Rule 9 Academy Series Boxset: Books 3-5 Young Adult Paranormal Fantasy (Rule 9 Academy Box Sets (3 Book Series) 2)

by Elizabeth Rain

  “What about Shade? Have you seen him?” If they could find the Captain of the Guard, maybe they could regroup.

  He shook his head, his expression grim and terrified. “I haven’t seen him. They probably caught him, too, and I don’t know where the rest of the guards are from our troop. Hiding probably, like me. You aren’t safe here, Sirris. They especially want you. You are a genuine threat to them somehow.”

  I wanted to scoff that I was only a threat because they kept insisting I was something I had no interest in being.

  One thing was obvious: I couldn’t help them—not like this and not by myself. “I have to get out of here and get back to the surface. If I end up in some cell with them, it will do no one any good. You should come with me. We’ll be safe on land at my dad’s.”

  But he was already shaking his head. “I don’t belong there. I have to see if I can round up any more members of the guard that are hiding like I am. We’ll regroup and try to mount a rescue, I hope. Maybe I’ll run into Shade and he’ll know more.”

  I nodded. It was nothing less than what I’d expected.

  He said, “You were lucky, getting this far without being seen. I don’t think we should push that luck too far. If you wait here, I’ll create a diversion near the castle so you can get out.”

  “How will I know what it is?” I asked.

  “You’ll know, trust me.”

  I nodded as he opened the back door to the small shop and slid out into the alley, leaving me behind watching the main street.

  Several moments later, a loud crash sounded in the castle courtyard, followed by several frantic shouts. I hoped he hadn’t given himself up just so I could gain my freedom.

  I waited as at least twenty rebels thundered past me, weapons ready, shouting to each other and no longer making any attempt to be quiet. I gave it another minute and then slipped out along the street and back the way I’d come.

  #

  Thomas stood on the low flat rock, staring out over the wide expanse of churning water as it roared down out of the mountains and pounded past boulders and fallen limbs. Dawn pinked the horizon of early morning. Every muscle, each individual bone, and even the taut pull of his skin was on fire with pain. He wondered if he would ever get used to the agony of the change, the twist of sinew and rearranging joints into something foreign and inhuman. It was in his blood, though, and he couldn’t escape what he was. He wasn’t sure he wanted to most days unless he was around Sirris, with her soft skin and pretty eyes. He couldn’t forget the silky waves of her pale hair that fell past her waist and that he longed to touch. For her, he just wanted to be normal.

  He wasn’t sure how he’d come to be standing there, all the way up the mountain and on the edge of the Bear River, only a dozen paces below the falls. Maybe it was because he needed to be near the water, even if it wasn’t Deep Lake where she swam unprotected beneath its surface and where he couldn’t go because he didn’t have fins and a tail and never would. He was a wolf, not a fish.

  He shouldn’t even be out here. He was getting better at controlling the change, though he was still exhausted afterwards. Last night, he’d been on the hunt, but in the dim light of morning, he’d slowed his mad running, the yearling buck he pursued escaping to live another day. He gave a shiver. Fur was warm, but human skin lacked sufficient hair to do the job in the late fall air. He looked down at the lightweight shorts he wore, a new material that Jerry had manufactured for his family with enough give that they were at least decent when they changed back to their human forms. It saved them from constantly having to have bags of clothes stashed around the mountain. He turned and looked at the falls, his eyes moving to the ledge halfway up that ran behind and ended up in the hot springs, but he wasn’t in the mood for a warm dip, and his father was going to kill him when Kimmy brought him his breakfast and discovered he was gone again. She’d be telling the major, worried about him as usual. His stomach gave a rumble at the thought of Kimmy’s pancakes and bacon. He was always hungry lately. He flexed his arms and made a fist, drawing the aching muscles along his biceps tight and bulging. At least he was losing the fat.

  A sudden commotion in the water behind him made him whirl in alarm, wondering if a bear had jumped into the river from the far side. Instead, he watched in complete bewilderment as a small, slim head and shoulders emerged from the river. Lovely turquoise eyes blinked up at him in shock, her lips parting in amazed wonder as she spotted him.

