Their Shifter Academy 3: Undone

by May Dawson

  Right before I realized it wasn’t Silas at all.

  It was a witch in dark robes moving through the woods, wearing Silas like a backpack. His head lolled to one side. He was unconscious at best.

  The three of us exchanged a glance, then wordlessly dropped to the other side of the wall.

  “Try to take the witch alive.” I dropped my blazer to the ground, and the others followed my lead, undressing silently. “She’ll be useful to the Council.”

  Then the three of us started to shake with the transformation before dropping to the ground as wolves.

  The three of us spread out, circling the witch.

  The moment she realized she was surrounded by wolves, her eyes widened with horror. She tried to raise her magic as my lips drew back from my teeth.

  Her scream pierced the quiet of the forest when I leapt on top of her, knocking her down. I pinned her. Her lips moved with the words of a spell, but Penn turned back, fast. He slammed her across the face with a fist, and her head fell back, unconscious.

  I shifted back in a hurry then, and Chase did a moment later. I scrambled on my knees to Silas, pressing my fingers into his pulse.

  “Is he alive?” Chase asked as soon as he came out of the shift, his voice still raspy from the pain and blood.

  Silas blinked his eyes open. “No? Can I opt for no?”

  “What the hell were you doing?” I demanded.

  Silas let his head fall back into the grass. “That’s why I opted for no.”

  “We need to have a conversation,” I told him.

  “Two things,” he said, sitting up to his elbows. “One, it sounds like you’re channeling Rafe right now, and it really worries me. Two, if you must yell at me, please put some clothes on first. I cannot have a serious conversation with you when your dicks are swinging in the breeze.”

  “We had to shift to save your life,” I growled, reminding him. I stood, prodding the witch between us. “Where did she come from?”

  “There are two more back there,” he said, glancing through the woods. “I just didn’t manage to stop her spell in time.”

  “Two more we need to capture?”

  “They’re dead,” Silas said. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

  His smartass responses were infuriating me. “You sound so fucking glib, but you were almost kidnapped by witches, who would have tortured you—”

  Silas nodded, his gaze fixed so studiously on my face that it was distracting.

  “Let’s get dressed,” I said, whirling to head back to where my clothes were. “Then we’ll drag that one back with us. Clearborn will have a lot of questions.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Rafe

  “Your patrol isn’t back yet.” Clearborn checked his watch. Everyone else had checked in, but the patrols couldn’t be secured until everyone arrived. He looked from me to Lex. “Do your cadets make a habit of wandering off?”

  Was this a trick question? Obviously, my cadets had a habit of wandering off.

  “We’ll go find them, sir,” Lex said.

  “No, no, no,” he said. “I’m concerned that you would then get lost. Given that the performance of any wolf is generally a reflection of their leadership.”

  Lex’s jaw tightened.

  “But,” Clearborn went on brightly, “these are merely temporary errors. I have great faith in our ability to work together to correct them.”

  Yep. Definitely looking forward to that.

  Jensen, Silas, Penn and Chase straggled out of the tree line. Usually, Dean McCauley had ordered our drills as part of our afternoon hand-to-hand training. It was the first time my team had to do it in blazers and dress shoes, and they all looked bedraggled. Penn’s tie was loose around his throat, like he was settled in for happy hour after a long day. Chase’s shirt was buttoned wrong, as if he’d dressed in a hurry this morning, and dread settled over me.

  If they wouldn’t cooperate, I couldn’t protect them from academy discipline. I couldn’t protect them from me.

  “Release the cadets for lunch,” Clearborn called to one of his Guard Patrol, Langley. He turned to Lex. “You and your cadets, I’d like to see.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lex said. He headed across the open lawn toward them.

  “Which one of you is in charge of them?” Clearborn asked me, his voice curious, although I didn’t trust that tone one bit. “When there’s a disagreement. You or Lex?”

  “We work well together,” I said. “We’ve never had a disagreement that had to be settled by hierarchy.”

