“Oh.” He shook his head. “Rarely. You were just lucky.”
“Lucky. Right.” Then I remembered the pure malice in the dog’s eyes, and a shudder ran the length of my spine. He was right. If he hadn’t turned up when he did, I’d have been dog chow. “What the hell sort of idiot keeps dogs like that, anyway?”
“Sorry?” He cocked his head at me.
“Those dogs, last night. I grew up round here, and I never saw a dog like that before. Those things were massive. Dogs don’t get that big. Or aggressive.”
He frowned at me, setting down his fork.
“You must’ve hit your head pretty bad last night. That was just a normal dog. A husky, or something. Maybe I should have taken you to the hospital. You might have a concussion.”
“So you’re saying it wasn’t the size of a small pony? And there wasn’t a whole pack of them?”
He chuckled.
“The size of a pony? No. It was just a dog. A mean one, but just a dog. One dog.”
Right. Just a dog. I mean, it couldn’t have been a pack of pony-sized dogs. This was surrey, not Forks. Dogs didn’t grow that big, and they didn’t roam in feral packs. Maybe I really did have a concussion. I frowned and rubbed the lump on my head.
“Okay,” I said eventually, with a slight nod. “One dog. You’re right. Did you get it?”
“Nope. Couldn’t leave you. It ran off. I called the animal warden this morning. They’re going to keep an eye out.”
Great. That was the last thing I needed. An aggressive dog running loose on the farm.
“Do you have anyone who can come stay with you?” he asked. “Any family?”
“It’s just me. This place belongs to my uncle, but he’s in a nursing home.” And clearly had no idea what had happened to his beloved farm in the few years he’d been there. I looked at him sharply, and added, “He said I could stay here.”
“Alright, calm down,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “No-one’s saying you shouldn’t be here. I just don’t think you should be alone, in case you do have that concussion. There’s no-one else? Parents? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”
“I’m into guys, thank you. And no. My Mum moved abroad a couple of weeks ago, and I left everything behind to come out here to study.”
“Okay, it’s settled, then. I’ll stay the night.”
“No, honestly, it’s fine,” I protested. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking, I’m offering. And I could never live with myself if something happened to you when I could have prevented it. I’ll even help you get this placed cleaned up a bit, get a new lock fitted on that door for you.”
I paused at that, because truth be told, you could write everything I knew about DIY on the back of a postcard, and still have room for a ‘wish you were here.’
“Are you sure?”
“You bet. Why don’t you go take a shower, and I’ll head into town and grab what we need to fix the door?”
“Uh, yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.”
He drained the rest of his mug, then headed for the door. When he got there, he paused and turned back, pulling a scrap of paper from an old corkboard near the door. He flipped it over and scribbled on it with a dust covered pencil.
“My mobile number,” he said, pinning it back on the board. “In case you start to feel dizzy again. There are some painkillers in the drawer, looks like they’re still in date.”
“Thanks,” I said again, as he headed out.
I found the paracetamol, double checked the date, then washed a pair of them down with the remains of my coffee. They started to kick in by the time I was out of the shower, and the sharp pain in my leg faded to a dull throbbing ache. My eyelids were getting heavy again, so I decided to forgo sitting in the dirty kitchen in favour of heading back into the musty old bedroom. Sleeping was a no-go with a concussion, but there was no rule against being comfortable, right?
My eyes flew open with a start, and Caleb was leaning over me, the back of his hand pressed to my forehead.
“Shh,” he said, moving his hand. “You’re fine. You remember what happened?”
I nodded my head against the pillow.
“Dog attack,” I mumbled.
“That’s right. Get some more rest. I’ll be outside if you need me.”
He woke me up four more times throughout the afternoon, once to bring me food, but the smell made my stomach roil and I told him to take it away. The last time he woke me, my leg was burning and I could feel sweat breaking out over my body.
