Scent of a Wolf: Great Falls Academy, Episode 3

by Alex Lidell

Coal steps forward, his ice-filled blue eyes meeting mine. I wonder what he makes of having bedded me in the cave. Whether he regrets the entanglement now. Whether he feels anything at all. Coal’s hand reaches for my wrist.

  The roar that sounds from the back of the chamber has nothing human about it. My heart stops, the room in a momentary silence. Then Arisha, Katita, and Sage all scream in unison as a large gray wolf pounces on Coal’s chest, knocking the male away.

  17

  17. Lera

  Coal stumbles back, drawing his sword in a single motion as a new terror rushes through me. Voices rise in explanation. Katita screaming, Sage gasping, River barking orders for everyone to stay still. The amulet against my chest grows hot trying to force an explanation into my foggy mind.

  Shade left for medical supplies. The wolf rushed in just now through an open door.

  Shade’s wolf snaps his teeth, his yellow eyes flashing at Coal. Circling him. Nipping at his sword arm and ankles.

  Coal swings his steel with one precise motion, not a dull practice blade, but a razor-sharp edge aimed for Shade’s jugular.

  “No!” With a scream, I launch myself in the middle of the pair, burying my fingers in Shade’s warm fur. Beneath my hold, the animal’s sides vibrate with flesh-shuddering growls. “Don’t fight.”

  Coal’s gaze snaps toward me, penetrating my eyes as if seeking answers.

  My mouth is dry, my heart racing my breath. Shade’s wolf holds its position against my thigh, hackles raised.

  You know this wolf, I shout at Coal in my mind. Remember him. Bloody remember.

  “Fae craft.” Katita’s voice shatters the silence. “Osprey summoned a wolf to her aid.”

  “He walked through the door.” Beside Katita, Arisha’s thin voice sounds barely above a whisper. When gazes turn to her, the girl blanches but stands her ground. “The wolf wasn’t conjured. He walked through the open door. We all saw it.”

  My amulet heats, agreeing with Arisha’s words. Slowly, the others nod along despite themselves. They can’t help it. The veil tells them what to believe, and Arisha plays to the veil.

  Arisha swallows. “And he didn’t just appear. That’s Lera’s pet. Ruffle. I’ve seen him before.”

  The amulet stays cool. That fiction I made up all on my own.

  “It doesn’t matter. Only a fae would have a wolf as a pet,” Katita says, recovering her wits first. “Put him down, Master Sage.”

  “You can’t do that,” I gasp, gripping Shade’s thick gray fur desperately. Stomach bile claws at my throat, and my eyes dart around the room, looking for a single sane face. She can’t. I can’t let her.

  “I don’t think you understand how this kingdom works, Lera,” says Katita.

  “Katita is the heir to the throne,” Arisha’s voice reminds me. “She can do as she wishes.”

  My gaze flows to River, his intelligent gray eyes watching me. Watching everyone. As he always does. Watching, thinking, evaluating, carrying the weight of responsibility that would crush a lesser being. Katita may be a princess of a small kingdom, but River is the king of an immortal court.

  And River can’t do as he wishes. Never could.

  I gasp, the sudden realization slowing the world around me. I can see the room I’m in—River is tightening his brow, Sage is fingering his handkerchief, the logs are crackling in the flame—but my mind is too busy to pay attention to that. What is more powerful than the king of Slait court, so powerful that it makes the king himself bend a knee?—It is the welfare of Slait itself.

  “No,” I whisper, turning to face Katita, knowing the move I need to make. My one move. “No, I do understand how your kingdom works, Your Highness. Which is why you can’t turn me over to the magistrate. Or Arisha. Or Tye. Not without announcing to the whole Continental Alliance that Ckridel has been compromised by magic. That the very Academy they’ve sent their children to has been under siege from those hog beasts for weeks, and your officers kept it quiet.”

  Letting go of Shade, I step toward Katita, my voice becoming more powerful with each word.