  “Thomas?”

  “Sirris?” he responded. Her hands came up and crossed over her front and she raised one eyebrow archly.

  “Do you mind?”

  Something wicked made him grin mischievously. He was so delighted to see her. “Not a bit.” He didn’t turn around, continuing to admire the view and wishing the water wasn’t churning so.

  Her eyes narrowed. And then his jaw sagged as she emerged from the river, water dripping from her hair and slicking over her shoulders and down her newly formed hips and legs. He gulped, realizing she wasn’t entirely naked, but the skin tight, brief dress she wore left very little to the imagination.

  Noting his expression, she hissed, “Watch it, buster. Turn. Now.”

  He smiled, suddenly giddy with happiness. He did an about-face. Listening, he heard the slide of the zipper on her pack, which she must have had hidden nearby. He frowned. Why she was in the river and not one of the lakes was a mystery. The last thing he knew, she’d gone back to Deep Lake. Bear River was miles away from that.

  “You can turn now.”

  He did. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”

  Finally able to get a good look at her face, he took in the wan smile and the pale cheeks. Her eyes were haunted in her slim face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything. Tarus is under attack, and my family is being held prisoner.”

  “I thought we were your family,” he shot back, his mood changing in an instant. Had she forgotten where she belonged?

  Sirris grabbed her pack off the ground and slung it over one shoulder with a jerk, and shot back.

  “We can’t escape who we are, Thomas. You should know that better than most. I have friends and family here, yes. But I have sisters there that need me, too. I can’t abandon them.”

  “They didn’t seem to have any problem forgetting about you for the last twelve years,” he argued, wishing he could stem the tide of foolish words, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  Her eyes darkened in temper and hurt. “Thanks for the reminder. I feel better now.”

  He was opening his mouth to apologize when something rose out of the water at her back. In horror he watched as several Seascrill emerged, head and shoulders out of the water and advancing, bringing their hand bows up and taking aim at her back as they came. They were only a few yards away. There was no way they could miss.

  With a growl of rage, the hairs along his neck and shoulders springing up thick and coarse, he leapt towards her, dragging her to the ground as he snarled, “Watch out!”

  #

  Leave it to Thomas to say just the right thing. I was on the run, my entire Tarus family was prisoner to a bunch of renegades, and I was exhausted. Tears threatened, and no way was I sticking around so he could see them. I took a step in his direction, planning my exit past him, when his eyes suddenly changed and he growled in my direction and leapt.

  He hit me so hard every ounce of breath in my newly functioning lungs exploded from my chest in a gasp. I hadn’t missed the blaze of red in his eyes or the sudden ripple of hair and muscle over his broad naked shoulders and dark back. I wondered how I’d pissed him off that badly.

  It was the last coherent thought I had as we tumbled over the ground. My fingers gripped his neck, feeling the bunch of muscles as they reformed. The sound of snapping bones and rotating joints made me cry out in alarm. It sounded painful. Thomas was changing, and I was in danger. Everyone knew a newly changed werewolf was unpredictable.

  But before I could scre
am or think of fighting back, he’d rolled to a crouch and thrust me behind him. I flew several yards through the air, coming down in a fighting stance of my own, my eyes wide, wishing I hadn’t dropped my staff when he hit me. But Thomas wasn’t looking at me.

  I stared in horror at the group of Seascrill scrambling up the bank, already adjusting their aim at Thomas, who wasn’t stopping. Instead, he was charging, his fangs pulled back in his canine head, his clawed feet scrabbling for purchase as he rushed them. They never had a chance. He hit them like a bowling ball, knocking pins over in a bowling alley. One of them managed a shot, but it went wide from its intended target, slicing a narrow furrow along Thomas’ furred shoulder. He screamed in rage, strings of saliva whipping from his jaws as he reached the first, bringing his teeth down with a satisfying crunch over his trigger hand. They’d royally pissed him off. The rest of the fight was a blur, and I was never a thought in the Seascrills’ minds as they fought for survival against the monster in their midst. They were fierce warriors, but they were no match for a full on Werewolf in Protection mode. He moved through their ranks in an instant, taking them out amidst a fury of snapping bones and ripping flesh. When he was done, he stood over them panting, snarling, and waiting for any of them to dare to move. That wasn’t happening soon, if ever. I moved closer, my entire body shaking with shock. He hadn’t ripped out their throats. I had to be thankful for that at least, but none of them would cause any trouble for quite some time.

