Their Shifter Academy 3: Undone

by May Dawson

  I’d do whatever it took to make him feel better.

  Even though I was actually a perfectly fine driver.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Silas

  On Monday, in the middle of classes, the fire alarm went off. It was a low blaring sound unlike the kind of fire alarms I’d heard before when I was Earthside.

  I stood, throwing my backpack over my shoulder. The alarm cut off as suddenly as it had begun.

  The instructor at the front of the room raised his hands. “There is no fire. This is the start of your patrol drill.”

  This again. Every once in a while, we had a patrol drill where we pretended to turn out as if the academy was under attack. Sometimes we ran them in our human form, sometimes we had to shift.

  Which was very inconvenient for me, given that I was not a werewolf.

  “All right, everyone, you know the drill.” Tuck, an upperclassman who had somehow missed this class when he was a first-year, jumped to his feet.

  “Sit down, Mr. Tuck,” the instructor said. “For today’s drill, the cadre have been mysteriously struck dead. We’re going to see how well these patrols work when there’s a disruption to the defined leadership.”

  Chase groaned next to me. “This should be fun.”

  “It should be,” I said, surprised by the change. This was the kind of drill we would have run in the magic military academy that I had attended, where the expectations were higher and discipline much tighter than around here.

  “Now!” The instructor called. “Move smartly! The academy is under attack.”

  When we got through the crowded halls and made it outside, I saw Lex and Rafe standing with a bunch of other cadre under the watchful eye of Clearborn. Lex had his arms crossed over his chest, as if he just loved this. I could’ve sworn Rafe gave me a look that said don’t embarrass me before Clearborn said something to them all, drawing their attention back.

  Chase, Penn and I moved quickly to our designated rally point on the north side of campus, by a trio of pines. A minute later, we were joined by Jensen, who moved at a run.

  “Where’s Rafe and Lex?” Jensen frowned. “They were just standing around back there.”

  Maybe the instructors hadn’t even been intended to tell us what the drill was about. Penn hastily filled in the details.

  “Then I’m in charge by default,” Jensen said.

  “Agreed,” Penn said, which made Jensen’s lips tug slightly at the corners.

  “We need to move out to patrol our designated section of the wall,” he said. “We all know the drill. We can do it without Rafe yelling at us.”

  “That’s your motivational speech?” Chase grinned.

  Jensen ignored him. No one would’ve said that to Rafe or Lex in what was supposed to be a serious drill.

  The four of us moved out quickly, spreading through the woods apart from each other but without losing sight.

  “Bring it in a little closer, Penn,” Jensen called. “I keep losing you.”

  “Got it.”

  The four of us slipped through the pines until we reached our section of the wall that was our responsibility.

  Jensen started to say something else about breaking into pairs, but a strange twitch of magic in the air distracted me.

  We were supposed to be out on a pretend drill. But there were witches on the other side of that wall. I could feel their magic in the air.

  I glanced around, wondering if any of them had scented something unusual. I didn’t have their wolfish senses, and I always had to bluff my way, guessing at what they might pick up on.

  “We should shift,” I said. While maintaining the illusion I was a wolf was hard on me, I expected that it was more likely they’d realize what was wrong in their wolf form.

  “That’s not protocol,” Jensen said.

  “Words I never expected to hear you say,” Penn said.

  Jensen flashed him a look. “Are we really doing this?”

  Penn raised his hands. “I have no problem playing this game.”

  “It’s not a game,” Jensen said. “Maybe if you’d all been chased by witches through the forest and almost killed a few times, you’d realize that.”

  His words hung in the air as he looked around at us all. Penn’s lips tugged ruefully, as if he might apologize, but Jensen was already going on.

  “Now stop fucking around. Chase, with me. Silas, Penn, you patrol north along the wall while we go south to our boundary’s edge. Double check that the wards are all secure, then meet back here.”

  “Got it.”

  That was why we weren’t supposed to shift; we couldn’t check the wards in our wolf form. But off in the distance, I heard the baying of wolves, so clearly, not everyone had gotten the message.

  Penn and I headed along the wall as I wracked my brain with how to get away from the guys for a few minutes so I could get to the other side of the wall and see what the witches were doing.

  The obvious choice was to use magic to knock them out, to steal a few minutes of time. I would have done that without hesitating, not that long ago.

  Maybe Keen was right. Maybe I was going soft.

  Maybe I’d get these friends I’d come to care about killed because of it. It was my job to protect the academy from the covens and to keep all-out war at bay.

  “Penn,” I said, gathering my magic in my palm, preparing to freeze him in place.

  He turned to me, his eyes widening. “You see something?”

  He looked at me like I was a friend. I couldn’t do it—not yet. Not until I exhausted my other options.

  “Nah,” I said, letting my magic dissipate. It burned against my palm, and then it was gone.

  He exhaled. “I thought maybe you saw something. I get the creepiest feeling whenever I’m out here along the wall.”

  He glanced up the warded stone barrier that separated us from the forest on the other side. “We should head back.”

  It would be harder to get away from all three of them.

