“No,” I finally mutter. “I wouldn’t have gone.”
“Why don’t you come over?” Dad asks. “I think you’re ready for something a bit more… dangerous. You can’t dare tell your mother about this.”
I grit my teeth. I hate when Dad does this, tries to pit himself against Mom to try to get me to do something. He turns it into a game, and it’s not something I want to play.
But he does know that curiosity is my vice, and I bite my lower lip. “Can I have a hint?”
“Now, now, you know that’s not how this works,” he admonishes. “Will you come?”
“Where to?” I exhale a sigh, wondering if he notices that I didn’t agree just yet.
“Gravennora Savanna.”
A grassland to the south.
“Can you be a bit more specific, Dad?” I ask dryly. “That’s a huge area.”
“The boulder.”
There’s a huge rock in the northwest of the grassland. It’s not too far from an overhand and a steep cliff down to a low, lazy river that’s drying up more and more every year.
“What do you say?” Dad asks. “You ready for an adventure that is far superior to maybe fighting a few vampires?”
I shrug. “I don’t want to fight vampires.”
“Who do you want to fight?”
“No one.”
“Peace isn’t won by ignoring disagreements,” he admonishes.
“What disagreement do I have with vampires?”
“You don’t hate vampires on sight?”
“You do know I’m related to one, right?”
“Yes, yes,” he says, and I’m sure he’s waving his hand to dismiss me. “A distant cousin. Do you think she would come to your aid if you called?”
“Maybe.”
“I doubt it.”
“You doubt everyone,” I counter.
“And you should too.”
Hmm. Does he mean I should doubt him as well?
Probably. And I probably should.
Immediately, guilt overwhelms me. Dad does the best he can for me, and just because he is a demon doesn’t mean he doesn’t want what’s best for me. He just has a twisted way of going about things.
“But tonight, I’m asking you to trust me,” Dad continues.
“It’s Monday night. I have school tomorrow.”
“If you want to make an excuse, that’s fine, but you can teleport here and teleport back. You can still get plenty of rest so you won’t be a bear in the morning.”
“Dad, I’m a werewolf. I can’t shift into anything other than a wolf.”
“Are you so sure about that?” he asks.
My heart skips a beat. “W-What are you saying?”
“What do you think I’m saying?”
Demons.
Demons can shapeshift into all kinds of things.
I’m half-demon.
Does that mean…
My mouth hangs open.
“If you trust me, come to the boulder.”
Dad hangs up.
I can hear footsteps outside my room. Maybe it’s Ellamaria back from her race, and if she comes to the door, she’ll want to talk.
If I want to see what Dad wants to talk to me about or show me or teach me, I have to go now.
So I do. I teleport to the boulder, standing on top of it even though there’s a risk that Dad will be sitting on it.
Instead, he’s standing with his back to me, hands clasped behind him as he stares at the moon.
“Good of you to join me, my wolf.”
I swallow hard. Dad hasn’t called me that since I turned five. Why he stopped calling me that I don’t know. It’s a little disconcerting to realize just how much I don’t know.
“I’m glad you trust me,” he says, turning around.
It’s only then that I smell the harsh bitterness of smoke. There’s a long patch of fire burning the grass behind him in a perfectly long rectangular area.
“You do trust me, don’t you?” my dad asks as he moves to stand behind me, his hands resting on my shoulders.
I say nothing. My eyes already burn from the smoke.
“Go on,” he urges, giving me a push.
"Go on, and what?" I ask.
“Walk through the fire.”
“You want me to what?” I screech.
“Walk through the flames.”
“No.” I shake my head frantically. My entire body is trembling.
I won’t do this. I won’t!
“I would never ask you to do something you can’t do,” Dad says patiently.
I shake my head again. “No.”
“You don’t trust me?”
Unmistakable fear races through me, and I take a step back, colliding with him. He’s asking far too much of me. I can’t. I’ll burn.
“I’m not a dragon,” I hiss. “I can’t survive walking through fire. I’ll burn to death!”
“Fire is a part of a demon. Fire burns in our veins.”
"I…" I shake my head, closing my eyes. Trying not to breathe in the smoke, but a sob bursts out.
In my shame and my cowardice, I teleport out of there without another word, not even a goodbye.
Chapter 9
Robb
For the most part, I’ve been trying to keep to myself. Roald and his goons won’t leave me be, though, and Nia… She knows too much. Every so often, I’ll catch her watching me, and it’s not because she has a crush on me. More like she wants to crush me. She doesn’t trust me, and I don’t trust her. She’s violent.
To some extent, all werewolves are violent. It’s in our nature, but if she thinks I’m going to just let her do whatever she wants, that she can pretend to be a good friend while steering the others down a dark path…
Dark paths only ever lead to one place.
Death.
Death is permanent.
Unless you come back as a ghost. There is that.
A faint smile curls my lips. I’ve managed to duck the rough crowd for lunch today, and mealtime is almost over, but then, before I can throw out my trash, they descend.
“Robb, you look a little thin,” Roald points out.
