by A. K. Koonce
“You passed, but you failed, I’m afraid.” Professor Zent licks his dry lips and drops his attention back to his papers. “Do try to do better next week on the semester final.”
God dammit.
I wish I could say that’s the worst thing that happens today.
White fuming smoke drifts from the front doors of Dorm J. It’s late into the night and the twirling fiery scent of something burning drifts through the evening air, clouding over the nearly full moon above.
I stand at the front step, side by side with Phoenix. His fingers slide slowly into mine and it’s the first real moment that I feel like we’re a real team. Friends almost.
“Don’t leave my side,” he whispers, taking the first step on the broken concrete and guiding me into the ash that’s drifting through the halls. It clings to our bodies, shadows against our skin, a sticky coating that comes off easily with the gentle brush of fingertips.
When I think of ash, I think of destruction, of consuming fire raging and destroying. Funny how something like the aftermath of flames can seem so gentle somehow. But where is it coming from?
Blood splatters the old brick walls. It lines the broken tile floor like a pathway of breadcrumbs left behind, as if something was dragged from the front doors all the way up to the fifth floor.
Our floor.
A shiver crawls down my spine, sweat clinging there with every step I take.
What happened here? In the eleven hours that we were gone, this place is in worse shape than before. And I didn’t think that was possible.
My focus is room 503. My friends are in there. Saint and Malek are in there.
I hope.
Just when we creep cautiously up to it, the door directly across flings open. Violent steps storm toward me, black reckless eyes look to me with so much pain in them it’s terrifying.
Syko’s big arms wrap around me fully, pulling me against his hard chest until I can feel the tremble of his breaths inside. Slowly, Phoenix slides his hand away from mine and my fingers push through the downy soft feathers of the beautiful man wrapped around me.
“They fucking took her, Izara.” A sinking feeling of rage and sadness thickens his rasping voice. “They fucking brought her to the most dangerous place for a startle Prod and then they fucking blamed her when her Prodigium lashed out.” Hot breath heaves out from his trembling lips but he bites the uneven sound of his voice back. He’s tensing in my arms and just clinging to me like I can fix all the terrible things the world has done to him.
To Kayos.
She didn’t stand a chance.
Eighteen
Izara
Thick hair meets my fingertips and I push his pale white locks back from the lost look in his big eyes. He’s slept on my bed for four days now. He hasn’t moved once.
And they’ve given no updates on Kayos.
The curl of his body fits against mine and I hold him against my chest, listening to the steady but slow rhythm of his breath.
This place tries to break us.
They broke Kayos. And now they’re breaking Syko.
“You should get out for a few hours. Get some air,” Saint says to me softly.
“No.” Malek’s bare shoulders hold steely posture, his dark hair hanging loosely around his handsome face.
I had no intention of leaving Syko.
But now I’m curious.
“Why?”
“Full moon,” Malek says without further explanation.
I wait, but he gives me nothing more.
Okay...
My gaze spans to Phoenix sitting lazily across from me, his attention flicking from me to the nephilim holding me to him.
What are we? Are we really dating? Is this real for him?
The hard pull of his brows and the purse of his lips makes it feel real. The confusing guilt laying like lead in my stomach feels real.
“We should talk,” I say to Phoenix flatly.
“Nothing to talk about.” He shakes his head, biting the inside of his cheek, that I don’t give a fuck about anything or anyone firmly in place against his features.
“You’re an idiot,” Saint whispers from the bunk above.
“If she wants to sleep fuck me, but in reality snuggle the bird boy, that’s none of my business. We’re not real.” He air quotes that statement like it’s our relationship slogan.
Phoenix and Izara, Keeping it Not Real Since 2019.
I hate this.
Maybe I do need to get out of this fucking room.
I don’t leave right away. It’s hard to extricate myself from Syko’s body. Any time I tried, he pulled me closer, as if his unconsciousness couldn’t stand the thought of being alone without my warmth. It’s as if somehow I understood above all others what his sister means to him, and it was only in me that he could find solace.
I hated to leave him, but I was suffocating as much as he was. He couldn’t pull me close without Phoenix grunting or snorting or offering bitter commentary, to which Saint only replied in my defense. Malek had long since left the room. He never said where he was going and I didn’t ask.
Which is exactly why I’m here.
My tennis shoes crunch against dry leaves and dead earth. The wind stings my face, making tears burn behind my eyelids and trail down my cheeks. I tell myself it has everything to do with the cold and nothing to do with the haunting loss in Syko’s eyes echoing in my own heart.
“Your art is overemotional,” Kayos had said to me.
She’s right. I’m overly emotional and it comes out in a mess of reclusive quietness and lashing aggression sometimes. I’m wandering campus grounds with my hands shoved tightly into my pockets, crying silent tears over a young girl taken because she couldn’t control the Prod inside her.
Maybe I’m crying for myself, because Kayos reminds me of me. Maybe I’m crying because we don’t know if she’s locked in confinement or if they killed her because of that power.
At this point, I don’t know why the empty tears linger damply in my eyes.
