“Show me what you got, pussy,” Sam snarled at Donovan. “Are you as pathetic as your brothers? I thought you were supposed to be a wolf. I bet you don’t even know how to shift.”
A few people in the crowd snickered, and my wolf growled, pushing up inside me, wanting to defend my brother.
“We don’t use them to hurt people,” Donovan said.
“You think you can hurt me?” Sam asked. “Try it, mongrel.”
Donovan put his fists up, but he didn’t go in for a hit. He just stood there. He wasn’t going to go on the offensive like I had. He’d wait and see what Sam was working with before striking. I’d armed him with all the knowledge I had about his opponent’s weaknesses. Now I had to just stand back and trust him to do his best. If he didn’t get the better of Sam, we’d still survive. Adolf and I had both won our fights, and we could protect Donovan if anyone tried to fuck with us at school.
Still, we hadn’t shown ourselves as anything special. We’d barely gotten by. My knockout seemed almost like luck, and Adolf’s had been clever but not spectacular. In our years at different schools, I’d learned enough about the social order to know that we’d probably be okay. We’d given an average performance. But as some of the only wolves, we needed more than average. I knew if Sam won this fight, we’d be eating his shit for our entire career at Ravenwood.
Sam leapt forward, on the offensive this time. His hand shot out, and Donovan flew across the clearing, crashing into a tree trunk. A horrible stifling pain ripped into my chest, as if my wolf were trying to tear out of me from within.
Beside me, Adolf let out a rumbling growl, his eyes fixed on the fight with unwavering concentration. “Get up, get up,” he muttered.
Sam dove onto Donovan, his hands coming up to wrap about Donovan’s skull. An image of him snapping my brother’s neck flashed in my mind, and suddenly, my wolf was tearing to the surface, fur sprouting from my arms. I held back, the pain of it making me double over, panting with the effort.
“Submit, you dumbass,” Sam said, laughter in his voice as Donovan writhed under him.
“Never,” Donovan said, panting even harder than I was.
“Wrong answer,” Sam said. “Now you’re about to see what a warlock can do.”
I’d promised never to hurt anyone again, and I’d meant to keep that promise. But maybe it was time to throw out our old rules. At Ravenwood, we needed a new set of rules. Our old ones had served us well when we lived among humans. But this was a new ballgame. This game wasn’t played by human rules, by human participants. This game had rules we didn’t know and magic we hadn’t yet learned.
Donovan sucked in a breath, choking on a sob.
My wolf ripped at me, bringing me to my knees. Rage pulsed in my temple, red as blood across my vision. My brother would not be bullied into submission. Not by some asshole who must be at least five years older, who had full control over his magic. Judging us by this fight alone wasn’t fair. But it was the only fight we’d get.
Our lives had never been fair, though. I peeled off my shirt, ready to shift. My wolf urged me to attack. He wanted to help Donovan even more than I did. He needed to help him, despite all rules, despite all warnings. It was as instinctual as eating. No one fucked with my brothers. And no one told me when I could or couldn’t help them.
Donovan let out a howl of pain, and my fangs ripped from my gums. I tried to hold back, but every cell in my body was screaming at me to defend my brother before it was too late.
“What is he doing?” I demanded, spinning on the redhead still clinging to Adolf.
Her eyes widened in horror and shock when she saw my face. “He can put anything he wants in your head,” she said in a rush, cringing behind Adolf’s shoulder. “He could even make him hurt himself. If he doesn’t know how to block Sam, he should surrender. Now.”
“Surrender, you little maggot,” Sam yelled at Donovan.
I remembered my father’s words when I’d taken the moral high ground. “All fighting is dirty.” Maybe he was right.
My brother screamed again, a tortured cry that cleaved my chest like a knife. As I dropped to all fours, charging across the clearing, a chorus of gasps and cries of surprise came from the crowd. Ignoring them, I leapt onto Sam’s back. My wolf had one mode.
Protect.
The fastest, quickest, most immediate solution was the only one. I clamped my jaws around Sam’s neck and ripped his head off.
*
For a moment, no one moved. Then, there were screams, and Donovan was scrambling away from me. Only when I saw his terrified eyes did I realize what I’d done.
Not just hurt someone.
I’d killed someone.
As the black-haired girl ran to Sam’s side and dropped to her knees, I shifted back to my human form. My heart was racing, my head spinning. It had been so easy, even easier than in my nightmares. This was the moment I’d feared all my life, since first realizing the uncontrollable nature of my wolf. It was an animal, acting only on instinct. It had no concept of human consequences.
“No,” the girl gasped, turning stricken eyes up at me. “You… You killed him.”
This was the reason I hadn’t let my wolf come out and fight. The reason I had kept it caged inside me all these years. We were monsters, just as I’d always believed.
But as I looked around at the gaping faces, I knew I wasn’t the only monster. The black girl who had come to our room looked positively hungry, staring at the body with shining, greedy eyes. Other girls were looking at me that way.
I couldn’t bring back Sam. All I could do was accept responsibility for what I’d done.