  His eyes glared up at me and I froze, reminding myself I was in the presence of a fully morphed werewolf. I didn’t want him to decide I was dessert. But as I watched, his red eyes slowly dimmed until Thomas’ yellow-brown eyes stared up at me, filling with regret. I refused to look away as the coarse black fur lightened and shrunk, as skin and bone and muscle reformed itself into the boy I knew and cared about more than was healthy for either of us. In a matter of minutes, he was lurching to his feet from all fours, standing with legs splayed and chest heaving as he stared at me.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…but they were going to shoot you.”

  I tried to form the words to tell him it was all right. They’d had it coming. If not them, then it would have been me, dead and bleeding out on the ground. But the shock of seeing—feeling—my Thomas change undid me—and maybe it was the sight of all that dark, gleaming skin, glistening with sweat and exertion. But no way was I sharing that part, or the tiny glimmer of excitement that went with it.

  Of course, it was just like Thomas to be sensitive and take my silence for disapproval and shame. His eyes filled with disappointment and he moved away, stepping over the fallen Seascrill where they lay and heading up the path. He spoke over his shoulder, never pausing.

  “Are you just going to stand there staring all day, or are you coming? Maybe you’d rather stay here with them?” He jerked his head towards the unmoving men.

  I rolled my eyes and fell in behind him. I wanted to say something, but he was moving fast and I couldn’t find the words, not the right ones, at least. And I was freezing. I stared hard at Thomas’ broad back, the muscles bunching as he stalked so fast down the mountain that I trotted to keep up. The work of battle had clearly warmed him up just fine. He wasn’t sporting a single goose bump I could see, and believe me, I was looking.

  He never stopped when we reached the fork in the path that led to our individual homes. I wondered how long he continued to stalk towards the Tuttle homestead before he realized I hadn’t followed but had taken the fork towards my cabin. I needed the comfort of my father’s arms—my father, who loved me without condition and never judged. My father, who was my world.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The lights were on in the basement, and I knew where Daddy was. In a fog, I took the stairs, stopping at the bottom and staring. My father’s back was to me, and I watched as he bent over something on a cutting board, using a scalpel and tongs to slice and pull at something he was examining, oblivious to my presence. His forehead was furrowed in concentration and his glasses dipped low on the end of his nose, in dire danger of falling off.

  I smiled fondly at the picture. How many memories, just like this one, did I have? My smile slipped. In none of them, though, did I remember the sprinkling of gray hairs that stuck up like little wiry sentinels about his head. My father was getting older, and I wondered how many of those little gray buggers I was responsible for. He always seemed to take it in stride, but there were days when I wondered if he was as okay with it as he seemed.

  I cleared my throat, and he jerked, looking up at me, his eyes magnified and huge behind the spectacles. With a broad smile, he dropped what he was working on and moved in my direction, scooping me up for a hug I could sink into. These arms never let me down, not ever. I struggled to hold back tears, burying my face in the warm cotton that smelled like my father. “I missed you, Daddy,” Was all I could manage.

  “I know. I’m just glad you 're back and safe. I don’t sleep well when you’re gone.”

  I giggled at that, the sound thick in my throat as I stepped back. “You don’t sleep much when I’m here.”

  He scowled. “Yeah, well, see? I’m sleeping even less lately. Let’s go on upstairs. I’m guessing you’re hungry. You always are.” My stomach chose that moment to rumble, and we both laughed. He was right. I was starving.