A low growl rumbles from my chest. He doesn’t know why I’ve lost weight, and it’s not from a loss of appetite, although along with my numbness and lack of emotions, I don’t have a healthy appetite anymore. I’ve lost weight because my body is eating away at itself.
The curse.
“You’re not up to fightin’ vampires, huh?” Elliot asks.
I glower at Nia. “Why are you talking about fighting vampires?”
“We thought about going to their campus the night of their ball, but…” Decker shakes his head, confused.
I purse my lips. “There’s no need for that. You want sport? There are some hellhounds who race about a few miles north of here. Give them a chase. Up the stakes. Make bargains with them.”
“Everyone knows you don’t ever make a bargain with any creature from Hell,” Elliot protests.
“Yeah, well, if you have a certain advantage…” I hold out my hands.
“You mean cheat.” Nia snorts.
“How would you cheat?” Elliot asks.
He’s a bit too naïve for this crowd, a follower through and through. I feel sorry for him.
“A bone,” I throw out there.
“Which kind?” Decker asks.
I wink. “That’s the big question, isn’t it?”
“Have you raced a hellhound?” Roald asks.
I lift my chin. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
His gray eyes narrow. He doesn’t like being challenged, but if he’s going to ever try to officially be an alpha, he better get used to it because there’s no way Nia’s going to accept his authority. The other two might, but not Nia.
Before he can counter, a loud voice booms, “The princess of darkness thinks she’s too high and mighty to talk to us. If someone told you to ignore us so we’ll go away… that someone is as ignorant as you are.”
>
Decker glances over, and I might throw a few peeks that way too.
“Wyatt,” Roald says bitterly. A muscle in his jaw tweaks.
Nia smirks. “What’s wrong, Roald? Still bitter?”
I lift my eyebrows, confused. I don’t know Wyatt, which means I also don’t know the history between Wyatt and Roald.
“I’m ignoring you because you don’t deserve my attention,” a somewhat familiar voice says, the tone sweeter than honey. “Now, leave me be.”
"Or what?"
“Or I’ll make you leave me be.”
“Is that so?” Wyatt roars with laughter, and others join in. They’re crowding around someone, the girl talking back, but I can’t see her.
“What went down?” I ask, my attention torn between the rough crowd and the bullies.
“Wyatt, Jett, Gayle, and Mindy, they used to all be a part of us,” Decker explains.
“To some extent,” Elliot adds.
“They are all in the same pack, though,” Decker continues.
“Roald wanted them to deflect to us.”
“But Wyatt thought that if so many of us were in the same pack to start, that he should be the one to be alpha.”
“You two come to blows?” I ask Roald.
“It never came to that,” Roald says bitterly.
“Why not?”
“They deflected like Roald asks,” Nia crows. “They just deflected from us.”
“Wyatt’s the son of the alpha from Spark pack,” Elliot says. “For him to deflect is no small thing, but he tries to act like he’s the alpha for the teenagers of the pack. Not all of them hang around Wyatt, but if he does follow in his pa’s paws, well, they’ll have no choice but to obey him.”
“Or challenge him,” I mumble.
Roald eyes me and then slowly nods. “Maybe one day, one of them will challenge Wyatt,” he says, sounding satisfied.
Great. Just what I need to do, encourage Roald to sow my violence, this time in another pack.
“Why don’t we go see what Wyatt’s going on about?” Nia suggests.
“Let’s.” Roald motions for us to follow, but the crowd isn’t far away. In fact, it’s heading our way. The bullies’ target is trying to get away from them.
“Running away like a coward. You been out in the sun too long? I swear she’s part vampire. I mean, look at her. That white hair, she looks like a freak with her strange eyes.
Strange eyes? White hair? The girl I crossed had black hair with some white. Same girl or another one?
“Oh, so it’s Bellanore Shade,” Roald says as he worms his way into the circle. The rest of them—Elliot, Decker, and Nia—remain on the outside of the enclosure around her.
“Roald Jagger,” the target says in a slow drawl. “Why are you here? Still without a pack? Still trying to find someone to throw you a bone?”
“I don’t need a bone,” Roald hisses, “but if I change my mind, I’ll gnaw on one of yours.”
Wyatt starts to laugh. “You’re outnumbered, girl, and Roald has size on you. Do you honestly think you can take him?”
“Don’t underestimate me, Wyatt. That would be your second mistake.”
There’s a bit of tension, and I’m sure Wyatt is fuming at her bold claim, but he doesn’t rise to her bait and ask what the first mistake is.
Doesn’t matter. She opts to mention it anyhow.
“Your first mistake, of course, is to try to mess with me. You see, I eat up guys like you for breakfast, and I spit out the bones. I’m the one with bones to gnaw on.”
Wyatt snorts. At least I think he’s the one to snort. “You talk big, but you have no bite, no drive, no violence. All you do is talk. You never fight.”
“Oh, honey, that’s because I don’t fight fair.”
“That so?”
A gasp runs through the crowd, and I’m itching to know what happened, but I also don’t want to see.
Abruptly, the crowd parts. The girl with the black hair and some white and glowing green eyes is the target. She spies me as she stomps off.