“Hospital?” I croaked, but he pressed his hand to my forehead again and shook his head.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “If you don’t get any better.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue. Just that one word had exhausted me. I sank further into the bed and waited for sleep to take me again.
Suddenly, pain erupted all over my body at once, like something was crushing and tearing the life from me.
I twisted, trying to escape it, but every movement seemed to make it worse. My back arched and my head rolled back, and a howl of pure agony ripped from my throat.
The first of many.
Chapter Three
My eyes opened of their own accord, letting the painful light in to sear my pupils. I squeezed them shut again, so that the only pain was the dull ache in every muscle and every joint. Then the image I’d seen filtered through to my brain, and my eyes flew open again.
“Where the hell am I?”
I wasn’t in the farmhouse anymore. I knew that, because no part of the farmhouse was a freaking dungeon.
I leapt up from the stone floor, my movement hampered by the metal cuffs around my wrists – cuffs? – joined by a short chain, and raced the half-dozen steps it took me to reach the row of vertical bars that separated me from the rest of the barren room. The room was lit with only a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, casting a flickering yellow light that filled every corner of the room with deep shadows. The stonewalls looked ancient but sturdy, and there were no windows, no furniture. I gripped the bars with my shackled hands, a sob of terror slipping from my lips.
One of the shadows moved, detaching itself from the far wall. I gasped and backed away, and the figure came to a halt under the light.
“Caleb! What’s going on? Let me out of here.”
“It’s for your own safety, Jade,” he said, and slid a phone from his pocket. “Yeah, she’s awake.”
“Who are you talking to? What am I doing here?” I rattled the cage door in frustration, but it didn’t budge.
“Try to relax. He’ll explain everything.”
“Relax? Are you insane? And he, who? Explain what?”
I growled in frustration and rattled the door again.
“Let me out of here, you freak, or I’m calling the cops.”
“Good luck with that,” he said, as I groped for my phone and found it missing. “Trust me, this is for the best.”
“Trust you? I’m locked in a cage, you psycho.”
“Now, now, Ms Hart,” a low, gravelly voice said, as a wooden door at the far side of the room swung open, and a lone figure stepped through. “There’s no need for name calling. This truly is in your own best interest.”
“And who the hell are you supposed to be?” I snapped, looking him up and down. He was somewhere in his forties, or maybe a little older, with streaks of grey running through his short hair, and a few lines starting to set in his face. His body was lean and muscular, and clothed in jeans and a loose-fitting shirt, with a white tee under it. He shut the door behind him, and came to the front of the cage, just beyond arm’s length.
“My name is Blake.”
“Well, Blake, if you don’t let me out of here right now, my family are going to realise I’m gone and call the cops.”
Blake glanced over at Caleb and raised an eyebrow. Caleb answered with a shake of his head.
“No-one’s waiting for her. She lives alone. Her family are abroa
d.”
I shot him a furious glare, fear carving through my gut. All that stuff he’d asked me yesterday. He’d been planning this. I was such a damned idiot, I should have called the cops the moment he showed up with a loaded gun!
Blake cleared his throat, and I snapped my jaw shut, redirecting my glare onto him.
“I am a shapeshifter,” he said. “And now, you are too.”
“Uh, yeah. Of course you are. I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.” I turned to Caleb. “Let me go. Please? I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”
“You are a shapeshifter,” Blake repeated. “A werewolf, to be precise. When you were attacked the night before last, you were bitten. Turned.”
“No,” I said, my eyes flicking between the two madmen. “It was a dog. Just a dog.”
Caleb shook his head.
“No,” he said, his voice pretty damned calm for a man who broke into a woman’s home and dragged her off to some underground dungeon. “That was a werewolf. Werewolves. Plural. The rest of my pack went after the wolf who attacked you.”
“Right. Of course. There’s a pack of werewolves roaming round my uncle’s farm. Because that makes perfect sense. Tell you what, let me go, and I won’t tell the vampires where to find you.”
