by S. L. Morgan
“Dang, you do have a mouth on you.” Ian laughed and looked at Dom as if to say, only you would date a rebel. “Think.”
“Why are you all leaving this up to me?”
“Because you’re going first, and if you fall to your death and get teleported back to the school, we all know not to go that way,” Scott smirked.
“You’re an asshole, and I’ve wanted to say that since the day we met,” I said.
“That’s strike two. I wonder how many times we can get her mouth going to get her teleported back while just standing here and putting a little pressure on your girl, Dom.”
“Keep annoying her, and you won’t have your easy answer on this first obstacle,” he joked back.
“Alright, everyone shut up and let me think.” Besides the fact it annoyed me Dom was taking all of their master status sides on me being the tag-a-long inexperienced one on this mission, I had to really think, or I was toast.
I tried to get my inner wolf to rise up and scent the air, but she was taking a nap. Bless her apex predator little heart. Ugh, focus Jenna. You can’t fail this. Which one is the freaking way across?
My mind went back to my leprechaun professor and a stupid joke he made in class at Dark Water Academy. ‘Up is down and down is up! That’s how a leprechaun always thinks, and that’s why your quiz is written upside down, backward, and is missing words.’
I remembered thinking that stupid quiz was pointless and the professor was as dumb as any other fairy I’d ever met. Useless ramblings from that man were now serving a purpose in my not dying in this quest.
Everything was backward and flipped inside out for a fairy. The obvious was their trick. They knew the wolf would scent out that rope—well, a wolf who wasn’t sleeping on the job like my girl was. They also knew the wolf would expect the obvious to be a trap, and I studied the rope bridge. The boards and everything about the bridge was an illusion.
My eyes relaxed more, and some crazy inner magic hit me like Vannah had touched me and threw some magic in my system. It went straight to my head, almost making me lightheaded until I refocused on the bridge. The top two rails of the rope bridge weren’t really there. Illusion trap number one. The golden steps that served to create the bridge we would walk across disappeared. Illusion number two. The right side—the obvious rope to use—faded next. Illusion number three. I looked at the left rope that spanned across the ravine below us, it stayed, then faded to a standard brown rope color. It looked like we were either tightrope walking across this or hanging and working our way by using arms and legs to pull our butts across this thousand-foot drop below.
A cat shifter would love this, but I was not a cat. It was up to our own personal strengths and reaching outside of our boundaries to make it across. I glanced over at what we all thought was a swing rope and saw it was an illusion too. This was our only way across. I wasn’t about to show my balancing skill, so hanging from the rope was my option.
I stepped out and heard a shout from Dom as I flung myself out toward that rope, catching it with one hand, quickly gripping it with the other, and hanging upside down with my ankles locked around it.
I was halfway across the two-hundred-foot span and moving quickly to get across. I pulled by reaching my arms ahead of me, and my ankles kept me inching forward. The nagging sensation of wanting to just run across the rope and get there faster hit me more than once, but I wasn’t the tight rope queen, and I wasn’t offing myself this early.
“She did it. Holy crap,” I heard Finley say with a laugh. “I’ll be honest. I was leaning towards the rope swing idea that would have kept us here an hour at least trying to figure out how to dislodge that sucker.”
“Me too,” Scott laughed.
“You all are more amateur than she is,” Dom said, and I heard the laugh and pride in his voice. “She’s hardcore, I like that in my girl.”
I almost lost my grip on the rope when that fell out of his mouth. Yeah, Dom and I were fake dating, but that was the most real sounding thing I’d heard slip out of his mouth other than talking about protecting Ethan.
Focus, Jenna! I was almost there. The cliff was a slick rock and right behind me…finish mark. Now, I had to pull myself up and practically sit on this rope and plant my feet on it to jump to the flat surface.
I closed my eyes, searching for that magical insight energy I’d just had, hoping it would give me a little nudge of help. It surged through me once I thought of it again, and I unlocked my ankles, swung out and up, and now I was sitting balanced on the rope.