Or I could use it to protect my brothers.
The moment the thought entered my mind, I knew there would be no going to the headmaster or even to our father. There would be no funeral. There would be no admission of guilt. That would be locked away in the cage where I had kept the beast all my life, as hidden and secret as my second nature had been to humans.
“Yeah,” I said, staring down the circle of students around me. “I killed him. You fuck with one of us, you know what’s coming. So, who’s next?”
No one moved.
“That’s against the rules,” the pixie-cut girl whispered, her cheeks wet with tears.
But I only saw Donovan’s tears. I had one chance to lay down the law when it came to my family. One moment to take control of the situation and shape our entire future here.
“There’s a new alpha at Ravenwood,” I said, forcing my voice to come out hard. “You live by our rules now.”
10
Donovan
My pulse thudded in my chest as I stepped into the halls of Ravenwood Academy for our first day of classes. The moment we started toward our first class, the other students fell silent. They stepped back, giving us space, a mixture of fear and awe on their faces. Most of them were unfamiliar, faces I hadn’t seen at our initiation a week earlier. Only the best were invited to those, Leigh had told us on the way back to our room that night.
But everyone knew. I could see it in their eyes, in the wary and awestruck expressions. They knew what Alarick had done, what he’d threatened. We were all protected by his act, but we were also isolated by it. This wasn’t how I’d expected my first day of private school. But everything had changed that night.
My chest tightened and my stomach rolled at the thought of that night a week ago, the longest night of my life. I knew I would relive it as often as Alarick. I didn’t know which of us had thrown up more times afterwards. We might have been born monsters, but we weren’t used to burying bodies.
A few of the girls cast curious, speculative glances at our bodies, admiring our physiques. A week ago, I would have eaten that up. I would have loved it. Now…
I didn’t know now. Things were different. We could get girls, if Adolf’s first week was any indication. I just didn’t know if I wanted to. I didn’t know if I’d ever trust myself with one. I’d seen what our wolves could do, the devasta
tion one moment of rage could bring. Maybe one day, once I’d learned to control the beast inside me, I could let someone see my true self.
A couple girls turned away, one of them bowing her head like she was crying while the other comforted her. They shrank back when we passed, and my chest ached with shame and sorrow. It had been an accident. But I knew that Alarick had made it seem otherwise to protect us in a school full of people more skilled than we were, more dangerous. Now, we were the dangerous ones.
It was all an illusion, but on one had to know that. We’d become illusionists that night, not just murderers. We’d spent so many years, so many schools, being the victims. Being the freaks, the ones who were different, who didn’t have any other friends. And now, we had something else. A sense of power swelled inside me, and even if it was an illusion, I couldn’t deny that I liked the way a scrawny kid scurried out of my way. I would never forget what it had been like to be him. I wouldn’t let this get to my head. I wouldn’t use my powers for evil, the way our father had.
But I wouldn’t dispel the illusion, either.
As we’d buried Sam’s body in the woods that night, we’d vowed never to kill again. We were not our father. His influence may have swayed other students, changed the way they looked at us, but they didn’t have to know that we weren’t like him. Let them believe.
Only a handful had been at the initiation, but everyone thought they knew what had happened. They’d heard some version of the events that transpired that night. Maybe some of them believed Sam had run into the woods in humiliation after the fight. Some were sure he’d be back as soon as he recovered his dignity. Others had probably heard something worse than the truth. Judging from the looks on faces, some thought we were ruthless, coldblooded killers. If it kept us from being killed, so be it.
When I stepped into my first classroom at Ravenwood, the other two wolf boys were already there.
“Hey,” Vance said, coming over. The teacher hadn’t arrived, so it was just the five of us. We hadn’t seen them all week—not since the initiation. They’d tried to visit a couple times, but we’d needed time to ourselves. We’d spent a couple nights off campus at our father’s house while he was out of town just to be away from the weird sense that everyone was watching, waiting for us to emerge and take command. Only Adolf had allowed anyone to visit, and those were late-night visits from girls who were gone in the morning. Alarick said he was dealing with it in his own way.
“We just wanted to say we’re sorry,” Jose said. “We didn’t know that would happen. We talked to your dad, and he explained that you haven’t actually spent any time as your wolf.”
A roaring sound swelled in my ears, and I could barely swallow. Any minute, I expected Dr. Underwood to step out of his office and call us in for a talk. Or maybe a uniformed cop would arrive with the teacher, ready to snap handcuffs on our wrists and haul us away. The whole week seemed like a numb sort of limbo. Waiting for someone to snitch. Waiting for things to go back to the way they had been, though I knew that was impossible.
Before I could form a word, Alarick grabbed Jose by the throat and slammed him against the wall. “You’ll never speak of it again,” he growled.
Jose nodded, his eyes wide. But when Alarick released him, he didn’t scurry away. He was a match for us, and then some. After all, he wasn’t just a wolf. He was a trained wolf with complete control of himself. If we tried to fight him, there was no question who would win. And yet, he bowed his head slightly when Alarick glared at him.