  “You think we’re really all going to hang out at Chase’s? Like we talked about the other day?” I didn’t know why I was thinking about that. Chase had put an offer in on the house, but it wasn’t like it mattered. I wasn’t going to be here anyway.

  “I mean, he’s crazy to let us in. Maddie talks a lot—beginning way too early in the morning—and Jensen’s a sarcastic pain-in-the-ass, and we all know I’m a wreck,” Penn said, shrugging. “But maybe.”

  “It can be our clubhouse,” Jensen deadpanned, materializing out of the woods on silent feet. Chase was a step behind him, to his side.

  Damn it. But if I’d frozen Penn, I probably wouldn’t have had enough time to get over and back before Chase and Jensen doubled back, and then I’d be in a worse place. It made more sense to freeze all three of them.

  “I’m seriously touched you’d want us around,” Jensen said to Chase, but he was always so deadpan that it was hard to tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

  Chase shrugged. “My brother and sister are already a pain-in-the-ass. I’m used to it.”

  “All right, now we post and wait,” Jensen said. “Hopefully they sound the all-clear soon.”

  “This new dean seems awfully intent on running things like a military school,” Chase said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

  “So irritating. It’s not like it’s a military school,” Jensen said.

  “Is your dad okay?” Chase asked Jensen.

  Jensen nodded slowly. “He’s full of rage and whiskey, at the moment, but he’s fine.”

  “I don’t think I like this new guy much,” Penn said.

  “I don’t,” Jensen said flatly. “But at least some of the shit that’s always slid around here is getting straightened up. Better security, more drills.”

  “You really feel that way?” Penn asked. “After what Clearborn did to you?”

  Jensen shrugged.

  “We’ll see, I guess,” he said. “I’m more worried about whether Maddie and
Ty make it back, about the covens themselves, than a little skin off my back.”

  “I don’t think I’d be so forgiving,” Penn muttered.

  The all-clear sounded.

  “Let’s go back,” Jensen said.

  “I’ll catch up with you guys later,” I said, checking my watch. “I’m going to skip lunch and go for a run.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jensen said. “We aren’t secured until we’ve all checked in.”

  “Cover for me,” I said, already walking backward into the woods.

  Jensen started to say something else. I wouldn’t expect him to be the one to sell military discipline, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Magic glowed in my hand, a warm tingle across my palm that always felt comforting.

  “Let me go,” I said, raising my hand toward them. My magic scattered across them all.

  Jensen frowned, his lips parting. But he breathed in my magic.

  I hated seeing the faces of my friends when I felt like I’d just betrayed them, so I turned and strode through the forest without hesitating, back toward the wall.

  Chapter Forty

  Silas

  I jumped and caught the edge of the wall with my hands, then swung myself up and over. The physical training at this school was easy after the academy I’d attended.

  Still, at the top of the wall, I always had a second of hesitation. There was such a difference between the shifter grounds I left behind, which were carefully warded and patrolled, and the forest beyond, where the witches launched their attacks.

  I’d been unimpressed by this assignment when Keen first gave it to me, not that I was allowed to protest. The thought of going undercover at another academy, pretending to be a student again to be talked-down-to, had been bad enough. And to protect shifters?

  Whether we should interfere in the war between the shifters and the covens was a hot topic in my world, and most people fell into the very enlightened side of maybe we should let them all kill each other.

  I’d held that view too, but now everything had changed for me.

  It’s hard to hate people once you know them.

  I glanced back toward the forest where I’d left my friends, hoping they were headed back to the academy and that they’d cover for me without getting into trouble themselves.

  Then I jumped down into the quiet woods.

  I didn’t dare carry a wand, but the truth was I didn’t need one. I’d have been top of my class at the academy of magic if the only qualification had been wizardry itself.

  Unfortunately, they deducted points for things like being a smartass and excessive thinking for oneself.

  Both those things—my, ah, independence and my skill with magic—had qualified me for this assignment, which at first had made me wish I’d kept my mouth shut a little more often.

  I moved swiftly through the woods, searching for the tendrils of magic I’d felt. There were witches out here, now. And as much as I wanted to fit into my cover role at times, to be a good friend to my fellow students, my real mission was simple.

  Defend the academy from the covens. At all costs. Keep Madeline Northsea alive.

  The only higher mission I had was to seal the rips themselves.

  Then I felt the witches’ magic, drifting through the air. The witches were working on destroying the wards. They were clumsy, just like the ones who had been out here before, that first time I met Maddie.

  I hated that she didn’t remember it.

  I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t make any memories with her that she wouldn’t keep herself. I didn’t want to lie to her. As much as I wanted to kiss her, I didn’t even want that if it wasn’t real, if she didn’t know the man she was kissing. But the way she’d tried to kiss me, and I’d rejected her, haunted me.

  Definitely botched that situation. Let’s kill some witches and make up for it.

  I had to find my comfort where I could.

  The witches’ magic felt like tendrils of enchanted vine creeping through the forest, sliding toward the warded walls. I could feel three of them out here, working together.