Without feeling the fear I should’ve, I swung my legs out and up, leaping onto the top of the rope. I stood bent over, holding onto the thing while it wavered. I focused on the energy I’d transferred into the rope, and then leapt from it, doing a duck roll and making it safely to the other side.
My pride in my accomplishment ceased when Finley walked the rope like she was on the ground. The other two followed in her actions, but Dom took the rope challenge the same as me. I pinched my lips and crossed my arms, watching the veins pop in his biceps as he glided smoothly under the rope, pulling himself without hardly any effort.
The other three patted me on the arm, laughed, and sauntered off further down the glittery path. Dom made some acrobatic move and was now walking over the final feet of the bridge. “Hey,” he said, leaping off the rope and over to where I stood. “Nice call. Don’t know how you figured that one out and so quickly, but that was pretty amazing.”
“Listen,” I lowered my voice for only him to hear. “I don’t need your sympathetic way of doing this to make me look like I’m not an amateur. You could have easily walked across that rope too.”
“Yeah, I could have,” he answered in the same low voice. “But you, you little judgemental, hot-tempered shifter, have no idea how I run on these courses. This is the boring part, and I like having a little fun. So chill and quit getting worked up over stupid crap or you will be the first one teleported out of here.”
He walked off to join the others after putting me and my temper in check. The point I was trying to make was that I didn’t need his help or sympathy, but that was in my personality. The minute I caved to this man I’d submitted my wolf to, would be my first and last mistake with him. He would use his alpha to forever dominate me, and I wasn’t about that life.
“Any day now, Jenna,” Scott said with a laugh to the others. Dom never once turned back to me, but who cared.
We traveled through the glitter fairy forest, darkness starting to claim the daylight now, and we dodged more obstacles along the way. I was now in the middle, Dominic most likely behind me to protect me, and was stopped when the sprite element came into play. We were in some sort of wind pattern that forced you to take small breaths, or your lungs would be overpowered with air and boom—there went your lungs—and a ticket back to the academy.
The wind was enough to blow the trees around us over, and when it hit head-on unexpectedly, I was thrown into Dom’s chest. Annoying, but nice. I was reminded that my skin and body both loved being in close contact with him. The laugh that came from his chest, the gentle but strong way his arms held me close, they gave me a gentle push back to get my feet on the ground and steadied again. I liked his support and the friendly nature I picked up from him, but my mind fought him off like an enemy.
“Scott, don’t!” Dom shouted.
Scott had just skipped a rock over the glass water lake that looked like red rubies, reflecting the sun setting to our right. The water instantly swelled up like a tidal wave, slammed over Scott. Before I could see anything else, my arm was jerked, and I was scampering off to the left, racing right on Dominic’s heels, hearing the thunder of the water crashing down onto the path behind us.
Dom glanced back, grabbed my hand, and forced us both into a faster pace. “When you see a low branch, grab it and climb.”
He ordered. Like magic, a branch appeared, and Dom jerked me under it to keep me from grabbing the thing. Fairy trap. We kept running and
met with trees that had thick, low branches. I gripped one, the sound of the rushing water right behind us, sending Dom and me climbing the trees as fast as a bear shifter would. Once Dom stopped at the more brittle branches at the top of the tree, I stopped too. I leaned forward, gripping the smooth white branch, watching the water rush below us.
It flowed as if a dam had been opened, and I had to wonder if we were swimming our way to our next checkpoint. We were split up in the fae part of this quest, and it sucked. Maybe it was just me and Dom left now, or perhaps our whole quest was only slowed up by having to search for the others. All that mattered was I’d survived until sundown and was still here.
“We’re still about a day away from beating the fae’s obstacles. The leprechauns have placed all of the different fae runes around, so we don’t know which element we’re running into. It can be earth, wind, fire, or water, or it can be all of them at once. Anything.”
“So think end of the world type stuff?”
“Basically.”