Blake stiffened.
“Vampires are not something to joke about, Ms Hart. Had you spent much time in our world, you would know that. Tell me, how much do you remember about last night?”
I paused.
“Last night?”
I lifted one hand to run it through my hair, but the shackles pulled me up short. My stomach fluttered. I remembered pain, I remembered every part of my body hurting… like bones were snapping. A flash of memory: dark fur, snapping teeth, the feel of flesh between my fangs.
I shook my head and ground my teeth together. That. Wasn’t. Real.
“Concussion,” I said. “I had a concussion. I was seeing things.”
Another flash: a second wolf, inside the farmhouse, between me and the door.
“How’s your leg, Jade?” Caleb asked, eyeing my right calf.
“It’s fine,” I snapped back.
…But it shouldn’t have been. I was bitten two days ago, but it didn’t hurt. At all. I frowned down at it, then rolled up the denim leg of my jeans – noting as I did that I was wearing a fresh pair. The wound had faded to a puckered scar.
“Shifters have accelerated healing,” Blake said.
“I…”
I didn’t know what to say. What to think.
“Werewolves aren’t real!”
Blake turned to Caleb and inclined his head. Caleb pulled his t-shirt over his head, then kicked off his shoes and started unbuttoning his jeans.
“What are you doing?”
“Proving you wrong,” Caleb said, and kicked his jeans aside, standing nearly naked in front of me. Any other day of the week, I might have taken the time to enjoy the view, but right now, I had other things on my mind.
“Don’t you need a full moon?” I looked up at where sun would be shining if I wasn’t trapped underground, and smirked.
“Myth,” Caleb said.
“Of course. Full moons are a myth, but werewolves aren’t.”
I started to cross my arms, but the chain on the cuffs pulled me up short. I exhaled sharply and dropped my hands to hang down in front of me.
“I apologise for the discomfort,” Blake said. “I will have the cuffs removed as soon as possible. We had no way to predict how you would react.”
Right now, I wanted to react by ripping his damned throat out, but he was out of reach, so I said nothing, shifting my weight from one leg to the other, and watching Caleb warily.
It happened so quickly that if I’d blinked, I would have missed it. One moment he was standing there, near-naked and decidedly human, albeit with a little more chest hair than I like. The next, with a snarl and a snap of his jaws, he was on four legs, shaking out a thick fur coat. His face was canine – no, not canine. Lupine. The face of a wolf. The body of one, too – only more like a wolf on steroids. Muscle clung to his frame in thick slabs, not quite hidden under his fur, and the proportions weren’t quite right. His shoulders were too broad, his jaws too wide, his legs too powerful. And he was the size of a damned pony – even bigger than the wolf at the farmhouse. Wolves. I hadn’t imagined the others.
He slunk towards me and I staggered back until I thudded into the stone wall at the back of my cell. I raised my shackled hands, but he stopped in front of the bars, and dropped back onto his haunches, sitting.
I sucked in a breath, tried to speak, choked on air, and then tried again.
“You– You’re… a werewolf.”
I sagged against the wall and stared up at the ceiling.
“What the hell have I gotten myself into?”
“Caleb,” Blake said, watching me closely. “That’s enough.”
The wolf slunk away to the corner of the room, where the pile of clothes lay discarded. There was another snarl and a series of loud cracks that sounded a lot like the time I’d fallen from a tree as a kid and snapped my arm, and then Caleb was standing there with his back to me, fully human again. I didn’t even notice his well-toned arse – much – as he stooped to grab his jeans and tugged them on.
“Okay,” I said, trying to arrange my body so I looked more like I was leaning casually against the wall, and less like I was cowering against it, wishing the ground beneath me would open up and swallow me. “Okay. I’m… I’m a… werewolf.”
I blew air through pursed lips and nodded. That word had a funny taste to it, especially when it was preceded by the words ‘I’m a’. I was a werewolf. This was not how I had envisioned my summer going.