  “Men and women around the continent have been tortured and executed for charges so frivolous that it makes the evidence you laid out today a case for the newsleafs. But that’s the problem, Katita. There is no magic breach in all those other places. No magical blight. No hog beasts. Just accusations of ‘fae craft’ levied against people who’ve never seen magic. But here, in your kingdom, in your famed Academy that’s stood for two hundred years, there is true danger. Enough of it that if the alliance learns your secret, Ckridel may find itself all alone. So, here is what you are going to do, Katita of Ckridel, heir to King Zenith’s throne: you will get on your knees and beg everyone in this room to keep that secret.”

  Katita’s face has gone white. I know through my bones that she has never been given such an order in her life. The danger of what I’m doing thuds in my temples, but I hold my ground.

  Katita’s nostrils flare, her good hand opening and closing at her side. Wide teal eyes study me, the pure hatred in them tempered only by dawning comprehension.

  I take another step closer. “And after that, Your Highness,” I say, my voice ringing through the room, “you will beg that we continue pooling our swords and our minds and our research to work out how to pull your kingdom out of this blight. Because those drawings and theories are all we have standing between the mortal lands and disaster.”

  The last is not true. The mortal realm has more than drawing and theories. The mortal realm has me.

  18

  18. Coal

  “And did she?” Shade asked Coal, his soft voice riding under the din of dining hall conversation. “Did Katita get on her knees?”

  The clink of silverware on china echoed delicately around the great tapestry-lined dining hall, the crystal chandeliers overhead scattering candlelight on all the finely dressed diners below.

  “Yes.” Coal dug his fork into a slice of roasted pig. He tasted none of it—though that didn’t stop him from eating every bite—which he was focused on now with more industry than the task required. No matter how he angled his chair, he could not help seeing Lera at the other end of the hall, her red dress as bright as the fire glowing inside her. It was strapless, tightly hugging her breasts and torso, then flowing down from her waist in textured waves of silky crimson. She was eating. Talking. Smiling at Arisha as if she had no concept of what that dress was doing to every male in the dining hall—and, knowing her, she probably didn’t. The dress, the creamy shoulders and clavicle, her fiery hair, the shadowed V of her breasts, inviting the eye lower and lower. It was enough to make a man mad.

  But Lera didn’t notice. She was moving on with life, doing all the normal things Coal found near impossible after the morning’s near horror.

  Coal still didn’t know what he would have done had a bloody wolf not walked into Sage’s chamber just when the headmaster ordered Coal to seize Lera. How far he’d have let things get before breaking the girl out, no matter what it took. Coal wanted to think it was because no one deserved to fall victim to the fae hunts plaguing the continent, but he knew it was more than that. Coal hadn’t been worried or concerned as Princess Katita laid out her deadly accusations—he’d been terrified down to his core.

  “Leralynn. Stars,” Shade said softly, shaking his head. “I’ve little notion what just might come into that girl’s mind next. And speaking of Katita—her wrist really is broken. Don’t let her push it.”

  Coal nodded, paused, then schooled his voice to a quiet nonchalance. “When you left to get supplies for a splint, where did you go?”

  Shade shifted, his golden eyes carefully impassive. “The infirmary.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Coal snatched Shade’s wrist before the man could move away. “I went looking for you afterward, and no one had seen you there. You might have gone to the infirmary, but that’s not where you ended up.” Coal paused at a slight tic in Shade’s jaw. For a moment, they locked gazes, their silence fil
led with the sounds of an oblivious dining hall. Then Coal slowly released Shade’s wrist, leaning away from the higher-ranking officer. “You’ve a bloody big problem, Shade. Let me help you.”

  Leaning forward into the space Coal just vacated, Shade bared his teeth. “I will tell you what losing time is like, right after you lay out the details of being held captive. Unless you want to put that on the table, stay out of my business.”

  Coal kept the man’s gaze, letting silence trickle between them.