“Do you know if they all survived?” I asked as he studied the water below like he was ready to dive out into it at any second and get to our checkpoint.
“Won’t know until we get out of the fae realm. If they meet us at the next checkpoint, we’ll know who won’t be the laughing joke of all the fairies when we get back to the school.”
“Are you serious?” I asked with disgust.
“What?” he looked at me, confused. “What are you annoyed about now?”
“Back to the school? You act like we’re heading back to a normal place. I’m not going back.”
Dominic’s eyes widened, and he glanced around. “For all we know, that stupid hawk is perched in one of these trees listening in on us. Don’t be stupid, and don’t talk like that. No one is leaving this school, especially you and me.”
I watched as he returned his focus to the water below. Fine. That conversation would have to wait. He sounded as serious as a freaking heart attack about not leaving. I would convince him otherwise, I had to. If Dominic wanted to help his own cousin, he would leave this place and go on a search mission to find the people that could shut this place down—or at least bust the people who turned it into a horror house for supernaturals.
Even if Dom was committed to his lame idea of staying here for the next two years, kissing butt, and coming back as a professor, I wasn’t on that page with him. That idea wouldn’t work out. For all we knew, Dom and I would end up somehow being forced into mate-ship at this school, empowering our wolves by merging them, and being the new higher force to help this school continue on its freak show ways.
I wouldn’t put it past that stupid creep dean for already planning the big mating ceremony, then rewiring our brains with dark magic and turning us into dangerous wolf shifters, doing the academy’s bidding—or worse—going out to do the dean’s bidding and taking out enemies this jerk most likely made with higher powers than him.
That sounded like the more reasonable option. Edgewater probably was trying to climb the supernatural of dark evil ladder and needed me and Dom’s powers to help him dominate the races. That wasn’t happening, but it did level out the insane idea as to why he would kill off immortals for objecting or getting in the way of Dom and me having a relationship.
Edgewater was going to learn his lesson the hard way. For all I knew, these sensory reactions I was having around Dominic Rossi was dark-magic driven. I wouldn’t know for sure until we got further away from the magical grips of the academy.
Chapter Thirty
I followed Dominic’s lead since he acted like he could sense the House Fae obstacles a mile away. We remained silent as we rounded large, ancient-looking trees. We leapt over shimmering brick trails and stayed moving on the vibrant blue dirt trail that led through a dense area filled with red thorns shaped like spears coming off massive, blooming bushes.
When Dom jumped the vines on the ground, I did exactly what he told me by jumping things and following in his exact footprints.
We were on a steep climb now, my legs burning as we ascended the golden rocks to where Dom said was the trail to our first stopping point. I was exhausted. The first part of the mission was to journey for the first day or two without using our wolf form. It was a grueling exercise, but it made me start to appreciate why the school worked to keep us from shifting whenever we wanted. This served to give me more power in this form in protecting myself, and the lame school rule came in handy on the quest. Reining myself in from wanting to shift whenever I wanted this entire school year kept me from shifting overnight while making this journey.
“Don’t touch the branches,” Dom said as he leaned forward and used his hands to help him climb the steepest part of the cliff. “It’s all arms from here.”
Dom reached the edge of the cliff and gripped the golden ledge, letting his feet hang while using his arms to pull him up and over the top. My arms were already burning, and I wasn’t about to look down. I knew we were at least a thousand feet above the ground. Dom’s face peered over the side, smiling that smile that sparked electricity inside of me, then he extended his hand down toward me.
I wasn’t about to prove anything to anyone. I took his hand without reservation and allowed him to pull me up and over the side. I crawled out once on top and fell on my stomach, face down in the lime green grass. I was utterly bushed from running, dodging traps, and balancing on large logs just to get to this climb. I barely made it, but my determination to stay on this quest kept my mind off my body begging me to stop.
“You alright, babe?” I felt a pat on my back, and I rolled my eyes while holding a hand up to assure Dom I was okay.