  But I was also exhausted. In the space of a day I’d swam twice through several miles of underground river, been shot at, accosted, scared to death, and nearly mauled over by a muscle-bound wolf. I needed sleep, but food was first. I sat for once at the table and let my father fuss as he made me his quick version of tuna noodle casserole with a can of tuna and a box of mac and cheese. I scarfed nearly the entire thing before I came up for air and asked if he wanted any, but I knew he hated tuna. Come to think of it, he wasn’t really fond of any kind of fish. It was almost all I ate. It just pointed out our overwhelming differences. But somehow, it still worked.

  I told him everything that had happened. While I sat alive and free and eating tuna, the other half of my family and friends were being held prisoner or worse. The thought made me push my nearly empty plate away. I was no longer hungry.

  My father rightly read my expression and grabbed my hands where they twisted in balls on the table in front of me as I chewed on my lower lip in frustration.

  “Sirris. You can’t help them today. You can barely hold your head up. You need to sleep. Nothing is going to happen yet today that hasn’t already happened. Tomorrow is soon enough to figure out your—our next move.”

  I nodded. “I need to sleep. But there is nothing you or anyone here can do. I’m all alone in this and I have to do something. I can’t not act, you get that, right?”

  He nodded. “I do. But sleep first, Sirris.”

  I squeezed his fingers back and released them and turned towards my loft bedroom and grabbed the rails of the ladder and climbed. He would get no further arguments from me.

  #

  I had planned to be up by early evening—just a nap, I promised myself—regardless of what my father thought. Instead, I slept through the night and didn’t wake until eleven o’clock the next morning. Every bone and muscle in my body ached, and I stood in the shower under the hottest water I could handle until it ran cold before I shut it off and reached for a towel.

  Dad was in the kitchen, fixing us both a cup of hot mint tea when I emerged. “We’ve been invited to the Tuttle’s for dinner,” he said, handing me a warm cup. I settled at the table, cupping it in my hands and shaking my head.

  “I don’t have time. I have to get back and do what I can to free them.”

  He sat across from me, stirring his own tea. “Getting caught won’t help anyone. Besides, I think you need to know what you’re going to do once you get there. Rushing in blind doesn’t seem like much of a plan.”

  “No, but neither does sitting around here and…and drinking tea,” I blurted, frustrated.

  “Sirris, come to dinner. Let’s talk it over—a
ll of us—and see what we can come up with together.”

  “I don’t see how any of that is going to help me. It’s not like any of you can be there to assist.”

  Dad smiled at me mysteriously, and my eyes narrowed. “What?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing yet, but I’m working on that. Maybe I’ll have an answer to that little issue yet.”

  “What are you concocting, Dad?”

  But he only smiled and drank his tea. He’d share when he was ready, and not a moment before.

  #

  We arrived at the Tuttle homestead a shade past four o’clock in the afternoon to the spicy smell of pasta and red sauce. I wasn’t normally a fan of anything with tomatoes, but Kimmy was a whiz in the kitchen, and anything she made was delicious. The Major was on the porch, sprawled back in his favorite oversized wooden rocker. He cracked one eye as soon as my foot touched the first step. “Good to see you, Mr. Tuttle.” And it was. I missed his gruff, wolfish personality. Thomas was a lot like him.

  He sat up, nodding at us both. “I’m glad you two could make it.” He waved a hand towards the house. “The others are in the living room. The conversation was getting a might loud for my liking. Quieter out here.” He smiled.

  “Are Sadie and Nick here?”

  He shook his head. “Go on in, keep the others company. Maybe you can get them to stop arguing.”

  I found Niel and Fern in the living room, having a heated “discussion”. Kimmy stood in the kitchen, shooing everyone out that didn’t belong, which included her other sisters and Todd.

  When we entered, the tension was thick. Niel and Fern looked up and stopped talking as soon as they saw us. Fern pursed her lips.

  I asked, “Is it just you two? Do you know where Sadie and Nick are?”

  Fern shrugged. “I heard they had somewhere to go and something to do. I would have gone…”

  Niel scowled at her and shot back, “I told you we have to be getting back to Greylock Mountain soon. We can’t risk being gone that long.”