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“I don’t know but my parents live overseas most of the year. They probably won’t even notice I’m gone for a while. Maybe we can work together.”
The bus driver stopped at a four-way and glanced over her shoulder at me. “I’m glad you two are getting along. You two were the last accepted students. They gave me the list. Looks like you are going to be roommates.”
“You got the list?” June said. “Are you sure?”
The woman handed her a printout and, while June’s name was at the bottom along with the others, mine was scribbled next to hers in pen. What an afterthought.
June nodded. “She’s right. You’re stuck with me now.”
“Yeah.” I tried like hell to be positive. “Cool.”
Great. It was enough that I had to hide my wolves from the other students, but now I had to hide it from a roommate?
Running from the Light Kingdom was what they promised and threatened me—a nightmare.
Chapter Four
Casimir
The motorcycle was new, the latest in a series of bribes to keep me on track here at the Reject Academy. My parents suffered under the impression that they had to make up for the way I’d been treated by the shifter educational system, so they gave me bigger and bigger gifts, never asking if I wanted them.
It wasn’t the best way to travel in winter, but I liked having some level of independence, a way to leave should I ever decide that school was too much for me. So I wore my wooliest scarf around my neck, tucked into the leather jacket that had also been part of the gift. And of course, a helmet. Shifters’ skulls, even ones as hard as mine, could break when an accident occurred.
They were concerned enough that I insisted on riding it back to school. But once I had those wheels under me, I refused to use their driver.
The school was not thrilled with my bike and tried to refuse to allow me to keep it there during the term, but my warrior-class mother placed a call and no further objections were brought. Mother and Father had objected to my going to school at all; I was the first in our line to do it, and since the administrators had assumed I’d be some kind of a wild troublemaker, I’d been assigned to this campus. Oddly my parents hadn’t minded that. I think they secretly hoped I’d hate it enough to quit. But they’d be damned if someone was going to tell their son he couldn’t keep their gift at his disposal.
If anyone was likely to make trouble, it was my parents. But that didn’t stop the school from watching me for any sign of misbehavior. I could have told them it wouldn’t happen. Warriors were nothing if not disciplined—at least until they gothigh enough up in the pecking order to add ego to their character traits.
I could take whatever they dished out here, and so far, I had. When I chose to get a traditional education, I took it as seriously as the warrior craft I’d been taught in the pack. We needed more than just knowledge of weapons and fighting and how to claw out an enemy’s intestines if we were going to thrive in the modern world. As the future alpha of our pack, I felt I had to lead the way, learn as much as I could, and be prepared to guide us to the future.
Our warrior skills were unsurpassed—but they weren’t the only things we needed to have at our disposal. Until a few years before, most tech had been forbidden on the pack lands, and even now, the only PC I was sure of was in the office and used largely for emails and accounting. Smart phones, on the other hand, were in the pocket of every young one who could find a way to get them, which meant we had children doing things the adults did not understand and could not police.
For some reason, only I seemed to be disturbed by that. When I’d brought it up at a council meeting, the others brushed them aside as “only phones.” I’d been the first one to have one, and knew well how much more than devices to call a friend they were, but I feared if I pushed too hard, showed them what might really be happening, the alpha—Father—and his betas would round up and destroy all the devices.
Which would not only throw us even more out of the mainstream but likely lead to a stream of young people leaving the pack as soon as they were able. And with what I’d learned since being at school here, that was a problem for packs a whole lot more accepting of the modern world than we were.
Pack lands had their charms, but the cities were exciting, and sometimes when you were too young to know any better, you forgot that your wolf also had needs that might be difficultto fulfill there. I wasn’t sure what to do about that yet, but I hoped that by spending these years with other shifters, making better connections with other packs, I might learn how they were dealing with the same situation.
It was the only way our brave and noble line could continue and even thrive. Just try to explain that to my parents and the other leaders… It was not possible. Being placed here with the troublemakers and semi-criminals of the wolf world was not the optimum situation, but I had hopes that in time, I’d be able to prove myself worthy of going to the Urban Academy where I could meet the more successful of my peers.
It was my single goal, and one I’d managed to delay, or worse, when I got into a fight the previous semester with one of the bullies who made this school their home. They’d chosen to overlook my background because I made an effort not to allow anyone to draw me into arguments or other negative situations. One fight. And my lack of control in that single instance might have cost my pack the place in the wolf world I sought. Didn’t matter that I’d had no choice but to defend myself or that my superior skills had made the situation end with nobody hurt too badly. I fought. The dean of discipline made it clear he’d been waiting for me to behave like this.
Now I had to start at ground zero, or even lower, to prove myself.
I couldn’t afford another incident, no matter what. Even this school had its limits and when everyone expected you to be a problem, you had way less leeway than the rest. Instead of gaining admission to the Urban Academy, I could find myself returned home in ignominy, having lost the best chance for my entire pack to grow and thrive.
Nothing was worth that. If someone attacked, I’d have to…what? Let them?
My training would make that difficult if not impossible.
Chapter Five
Karelis
“This is it?” June and I asked at the same time, laughing.
But our driver was busy passing an open set of tall iron gates and piloting the bus down a narrow drive that went on forever, so she simply gave us a thumbs-up. The road was smooth compared to the others on the way here and was framed by tall, looming trees with leaves glistening from the dripping ice. Up ahead, a grandiose yet grayish and foreboding castle came into view. There were several towers, but it was a place in a story where the villain queen lived instead of the giggly princess. Instead of rounded turns, making the place less severe, hard corners and jagged rocks made up the outside. From the front, it appeared that windows weren’t a thing. Anywhere.