A surge streamed through my veins when his hand clasped around mine. I turned my face to the left, where I knew he was and saw where he was knelt next to me holding my hand. This was just plain weird. Either Dominic was sending vibes to me because he actually cared, or what was more than likely true, we were still in reach of whatever spell that school might be holding over us.
Whatever. I was tired, and I was done thinking about it. This was nice, though. I loved the feeling of his warm hand gently holding mine and the soft laugh of humor when he asked me to get my lazy butt up.
“Come on, let’s get something to eat. Finley’s here, and we have our food rations. Trust me, you need some energy. This has been the easy part.”
With a grunt, I rolled to my back, took his offered hand, and sprang to my feet. We walked over to where Finley sat in front of a stone circle, tossing branches into it.
“This fire isn’t going to start, and we’re going to freeze on this bluff. Everything is soaked from the water. Freaking Scott was acting like a moron, and he screwed all of us.”
“Where’s Ian,” Dom asked, still holding my hand and leading us over to where Finley was. “Did he get wiped out by the water?”
“You know as much as I do,” she said, annoyed. “You know, you both don’t have to act like you’re madly in love. Holding hands makes you both look like you’re trying too hard.”
“I’ll do whatever I want. If Jenna doesn’t want me to hold her hand, then I’ll let her go,” Dom said, looking out at the landscape of treetops that surrounded the bluff that seemed to overlook the world.
When I looked, I saw glittery, fairy landscape to the south and southeast. Everything to my left—the northern landscapes—was all dark forests with thick gray clouds swirling over them and through those treetops.
“Is that the witches’ area we have to go through next?” I asked.
“Yep. It’s most likely just us three…and the hawk shifter, Brenda, is somewhere around here too. She’ll be cruising right alongside us. I can’t wait to take her out.”
“Where does it all end?” I asked Dom, ignoring Finley because her tone was bitchy, and I was too tired for her snappy remarks.
“What do you mean?” Dom looked over at where I sat in front of the stone firepit. “The quest ends after we have everything they can throw at us, and we survi
ve it.”
“I mean, where does the enchantment that hides this school end? I feel like there is no human population anywhere.”
“Why would you care about the human population?” Finley asked.
“Just curious. I don’t feel like this school is on the planet earth.” I laughed.
Finley tucked her knees under her. “Of course we’re on Earth, but where on Earth is the question. Some say Immortal Academy is hidden deep in the rain forests in South America, and some think we’re in the Scottish Highlands. No one knows for sure until we leave, that’s the whole point.” She shook her head and looked at Dominic, “You sure know how to pick them. An immortal who actually wants to leave a renowned school just to go see a human.”
“She has her reasons,” Dom said, ignoring her rude comment.
“And those are?”
“None of your business,” Dom quickly responded. “Quiet.” He looked around. “You hear that?”
I listened, and all I heard was the soft rustle of the wind blowing through the yellow bushes that surrounded us.
“I hear it. Sounds like…” Finley paused, covering her mouth. “Oh my gosh, it’s Ian.”
“No one moves, or you’ll smash him,” Dom said, staring just past Finley who froze.
“What an idiot,” she said with another laugh. “No, seriously, you must have drunk from water out of the wrong puddle, dude. Good luck.”
Dominic’s lips were tight, but eyes crinkled in humor. It was the first time I saw a lighter, more youthful side to him. “Get on a twig, I can’t see you in the grass, and I’m not shifting to find your stupid butt in wolf form.”
“Yeah, you’re lucky your hawk girlfriend didn’t eat you, thinking you were a grub worm, Finley laughed and looked at me. “Can’t you see him or hear him?”
“I have no idea what the hell is going on. Dominic is talking to the grass, and you’re talking to Ian like his freaking ghost is here.”
“It’s a shrinking spell. The most embarrassing trap to fall victim to.” He leaned down and pulled up a white branch where I saw a miniature version of Ian standing. “Man, I don’t even know what to say. This is the funniest thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