A werewolf steps forward. He's decently big, broad-shouldered, and he has a rip on the sleeve of his uniform. I can smell blood from here.
He must've grabbed her, maybe by her hair because it looked a bit disheveled. She must've clawed him as a result.
Good for her.
Wyatt glowers at me as if this is all my fault, but I just shrug and ignore him.
That girl might be a spitball. A firecracker.
I think my opinion of her might have just changed a bit.
There’s no doubting it. My opinion has changed because my final class of the day, predator instinct, I realize I have with her, and I make it a point to sit next to her. She sits in the front, like a good little girl, whereas I hang out in the back usually. It’s not that I’m a slacker. I’m just bored.
I shouldn’t be, though. I should be trying to do something about the curse, but I can’t bring myself to have the motivation to. All I want to do is just survive.
But I won’t. In the end, I won’t survive.
But fighting for my life requires effort and a level of desire that I just can’t bring myself to feel.
I can’t feel anything. Not fright, not worry, not even the desire to live.
When I slide into the seat next to her, she glances over and rolls her eyes.
“I can’t remember if you told me your name,” I say.
"Why not just call me Princess of Darkness?" She looks at me for a fraction of a second before staring straight ahead of her. "You did hear Wyatt call me that, didn't you?"
“I might’ve. Why did he call you that?”
“Why does he do anything that he does? I’m not his keeper.”
Her tone is frosty. I’ve warmed up to her, but she hasn’t me. Was I even that terribly biting to her when we first met? I had a terribly rocky first day, and honestly, the days since haven’t been that much better.
“I hate it here,” I mumble.
“Why? You have… friends.”
I snort. “I have no one.”
“That so? You hang out with a rough crowd.”
I snort again. “If you think they’re rough, then you don’t know what true rough and tumble types are.”
“That you?”
“Not really.”
“Hmm.” She’s back to staring ahead again.
“I’m Robb,” I offer, holding out my hand for a shake.
She doesn’t bite, doesn’t look over, doesn’t say her name. She doesn’t say anything at all.
“‘Hi, Robb, nice to meet you,’” I say in a high-pitched tone.
“I don’t sound like that.”
“Yeah. Guess not. Must be because I can’t hear you saying that.”
“Maybe because it would be a lie.”
“Ouch. It’s not nice to meet me, huh?”
“I’m not in the mood to talk.”
“To anyone?” I ask. Maybe she just wants everyone to leave her alone.
“Oh, I would talk to my friends if they had this class with me.”
“You any good at this class?” I ask, attempting to ignore the slight.
She scowls. “Why would you think I am?”
“I don’t know if you are or if you aren’t,” I protest. “I haven’t been paying attention.”
“Not to the class either. You’re behind on the lessons.”
“I just… I can’t bring myself to care.”
“And there it is. That’s why you hang out with Roald and the others, isn’t it? Because you don’t care about who’s good or who wants to rile things up and have a fight every night.”
“There isn’t a fight every night,” I argue.
“No? You sure about that?”
I hesitate. “I don’t spend every second of the day and night with them.”
“So you don’t know—”
“I’m not their keeper,” I interrupt.
She eyes me, but there’s a blankness in her glowing e
yes.
She really isn’t interested in me.
Why does that make me even more interested in her?
Chapter 10
Bellanore
I tap my fingers impatiently on my desk. Where is Professor Narcissa? Of course today would be the day that she's running behind. She teaches a ton of courses here, and she's also one of the head faculty members on staff. This isn't the first time that she's late.
And she’s not the only one late. Ellamaria is too.
Just then, my best friend rushes in. She starts toward her customary seat, which Robb has claimed, and she comes to a halt. The look of utter confusion on her face would normally make me smile, but I’m not sure how to feel about the werewolf sitting next to me. He’s a puzzle, and for once, I’m not sure I’m curious enough to work him out. Yes, maybe it had been a little rude of me to look at his scar, but I was trying to appraise his face. His eyes glow. I’m the only werewolf here to have glowing eyes before he came here, so I wonder about his father or mother. Maybe he’s a half-demon too.
Would that explain why he hangs around Roald and the others? Although there doesn’t seem to be much love there.
“Is this your seat?” the subject of my thoughts says smoothly as he glides out of the seat.
“You can sit there. It’s not like it has my name on it,” Ellamaria says, all flustered.
He touches an engraving on the south left corner. “This isn’t your name?” His fingers trail along the engravings she etched with her nails the first week of school. “Ellamaria? It’s a nice name.”
“Yes, that’s my name, but—”
“So it is your seat, and it does have your name on it.” He actually bows to her and then just tilts his head toward me before heading to the back.
I can’t help glancing over my shoulder to watch him go. Hmm. That was gentlemanly and a bit flirtatious too.
Toward Ellamaria.
A pang hits my chest, my stomach tightens, and I don’t know why.
Ellamaria claims her seat and leans over. “Tell me about him.”
“There’s nothing to tell. Or maybe you have something to share?”
“No. No, he’s not interested in me.”
I nod. “Sure. ‘So it is your seat, and it does have your name on it.’”
Moonstone Academy: Year One: A Mayhem of Magic World Story Page 6