“Yes,” Blake said. I hadn’t been asking, but whatever. I was too freaked out right now to give him any backchat.
“I can turn into a giant dog.”
“Wolf.”
“Right. Well, that’s lovely. If you can just open the door and take these off–” I rattled my chains at him, “–I’ll be on my way.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”
Why, oh why did I know he was going to say that? I made to cross my arms again, remembered I couldn’t, and settled for glaring at him.
“Oh? And why not? Is this where you tell me I have to join your pack?”
Caleb snorted.
“Jade, trust me, you’re not even close to ready to run with my pack.”
“Trust you?” I lifted my chin. “It’ll be a cold day in hell when that happens, trust me.”
“Hold your tongues, both of you,” Blake said, sending a sharp look in Caleb’s direction. The younger man held his hands up and grinned.
“No offence meant, pup,” he said. “It’s just going to take you a while, is all.”
“Pup?” I all but snarled. “Come over here and call me that.”
“She’s feisty,” Caleb said to Blake. “Have fun training her. If you’re done with me, I need to report in with the alpha pack.”
“Of course,” Blake said, dipping his chin. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“Wait, you’re leaving me?” I pushed myself off the wall and all my cockiness fell away. “Here?”
“You’ll be fine,” Caleb said. “The worst part’s over. I’ve got to go track down the wolf that did this to you.”
He slipped out of the door, leaving with me with a dozen unanswered questions. I gnawed at my lower lip a moment, trying to decide which to ask first. What slipped out of my mouth, in a tiny voice, wasn’t even one of the questions I’d been considering.
“Is there no cure?”
“There is no cure, Ms Hart,” Blake said stiffly, “because lycanthropy is not a disease.”
“Really? Because I didn’t have it until two days ago, when one of you bit me. So forgive me for thinking otherwise.”
“What happened to you was a grievous crime, and I promise you, the wolf who attacked you will be caught and brought to justice.”
“For all the good that’s going to do me,” I muttered.
“Quite,” Blake agreed. “You are what you are, and nothing can change that now. In time, you may come to see this as a blessing.”
“Yeah, right. I’m more likely to turn into a donkey.”
Blake raised an eyebrow at me.
“Oh, sorry, am I interrupting your big speech?” I swept a manacled hand at him. “Please, by all means, continue.”
“Your temper will not be an asset. You have difficult times ahead of you. But with discipline, patience, and determination, you will overcome these trials, as others before you have, and as others who follow shall.”
“Wait. I thought biting me was some sort of crime.”
“It is,” Blake said. “To bite a mundane is against our highest laws.”
I put aside the less than flattering term – now who was name calling? – and cocked my head.
“Then why are there so many others? Why will there be more?”
“Ah. Of course. Forgive me. I am not used to explaining our ways to one from the outside world. Being bitten is one way to become a shifter, though it is highly illegal, and almost unheard of. Most of us are born to this life. Lycanthropy goes back more generations in my bloodline than anyone can count. Many of the others who attend this academy can say the same.”
“What… academy?” I asked.
Blake smiled and inclined his head.
“Ms Hart, welcome to the Sarrenauth Academy of Therianthropy.”
Chapter Four
“Um, yeah, that’s real nice and all, but I already have an academy to attend. It’s a little place called University College London – you might have heard of it.”
“I’m sorry, Ms Hart–”
“Stop with all this ‘Ms Hart’ crap. It’s Jade.”
“Jade–”
“And you can let me out of here right now, so I can get back to my nice, normal life, and deal with whatever crap your friend dumped on me.”
“That’s not possible. What has happened to you cannot be undone–”
“Yeah, you said.”
“–and there will be an adjustment period. In that time, it is likely you will have very little control. You will be a danger to those around you. I’m afraid there is no question of you leaving.”
Moon Bitten (Fur 'n' Fang Academy Book 1): A Shifter Academy Novel Page 2