  Then I slipped between a few pines, and I could see the first one. He stood in his dark robes—very dramatic, no real wizard would be caught dead in a cloak in my world—with his arms raised. The first of the tendrils were curled around his legs, coiled so tightly that it was hard to tell where his flesh left off and where the magic began.

  I held my hand out toward him, summoning my magic, then reached out for the other two. I could feel his tendrils of magic, slithering in the grass and the muck, and sometimes they bumped against the other tendrils. I followed them until I could see each of the three witches in my mind’s eye.

  And then I snapped the tendrils.

  All three of them fell to their knees as their magic snapped painfully back into their bodies. I knew that feeling. In training, we’d had our magics broken dozens of times, until we learned to keep moving through the pain that came with it.

  I was at the side of the first witch in a few quick strides. I grabbed his hair, pulling his head back. I wanted to know what their mission was.

  When his gaze met mine, he raised his hand. There was something in his palm, a glass globe full of light, tinged with strings of blood from a dark red core that drifted out to the edges of the glass.

  A Hinderance. The Earthside covens weren’t supposed to even know this dark and ancient spell.

  I let go of him, already raising my wards, my hands lifting as a golden shield bloomed between him and me. But I was too late.

  He hurled the Hindrance at me.

  It shattered, blood splashing across my clothes, across my skin.

  I started to mutter the words of a protective spell, but I was already lost. My magic was gone. It sputtered at my fingers, golden sparks that I couldn’t flame into anything more no matter how hard I concentrated.

  Other witches appeared at the sides of the first, a woman and another male witch.

  Time to do this the old fashioned way.

  I hurled myself at the first witch. Catching him around the jaw, I broke his neck and dropped him to my feet.

  The two remaining witches looked at me wild-eyed. One of them was already intoning the words of a sleep spell.

  I moved toward her with intent, but the other witch tried to block me. I quickly dropped him, knocking him unconscious instead.

  I took another step toward her, and then my legs went out from underneath me.

  Sleep.

  Fuck.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Jensen

  We were almost out of the woods, and the green of the academy lawn was in front of me, when I got the tingling, instinctual sense something wasn’t right.

  “Where did our strange friend go?” I asked, stopping dead.

  In front of us, I could hear shouting as they did the roll call for the teams. Great. We were going to look like quite the bunch of fuck-ups if we didn’t make it to roll call. But I couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong.

  “Chasing butterflies?” Chase suggested. “Lost in a good book? It’s Silas. He just kind of wanders off. That’s his thing.”

  “Jensen is right,” Penn said. “That was weird.”

  “Weird, yes. But you literally just called him our strange friend,” Chase said to me. He frowned slightly. “Which is kind of weird itself.”

  “You’ve all grown on me,” I admitted. “I’m going back to check on him. I’ve just got a feeling. You two go on and meet up with Rafe and Lex. No reason for us all to be in trouble.”

  Chase’s eyes widened—as if he’d just realized missing the roll call might mean catching a beating. I couldn’t say I was enthused about the idea of another one either.

  “I don’t want to be wrong and see a friend get hurt,” I said. “It’s bad enough that we don’t know where Northsea is. But I’m probably being stupid. Go on.”

  “You probably are being stupid,” Penn said, “but I’m going with you. Just in case.”
/>   “Me too,” Chase said.

  “Really?” I asked skeptically.

  Chase shrugged.

  “All right,” I said. “Your funeral.”

  I was glad I wasn’t going back alone. I had the weirdest sense of something going awry.

  We doubled back through the woods, but there was no sign of Silas.

  I couldn’t even remember now exactly what he’d said he was doing or why I’d let him go instead of dragging his ass back to formation so we wouldn’t all catch hell.

  What was wrong with me? Maybe I really wasn’t cut out to be a leader, just like my dad had always said. You can lead on the basketball court. For what that’s worth. But anyone else? Who would follow you past the bleachers?

  I hated how hard things were on my dad since my sister died, but truthfully, it wasn’t like he’d ever been anything but an asshole.

  “I don’t like this,” I said, staring around the forest.

  I jumped and caught the edge of the wall, kicking my leg up and over. It reminded me of sneaking off academy grounds with Maddie, which was almost a fond memory.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Penn asked.

  “If he’s not on this side,” I straddled the wall, one leg hanging on either side, “he must be on that side.”

  “Except Silas isn’t stupid and he wouldn’t—” Chase began.

  I spotted something moving through the forest, then spied the blue of his blazer. “There’s Silas.”

  “I stand corrected,” Chase said. “He is stupid.”

  “Be a good moose and help me up,” Penn said to Chase.

  “You’re an ass, and I’m glad you’re short.” Chase told him, but he still boosted Penn up to the top of the wall.

  I caught Penn’s wrist and helped him pull up the rest of the way.

  Chase was a big guy and after he jumped, it was like watching a tank crawl up the side of a stone wall. If a tank got a bit red in the face. I pretended not to notice, though, grabbing his shirt and helping yank him up.

  Once we were all on the wall, I pointed towards where I’d last seen Silas.