my heels and carried them down the stairs. Victoria’s internship had her traveling tonight—someone somewhere had shifted on their eighteenth birthday last weekend and they had to be found—so if I fell on my ass, there’d be no one to pick me up. Once I safely reached the first floor, I slipped them back on, took a deep breath to settle the butterflies the golden wolf had stirred up, and then stepped into the ballroom.

  Right into Winter Davenport’s back.

  Damn, it’s hard to see in this mask!

  Winter turned, blue eyes squinting through her delicate white wolf mask. Feathers plumed around its ears like tufts of fur, and a line of pale blue sequins ran up its muzzle and branched out over both eye holes. She looked like a bride in her gauzy white gown, a royal bride once you took into account the fur-lined red cape she wore.

  No fair! I could have rocked a cape!

  The white wolf mask’s nose pointed down at my chest. “Wow, James. As an unwilling victim of your flashing fetish, I don’t recall you being quite so well-endowed in August.” She looked up, smiling sweetly and batting her eyelashes behind the mask. “The quads are really making a difference.”

  Really? That’s what you’re still going with?

  I faked a sympathetic expression. “Oh, Winter, I’m so sorry. Didn’t Derek tell you?” I rested my hand on her shoulder. “It’s actually quints.”

  Her lips puckered under the shadow of her mask’s nose, and then smoothed into one of her cruel smiles. “Just try to keep your dress on, okay? I promise there are other ways to get attention in life.”

  She whirled away, swinging her cape like an evil queen from some fairy tale movie. I watched her stalk over to the buffet table where Derek was filling his plate with Halloween-themed finger foods. Unlike all the other guys in the room, he had no cape to go with his gray tuxedo, and I realized she’d stolen hers from him. They argued briefly, and then she ripped the plate right out of his hands and disappeared into the crowd.

  “Quints, huh?” Laith’s voice rumbled quietly next to my ear. “You’re hiding them well.”

  The prickles hit me so hard and so fast that I instinctively clutched at the shoulders of my gown—as if that would
really keep it on during a shift.

  He laughed, swinging around in front of me and mimicking my protective pose. “What the hell is this?”

  “You scared me,” I growled, leaving my arms folded like they were because I really didn’t want him to see my heaving chest right now. “For Christmas, I’m getting you a collar with a bell on it.”

  He bit his lip, and the copper cougar mask rose with the lifting of his human eyebrows underneath it. “You’re into some weird stuff, St. James. But I can dig it.”

  “You can dig it?” I scoffed. “What are you, sixty? You sound like the Chancellor.”

  He drew his black cape across the human half of his face. “I wear many disguises, Remi,” he said in a fair representation of the Chancellor’s dorky dad drawl.

  Rolling my eyes, I pushed him out of my way. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  He fell in step beside me. “What’s the rush? Got a hot date with the geek fleet?”

  “No,” I said, intending to leave it at that, but my head flicked automatically toward the golden wolf talking to a bear-masked woman whose sturdy shape I recognized as Dean Belhollow.

  “Ah.” Laith’s lips pressed into a flat line. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Poodle.”

  I sighed. “Once again, no one asked for your opinion, Mister Whiskers.”

  He grunted. “It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. Professors shouldn’t—”

  I stopped and planted my fists on my hips, not caring that we were now in the middle of the dance floor. “Was there something you needed from me, Laith, or are you just trying to ruin my night?”

  Hazel eyes gazed steadily at me from behind the copper mask. The cougar’s nose was wrinkled up in a snarl that made it difficult to tell whether Laith’s actual expression was equally angry or not.

  “I thought that since we were both flying solo this evening, you might consider doing Victoria the favor of guarding my virtue from Lecherous Lenore, but I can see now that you’ve planned a very busy evening making googly eyes at the guy responsible for your grade, so… I’ll leave you to it.”