“Understood,” Vance said.
“Good,” Alarick said. “We’re all wolves. We should stick together.”
“That’d be cool,” Jose said.
“We can show you the ropes,” Vance said.
With that, we’d found our crowd. Maybe it wasn’t what I’d expected, but it was better than nothing. We had allies, people like us. They could help us figure out Ravenwood and our place in it, although I was pretty sure Alarick had established that the first night. More importantly, they could help us learn to be wolves, to control the monsters that waited inside us. Because they had monsters inside them, too. They were murderers, too. Maybe Ravenwood looked the other way when it was only a human, or maybe no one but Dr. Underwood knew what our father and the other wolves were up to. But we knew.
We knew, and we weren’t going to let it continue. Things were about to change around here, and not just because we were the new school bullies. For now, we needed the other wolves, so we’d let them join us. But they weren’t friends. We didn’t have friends. We had brothers.
We’d play along, though, pretend to help with their project until we figured out how to stop it. We might have to do things we didn’t want to do, but we’d end this sick game one way or another. I just hoped we succeeded before they found our mate and accidentally killed her.
*
What happens when the Wolf boys’ mate shows up? Will they be able to save her from the evils lurking at Ravenwood? Click here to find out: Ravenwood Academy Year 1: Wolf Moon.
Imdalind Academy: Pre Term
Rebecca Ethington
Copyright © 2019 Rebecca Ethington
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, incidents, and dialogs are products of the author’s
imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events is strictly
coincidental.
1
Sia
"Name?"
The haggard old lady behind the desk didn't even glance up from her computer. She continued clicking on the sleek, metallic mouse, the electronic card game she was playing reflecting in her overly large, and overly thick glasses.
No wonder this line was taking so long. Suzan, according to her nametag, wasn't even paying attention.
I should be mad, but I had been waiting for this day for seventeen years. Too long to get pissed at some Tarn and get myself kicked out only moments before the Gauntlet was to begin. Besides, Suzan had clearly come from a Chosen family like myself. She was too clean and had no tattoos or piercings that the Drains usually covered themselves in. Although neither of us had a kiss on our wrists. We were equals, for now. Goldens. Children of the Chosen, raised in the gleaming world of magic. I was sure she had entered the Gauntlet as I was about to do. The clean, unmarked skin on her wrists made it clear she hadn't succeeded.
She hadn't received a kiss from the Vilỳ, the winged magical beast whose poison awakens the magic in a mortal. She was never blessed with magic. She was nothing more than a Tarnished Golden now. A Tarn.
I was not going to meet the same fate.
"Sia Demarco." I spoke my name slowly, confidently, just as my father had demanded of me my entire life. It made little difference. My agitation boiled into a steam when she didn't click right over from her game.
"Eldest daughter of Samantha and Giovanni Demarco." I tacked that last part on for effect, pushing my sheet of chestnut hair behind me as if that alone would catch her attention.
Suzan froze, but not from the glittering strands of hair that my mother had bewitched that morning. She recognized my parents’ names.
Of course she did.
My parents were some of the most prominent Chosen in our area. My father had campaigned for the imprisonment and reuse of the Drains for years. Obsolete mortals were useless to the world and needed to be dealt with after all. They were drains of society, living in the abandoned drains of the world. No other name could fit them. Last year, my mother had led the efforts to clear the old subway tunnels so many of them called home. Which, if I had to guess, was where the Tarn that was sitting beside the useless Suzan had come from. Thick black lines of the tattoo on his neck were practically bursting out of the makeup he was attempting to use to cover it. Mo
st of the Tarns who failed the Gauntlet chose to hide underground. Ashamed.
Suzan hadn’t chosen that path. She should be commended for choosing to serve those better than herself. She had chosen to make herself useful to those above her.
I gave her a brighter smile.
"Demarco," she repeated. There was a bit of hostility in her voice as she finally looked up from the screen, fixing me with a steely grey stare from behind her grubby spectacles. I didn't let my smile falter. "Come to join your parents in their blessings of power?"
"No," I said, leaning closer to her and putting my hands flat on the folding table they were using for check-ins. "I've come to surpass them."
She flinched. My smile stretched.
"Well, I hope it works out for you. Everyone here has the same goal after all. Only the best will see the end." She gave me a narrow stare before clicking a few things on her screen and handing me a small steel blade, a cracked rock, a canvas bag, and an old laminated sheet of instructions. I didn’t need any of it. My father had prepared me better than that. I took it anyway, giving her a simpering smile.
"May the wells of Imdalind follow your quest," she recited the line at the same time as the Tarn next to her. Echoes of the deadpanned greeting banged through the noise of all the Gauntlet runners lined up behind me.
“You can count on it.” My smile did not falter as she sent me on my way. I passed the security check and into the old train station that they had used for the Gauntlet since they caught the last of the Vilỳs two hundred years ago and the Queen had started the school.
My heart was an absolute hum as I ascended the steps, staring at the chipped gargoyles that flagged the massive carved doors like sentinels. The first gatekeepers toward gaining my mark.
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