I just know that I want to scream. The emotions are building inside me to painful proportions and I don’t have a fucking outlet. If I were at home, I’d slather paint onto a canvas, onto a wall. I’d streak across it in violent brush strokes with wild music screaming in my ears. I’d jump from one canvas to the next, giving my emotions color and texture until I could make sense of it. Or maybe the point is to not make sense of it at all.
Maybe it’s just that need for release.
And if I can’t find paints, I have to do it some other way.
Storming into the woods I’d been in with Malek so long ago, I gather sticks and rocks, dig my fingers into the black earth to pull it out by clumps. I’m blind, with nothing but the soft moon lit rays of silver illumination to guide me from between thin branches. It’s enough. I pile dirt as if it were clay, I bend sticks, stack rocks. I make art in its basest, rawest form.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. How long my numb fingers bleed as I give form to my emotions. Hours into the night. Hours in which the tears slide down my cheeks. In which the pain loosens bit by painful bit.
Until the slapping sting of the wind brings the first howl of a wolf to me and tears through the haze of my emotions.
My gaze tears across the vacant woods. To the sound of branches snapping, of feet rushing towards me.
I blink up at the full shining light of the moon.
“Full Moon.”
Fuck.
Nineteen
Malek
Every month it was the same, and every month it never got any easier; the Change. It was always a phantom kernel inside… at first. But as the days close in to the full moon, the Prod rips violently from the confines I keep it locked behind.
It claws and bites, tearing through the very foundations of my soul only to arise bloody and gnashing, as if to say “I am here now. And now, it’s my turn.”
One day a month I let it reign free.
There are
shifters who train themselves to shift at will, with or without the help of the moon. I prefer not to. Not when the risks of doing so are deadly. Not when giving yourself to the beast inside merges both entities. Mind of the beast and man collide until it’s impossible to tell one apart from the other.
It’s why some werewolves are so feral. So violent.
I want to be better.
So it’s on every full moon that I unleash my more violent self.
During the full moon, the Academy locks up the shifters with no control over themselves. They’re sent away to the lowest level of Dormitory J, locked up like dogs in a kennel. The better students like me are allowed to roam the grounds. It’s good for my Prod and it’s good for me. Being here in nature, it eases the control, makes everything calmer.
It has taken every ounce of self control I have to prove to them I’m not the same out-of-control beast that ripped through my stepfather. Not like it had been my fault. He had known what I was. Had been given a fair warning. That didn’t stop him from taunting my wolf until it tore an open wound in his neck, never mind the fact that he’d chained me up at the time.
I’m better than that.
I have to be better than that.
Maybe if I was, my mother, brothers, and pack wouldn’t fear me anymore. I’d have a family again. I could have a normal relationship with Izzy. One where I didn’t have to keep her at arm’s length out of fear. One where I didn’t have to hold back from pulling her close. From kissing her. From calling her mine.
It took me months to accept the feelings that my Prod had obsessed over from the very first second I laid eyes on Izara Castillo.
She’s my mate.
And someday, I’ll have enough control over my Prod to tell her that.
Thoughts of Izzy bring the beast hurtling forward.
Mine.
A growl rises painfully up my throat, more guttural than human.
I drop to my knees on the dirt. Twigs and rocks dig into my bare knees. When I fall to all fours, the rocks abrade my palms but that pain is nothing compared to the excruciating rippling of my skin as the Change takes over.
I dig my fingers into the cold earth. Nails crack and bleed, ripping from the quick while claws replace them. I feel my insides distorting, pushing at skin and bones with expanding force.
The air is frost kissed, and yet, my skin is burning up.
A violent tremor shudders through me. I arch, screaming into the night air only to have the sound transform into the howls of a beast.
Every muscle spasms. My skin bursts in red welts that melt from my body. Hair sprouts, bones and body elongate. The pain has me dry heaving into the dirt. There’s nothing more painful than this.
Nothing but the memory of my kills.
Thank God I told Izzy to stay inside. As long as she stays with Phoenix and Saint, she’s safe from me, safe from the beast that would claim her.
Mine.
His growl within my head is a demonic demand that rumbles through me.
In one shuddering explosion, my entire body changes in an instant. The skin rips from me in shreds until I’m a massive thing. A beast that stands on two back paws. A wolf that arches up and howls.
At long last.
It’s me, and yet it’s not. I know they say we are our Prods, that it is a part of us, so intricately woven into the fibers of our soul that we are one and the same. It is our DNA. It is us. I’ve said it to Izzy plenty of times. But every time I Change, the more logical part of me tries to reason with myself.
This is not me.
But it is.
These savage cravings, these wild instincts, they thrum inside me every fucking day. Every fucking day they beg for control. They beg for the tether to snap to make way for my more primitive instincts.
And tonight is the night they do.
Tonight is a night for running. For hunting. For fucking.
I drop to all fours and prowl the woods in hulking form. I start at a slow walk and then my paws move of their own volition. Soon, I am running and branches crack under my feet. This is freedom in its rawest form. It’s everything I crave, everything I long for.