  “Both wolves and men are far more comfortable with a sure leadership structure in place,” he said. “I wouldn’t have structured your teams this way, with two cadre members in vague leadership positions.”

  “We make it work,” I said.

  Lex turned and raised his arm, calling across the yard.

  Clearborn started forward with me, breaking into a run with zero hesitation. I’d never seen Dean McCauley run anywhere. He hadn’t even come out to PT with us.

  As we got closer, I could see why Lex had yelled. Chase and Jensen carried a bound witch between them. They were sweating with the effort. Her dark robes brushed the grass, casting a shadow everywhere she went.

  Chase and Jensen dropped her to the ground. Jensen stepped back, brushing his hands off as if he’d touched something vile. Chase crossed his arms, looking as if he were dead on his feet.

  Clearborn glanced between them and the witch. “Are there more?”

  “Just dead ones,” Silas said. I shot him a glance, and he added, “Sir.”

  Langley said, “We’ll send out the patrols for real.”

  “Do that,” Clearborn said. He glanced toward us, eyeing us critically. “Have their territory covered. They’re not ready to go back out. The north wall, section 6, I believe. Is that right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lex said. “That’s right.”

  Did Clearborn remember everyone’s territory? Or did he have an eye on us in particular?

  Or both?

  So far, Dean Clearborn was terrifyingly competent. Given the team I had, maybe we were better off—in some ways—with a dean that overlooked a lot.

  With these kids, there was a lot to overlook.

  “Get the bodies,” Clearborn said to Langley. “Bring them back. Take her to the cells.”

  Langley nodded, already wrenching his radio off his belt to talk to the other Guard Patrol.

  “You four, come with me.” He glanced down at the witch. “Leave your new friend.”

  Just then, Langley said, “Call from the front gate, sir. Northsea and Atlas just arrived.”

  No matter what else was going on, the feeling of tension releasing in the air between the rest of my team was palpable. Maddie and Ty were alive, and in one piece.

  “And here I thought your patrol had gone missing,” Clearborn said. “When really, they’re all coming together for a reunion.”

  Yes, fantastic. A reunion.

  Don’t say anything I can’t fix. I wished I could tell them all that, but it wouldn’t help anyway.

  Clearborn wasn’t wrong. Their listening skills sucked.

  “You four, return to the house. We’ll talk later,” he said. “Mr. Hunt, Mr. Alexander, with me to the front gate, please. Let’s welcome your wayward cadets home. Do you think they have any witches in tow?”

  Normally, I would’ve expected the four of them to protest, wanting to see Maddie. For a second, I thought maybe military discipline had won over. Then Silas and Jensen exchanged a look that I could’ve sworn was relief, as if they were glad to have more time to get their stories straight. Tension tightened my stomach.

  Whatever. One crisis at a time.

  Clearborn headed toward the front gate at a run. Lex and I exchanged a glance, then followed him.

  Maddie and Tyson were visible on the other side of the front gates, which were still closed and locked. Relief flooded me at the sight of them, alive if not exactly unharmed; they were both streaked w
ith blood. Protectiveness flared in my chest, and all I wanted to do was to get to Maddie.

  Clearborn looked from the gates to the young shifter who stood guard. “Is there some reason you’ve left them outside? Is there some danger?”

  “She told me to,” the guard began.

  Clearborn’s brows arched.

  “We were kidnapped by witches,” Maddie called from the other side of the warded gate. “We were able to escape, but they had drawn wards on us for a spell that made us tell the truth. We were afraid they might’ve put some other magic on us that would put the academy in danger.”

  Clearborn looked from her to the guard. “She has a good reason, but you don’t do anything because a student told you to. You do it because it made sense.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Just…said it wrong.”

  “Mm.” Clearborn grunted, as if he weren’t totally convinced of that. He turned shrewd eyes on Maddie and Tyson. “Look at that, Mr. Hunt. I didn’t think your faith in them would be justified. But I was wrong.”