  “Is everything all right?” River asked, his approach bringing Coal and Shade to their feet. Setting down his plate, the commander frowned. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Not at all, sir,” said Shade. “Coal was filling me in on what happened at the tribunal. It appears I left just before things turned interesting,” said Shade.

  “I think you should move Leralynn off my training team,” Coal said, turning to River. “After what happened a few days ago, it would be better to put some distance between us.”

  “Agreed.” River’s brisk reply stung despite being right. Sighing, River lowered his fork without having taken a bite and brushed a hand through his short brown hair—his only tell of turmoil within. “Except I can’t. That girl brought a princess to her knees this morning, defied me in the middle of the infirmary four days ago, and—if the rumors I’m hearing are correct—started a fight with three royals twice her size yesterday in an effort to protect Rabbit. I’ve no one else who can handle her, Coal. The girl has a point about making use of her magical knowledge, but she is a cadet. A fact that she—and we—need to remember very plainly.”

  Coal’s stomach clenched. Everything River had said about Lera was true—painfully true—except for one thing. Coal was not the right person to handle her. Not when just the scent of her threw his mind and body into chaos, brought up memories that he barely recognized as his. But how could he say one word of this to River without digging himself into an even deeper hole?

  River watched him, waiting for a response. Then something shifted in the commander’s eyes as he studied Coal’s face, probably seeing far more than Coal intended. “I am sorry, Coal,” River said.

  Coal shrugged.

  “What about the wolf?” Shade asked. “We can’t have a wild animal roaming the Academy.”

  “You’d need to catch him first.” Coal turned to his food. He was the only one eating. “I saw the beast before. He’d been with Leralynn when she got away from me on our run. Came and left. Like today. Arisha is right, the animal isn’t—quite—wild.”

  “And how many cadets do you propose we let him maul before we give him that distinction?” Shade asked.

  “Do you truly want an answer?” asked Coal.

  “This day just keeps getting better.” Pushing his plate away, River tipped his head toward the sound of the Academy bell and rose. “I need to go talk Sage down from having an apoplexy after this morning,” he said, rebuttoning his crisp dinner jacket. Placing both hands on the table, River lowered his voice to hard command. “In case I wasn’t clear before—I want Lera under close watch, lest she graduates herself from protector of wolves, children, and instructors to a one-woman force guarding us from the immortal world.”

 

  Continue the GREAT FALLS ACADEMY adventure with episode 4, Clock Strikes Midnight

  Reviews are a book’s lifeblood. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider saying a few words about it on Amazon. Even a single sentence helps a lot!

  Also by Alex Lidell

  New Adult Fantasy Romance

  POWER OF FIVE (Reverse Harem Fantasy)

  POWER OF FIVE

  MISTAKE OF MAGIC

  TRIAL OF THREE

  LERA OF LUNOS

  GREAT FALLS ACADEMY (Power of Five world)

  RULES OF STONE

  CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

  SCENT OF A WOLF

  CLOCK STRIKES MIDNIGHT

  Young Adult Fantasy Novels

  TIDES

  FIRST COMMAND (Prequel Novella)

  AIR AND ASH

  WAR AND WIND

  SEA AND SAND

  SCOUT

  TRACING SHADOWS

  UNRAVELING DARKNESS

  TILDOR

  THE CADET OF TILDOR

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  About the Author

  Alex Lidell is an Amazon KU All Star Top 50 Author Awards winner (July, 2018). Her debut novel, THE CADET OF TILDOR (Penguin, 2013) was an Amazon Breakout Novel Awards finalist. Her Reverse Harem romances, POWER OF FIVE and MISTAKE OF MAGIC, both received Amazon KU Top 100 awards for individual titles.

  Alex is an avid horseback rider, a (bad) hockey player, and an ice-cream addict. Born in Russia, Alex learned English in elementary school, where a thoughtful librarian placed a copy of Tamora Pierce’s ALANNA in Alex’s hands. In addition to becoming the first English book Alex read for fun, ALANNA started Alex’s life long love for fantasy books. Alex lives in Washington, DC.

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