The cold wind whistles through my fur just faintly. My ears pick up every delicate sound. From the hoot of night owls, to the soft padding of other shifters. I steer clear of them. I know they are as vicious as I am tonight and won’t hesitate to rip through me if I invade their territory. Though my body is itching for a fight, I’m still smart enough to avoid it. I listen to every sound like a song I’ve long forgotten.
The wind shifts direction, bringing me the scent of familiarity. Of ink and sweat. Of fear and sorrow. Of long dark hair and golden-brown eyes that hold friendship and love in equal measure.
Mine.
I scent her before I see her, before I hear her.
And it fills the primitive part of me with rage and satisfaction. She’s here, she came.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
I told her to stay away. Why didn’t she listen? Does she want to get killed?
Mine.
I told her what would happen. I told her it was the full moon. She knew, and she came anyway.
Mine.
And now the beast is ready to claim her.
And the tether on my control snaps completely.
If she wanted a beast, then the beast is what she'll get.
I fucking warned her, after all...
Twenty
Izara
There’s nothing in the way of protection except for an unsturdy branch and the dormant, useless Prod deep inside me.
Fuck.
I could bring it forth if I had to. I’d force the reckless thing to come out if it meant life and death.
The smarter option here would be to run. But even I’m smart enough to know I can’t outrun the approaching werewolf. Besides, they smell fear. They love the chase. And I’m not giving the beast the satisfaction.
The steps of the wolf come closer. Sweat and fear cling to me like a second skin. My hands tighten so hard on the branch my palms scrape painfully.
Twigs snap. Closer. The beast is coming closer. My breaths grow labored in my chest, and my heart pounds so hard I can hear the echoes of it around the quiet night.
I bring the branch up like a baseball bat, search inside myself for that power, for the violence of the Prod that has the ability to tear people apart.
Fear ripples through me as the thin tree branches part and an enormous brown wolf prowls through.
It’s so different from what I thought it would be. The spine arches the way a human’s would as it stalks on all fours with an animalistic sway to its step, but it looks like it’s every bit as capable of standing impossibly tall on its strong back legs.
I freeze stupidly in my fear as the yellow eyes of the beast settle over me. My breaths are shallow, painful gasps.
The beast snarls, and the sound breaks me out of my daze. I can’t win against this. There’s no fucking way.
My footsteps slide against the cold grass for a single second. It just a split moment of stumbling unsteadiness. And then I sprint like my life literally depends on it.
My legs pump beneath me, thighs screaming with every painful step. I don’t pay attention to the pain. I dodge the copse of trees, even as branches slap my face and slice my skin. I push forward with the snarls and snapping of the beast behind me. All I can focus on is the little hints of lights beyond the woods.
Never has the Academy looked so safe.
But I’ll never make it.
A moment later, enormous paws slam into my back and I sprawl to the ground. My teeth clatter from the shock, and the weight of the wolf digging into me presses my chest into the dirt. It’s painful, and panic sets in as the wolf looms over me.
Snarling warm breath burns across my cheek as I take shallow, careful breaths.
I try not to move, try not to panic. But fuck, wet tears are filling my eyes because I know I’ll die here tonight.
The body above mi
ne shifts, and then a cracking sound splinters through my ears. The growls and whines become the groans of man and the heavy weight lessens, but is still there hovering.
I can’t make eye contact with it, I can’t move, I can’t even think.
Warm hands slide up my arms to capture my wrists and hold me to the ground. This is worse. This is by far worse than having a wolf above me. I want to scream but terror paralyzes the sound in my throat.
Hot breath fans along my ear.
Then the deep curl of accented words send relief shuddering through me. “I thought I told you to stay inside tonight, Izara.”
“Malek.” I breathe his name like a prayer.
“Why are you here, Izzy?” he growls.
There’s uncontrolled anger in his tone but his hands and body are pressing into me in a very, very different way.
His lips are on my skin. In fact, his whole body is becoming intimate with mine, and my skin is memorizing the feel of his bare flesh against the back of my thighs, against the curve of my ass. I feel his every muscle wound tightly, straining for control.
“I told you it was too dangerous to come.”
The way he says ‘come’ makes my body hum with awareness. It’s only now that I realize how hard he is. It’s only now I realize the strain of his cock is pressing against my skirt and his hips are grinding me harder into the dirt.
My body shivers with sudden a wave of want.
This is dangerous.
This is sexy.
This isn’t the Malek I know. The Malek I know is safe and kind. He’s gentle and caring. He keeps me at arm’s length and offers me quiet, tentative smiles.
Malek presses his lips firmly to my neck, slipping his tongue right over my pulse. His mouth opens fully and the sharp canines of his teeth graze over my flesh.
My whole body trembles as he sets off pleasurable sensation after sensation inside me.
“You shouldn't have fucking come, Izzy.”
His words are a warning I heed all too late, or not at all. There’s no regret in them, just endless expanse of painful desire. A desire I feel down to my core.