  “They’re good cadets,” I told him. As hard as it could be to believe. But Maddie and Tyson and the others were assets to the shifter community, despite their quirks and imperfections, and I hoped Clearborn saw that.

  “And yet. It seems like a strange coincidence that all the cadets in your patrol encountered witches today. What is it that’s going on with you all, exactly?”

  “Lucky, I guess,” Tyson muttered from the other side of the gate. Clearborn looked at him sharply, but let it pass.

  “Let’s get them cleaned up of any possible wards and the final four feet home safely as soon as possible,” Clearborn said. He spoke to the guard, then turned his attention to Maddie and Tyson. “What happened?”

  Maddie and Tyson filled in a story about being abducted by witches who tried to ‘cure’ them of their ability to shift. Then they described an escape that sounded so full of good luck and their own heroics that I was frowning by the end of it.

  “Is that truth spell still in effect, do you think?” Clearborn asked, and I schooled my face, afraid he’d seen I harbored doubts myself. “You’ll need to make your statements again, formally, once we get you inside. I’ll need to take news of this ‘cure’ to the Council.”

  Maddie nodded. The faintest look of relief came over her face, as if she wasn’t sure Clearborn would take her seriously. I wasn’t sure if she’d be relieved for long. Things had been changing at the academy while she was gone.

  I had so many questions for her. I wondered if she’d found out she was a witch at all, and if so, if she’d come back because she felt she had to prepare us for the next attack.

  But I couldn’t talk to her about anything that mattered as we stood here with Clearborn.

  One of the security trucks pulled up then. A couple of patrol guards leapt out, and they began connecting one of the hoses for the academy’s own fire fighting system to the nearby pump.

  Before long, they’d set up a makeshift hose ‘shower’ at thirty percent of the usual output. Clearborn turned his back as Maddie and Tyson exchanged a reluctant look—even if they had been the ones who said it had to be done, no one was excited about it—and then stripped their clothes off.

  I glanced away too as the water from the hoses hit them. I could hear the quick intake of Maddie’s breath, then her teeth chattering together, though.

  “I’ll get your back,” Ty said, and I glanced toward them just long enough to see him scrubbing her back with steel wool as she knit her arms over her breasts, her face down with her blond hair swinging to almost cover the way her teeth were gritted. I turned away, knowing she wouldn’t want anyone to see her like that, but I heard her and Ty change places.

  “We’re good,” Ty called. The two of them scooped up the towels the guards had tossed out, then hastily dressed in clean PT gear from the security office. They stuck their feet into their wet shoes and squelched across the pavement and through the gates as the guards swung them open.

  “You look miserable,” Clearborn said, a simple statement of fact which didn’t seem to bring him any kind of feeling at all.

  Their skin was bright pink. They’d scrubbed themselves down to remove any trace of the wards that could have been left behind on their bodies. Maddie couldn’t stop shivering, and Tyson put his arm around her, squeezing her comfortingly into his body. I wished I could wrap her up into my arms. She looked exhausted and fragile, her eyes shadowed.

  “Wait,” Maddie said, coming to a stop as if she’d forgotten it. She held up her wrist, and there was a gold cuff on her wrist. “You need to get this off me. I don’t know what it is.”

  “Yes, we do,” Clearborn said.

  The next few minutes went by tensely as they tried to figure out what the thing was on Maddie’s wrist.

  “If Dani Hedron was still here, she’d tell us what it was,” Maddie said pointedly.

  “Yes, remind me how much you like the witch. It’s very confidence-inspiring.” Clearborn said.

  In the end, the guard tried to break the bracelet off by wrenching and twisting away at it with pliers, then by getting a Dremel to drill through it. Maddie tried to be tough, but she couldn’t help the look of horror that crossed her face.

  Lex took a step toward her, and I grabbed his shoulder, pushing him back.

  “I know it’s hard,” I told him. “But you’ve got to just walk away. Trust how tough she can be.”

  I could feel Clearborn watching us. I willed Lex to listen.

  He wanted to protect her, but Maddie wasn’t just our girl to protect, no matter how we felt. In a few short years, she’d be in the patrols—hell, I could picture Northsea leading a patrol, because she didn’t take orders well and she certainly always had a plan—and I didn’t doubt her ability to face down any fear or discomfort she ever had to.

  Lex pulled away from me and went to Maddie. My jaw tightened, exasperated.

  “You’ve got this,” he told her soothingly. He reached out to wrap his hand around her shoulder, and she looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with warmth when they met his. He patted her shoulder, close and protective, just as Tyson was by her side, too. She looked petite next to them, but the three of them looked like they belonged together.

  If Lex couldn’t stand by and watch her in discomfort, he certainly wasn’t going to be able to swing the strap if she got into trouble.

  I had faith in Maddie for a lot of things, but avoiding trouble didn’t make that list.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Maddie

  We had to give our statements before we could go back to our house. Tyson was pulled into an empty classroom; I found myself sitting in the anteroom of the dean’s office with one of the Patrol Guard, a nice older shifter who brought me a cup of hot chocolate and a bottle of water. I told him my story, knowing Tyson and I were separated to see if we’d tell the same story.

  We had practiced quite a bit in the car.

  Still, he asked gritty detail questions that I worried I’d answer wrong, like what kind of lock had there been on the cell door.

  “Thank you,” he said, typing a last sentence into the laptop balanced on his knees. He looked at me, his eyes kind. “You can go.”

  I nodded as I stood.

  “Look after yourself,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  He didn’t know the half of it. “I’ll try.”

  Luckily, I didn’t have to take care of myself. I had my guys to take care of me, and I’d try to take care of them.

  “One minute of your time please, Ms. Northsea,” Clearborn said, and I bit my lip since I was still facing away from him. I could groan at that simple sentence.

  All I wanted was to be close to my guys, and sleep for a week.

  I turned to face him. “Of course, Alpha Clearborn.”

  There was the faintest flicker in his eyes that told me he heard every time we called him Alpha instead of Dean, but he didn’t acknowledge it. I was technically polite.

&
nbsp; He held his office door open for me, gesturing him in, and I walked in before him. He took his seat at his desk, but didn’t invite me to sit. I folded my hands behind my back, straightening my shoulders. I’d channel Lex, who was always polite to authority, but never bowed.

  “I appreciate the intel you brought back to us, Ms. Northsea,” he said.

  I didn’t know how to answer that. “Will the Council do anything about it?”

  The faintest smile tugged at the corners of his lips, as if he was fighting the desire to mock me. “Yes. I promise, the adults will take care of things. We don’t need teenagers running around saving the world.”

  I nodded, although I felt a faint flush of anger heat my cheeks, giving away what I really thought.

  “Not that you were doing that this time,” he said. “How was your visit to Penn’s pack? Did he have to fight for his position?”

  Shit. I hadn’t even talked to Penn since Saturday, when we had texted. I didn’t know what might have happened before he came back to the academy Sunday.

  “Luckily, I think the pack is accepting his leadership,” I said. “Penn is young, but he’s a great alpha.”

  “Mm.” His face didn’t give anything away as he moved behind his desk, although he paused there, his hands behind his back. “I’m curious. Did you find your biological father?”

  I stared at him without answering for a long second before I managed to ask, “What?”

  “You seem to have gotten into the habit of assuming anyone in an authority position is a moron,” he said. “Having met Dean McCauley, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised.”

  “I was at Penn’s pack—”

  “Don’t lie to me,” he said, the first barb of heat I’d heard in his voice.

  His voice was laced with command, and something about it sent a jolt of dread through my body. I hated that feeling, and it flickered into anger the very next second. I held myself tighter, forcing myself to stay still. When someone scared me, it made me want to show them that I couldn’t be cowed. But right now, being quiet was definitely the smart choice.