My defiance left me in a huff of air, and my calf started throbbing all over again. It was over.
“I’m coming down.”
I took hold of the branch and lowered myself to the ground, keeping my weight off my right ankle as best I could, and glared at the alpha.
“Back inside,” he commanded, not breaking eye contact.
“You can’t keep me here. I haven’t done anything wrong – you’ve got no right!”
“I am the alpha, and you are an untrained shifter. I have every right.” He closed the gap between us. “You will stay here, and you will learn to control your power. And we will not have to endure any further escape attempts. Is that clear?”
He glowered down at me, cold rage pulsing from him. I swallowed, and my gaze slid away from his.
“Is. That. Clear?”
“Yes,” I muttered sullenly.
“Back to the castle. Now.”
I limped along in front of him with as much defiance as I could muster, which wasn’t much. Every cell in my body was aware of the three shifters at my back, but I squared my shoulders and refused to acknowledge them. The damned wall was shielded with some sort of magic. I should have known. We were halfway back to the castle before what that meant really sunk in.
I was stuck here.
Chapter Seven
I passed the rest of the night locked in the cell that had been my first introduction to this cursed place. I didn’t sleep. I screamed until I was hoarse, I threw myself against the bars until my whole body was bruised, I pounded the walls until my fists were bloody.
How dare they keep me here? I wanted out. I needed out. I couldn’t be here another minute… and yet the minutes slid by anyway, and I continued to rage and seethe at the sheer injustice of it. I wanted my freedom, and nothing else would sate me. I wanted my damned life back. I’d liked my life. I’d worked hard for it. It was mine.
It was hard to judge how long they left me there, but when a figure finally appeared carrying a bundle in his hands, he looked well rested. It was morning, then.
I glowered at the man from the corner of the cell, not bothering to get up as he crossed the room towards me, running his eyes over the blood smeared on the wall.
“I’m Shaun,” he said. “I’m one of the instructors here.”
I said nothing, staring at him through sullen eyes. He was older than me – in his thirties, maybe, and he had dark blond hair cut short, and a smattering of stubble covered his chiselled jawline. His smart trousers and gleaming black shoes seemed out of place in a dungeon, though he wore his shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, like he was aware of that and trying for a more casual look. His expression was sympathetic, but after last night, any questions I’d had about trusting these people were long gone.
“You’re Jade, right?”
He paused, and when I didn’t answer, he wandered back to the door, picked up the single wooden stool beside it, and re-positioned it in front of my bars. I watched from the corner of my eye as he sat on it with a heavy sigh.
“Jade, I know that you are struggling to adjust to being here.”
I picked at the last of the scabs healing on my knuckles without looking at him. I didn’t much care what he thought he knew.
“Please understand that we are trying to help you.”
“Funny sort of help.”
He nodded.
“I know it must seem that way to you.”
“It seems that way because it is that way,” I spat, lurching to my feet. “I’m locked in a damned cage. Again.”
“Alright, Jade,” he said, and assumed what must have been his tough love face. Like I hadn’t had enough of that recently. “Say the wall wasn’t warded and you got over it last night. Hell, say I walked you to the front gates right now, and let you out of them. What then?”
“Then I go back to my life.”
“The law degree? At UCL?”
I nodded, and he continued.
“It’s a good university. High standards. Lots of pressure. Lots of frustration.”
“So?”
He got up and came to the bars.
“Give me your hands.”
I eyed him for a moment, wondering what the hell his game was, but I wasn’t going to find out from here. I crossed the cell and thrust my hands through the bars. He took hold of my left wrist and inserted a key into the cuff. It fell away, clattering harmlessly to the floor. Then he removed the one on my right wrist.
I snatched my hands back inside the cell before he could change his mind, rubbing at my wrists.
“So,” he said. “You’re at university, you’re under pressure, and you’re stressed. What happens the first time someone gets your back up?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know. Forget UCL.” He looked me up and down, his forehead creased in scorn. “You’re not good enough for them, anyway.”
How dare he? I worked damned hard to get accepted at UCL, and I earned my place there. My jaws ached to sink into the vein pulsing in his throat and put an end to his bullshit. And then they just ached.
And then every part of my body ached. Then a searing agony was crushing my bones. They broke with a loud crack, and I watched in horror as my hand deformed itself, my knuckles bulging under the thickening flesh, then my nails curved into thick claws, and fur sprouted from my arms. I dropped to the floor, threw my head back and screamed in agony as the bones in my spine cracked and broke and reformed themselves into something longer, more flexible. My face changed shape, my new teeth slicing my flesh as they erupted from gums too small. My next scream was distorted by my elongated muzzle and I collapsed to the floor, writhing and twitching as my hips shattered.
And then, finally, blissfully, mercifully, I blacked out.
*
When I came to, there was not a single muscle in my body that didn’t ache, like I’d had the mother of all workout sessions. My head felt like I’d had the mother of all drinking sessions, and even my joints felt bruised and uncooperative. My eyes seemed like the only part of me that didn’t hurt, and I slowly pried them open.
I was still in the cell. And I was naked. Someone had draped a blanket over me. It was thin and itchy, but at least I hadn’t frozen to death, so that was a plus.
Someone took a breath and I jumped, clutching the blanket to my chest and peddling back across the floor until my back thumped into the cold stone wall behind me.
Shaun regarded me calmly from his stool.
It took me a moment to find my voice, and it came out as a croak.
“I… shifted?”
He nodded to something just inside the bars of my cage. A bottle of water.
“Drink. You’ll feel better.”
I very much doubted that was true, unless there was either a whole lot of alcohol mixed in with the water, or a whole lot of painkillers sitting next to it. Still, I edged over to it, keeping the blanket over me as I moved. I snatched it up, and drained half the bottle in one go, guzzling greedily until I needed to stop long enough to gasp in a breath. I set it aside and wiped my mouth. Shaun was right. That did feel better. Better enough to start thinking more clearly.
“What the hell just happened? Why did I shift?”
“Your shift is triggered by your emotions. Frustration. Anger. Rage. The cuffs were protecting you from the consequences of your emotions. For what it’s worth, I don’t doubt you’re good enough for UCL, but do you see now why you can’t return to your old life?”
“So put the damned cuffs back on! I don’t want to shift. And I don’t want to be here.”
Shaun rose from the stool and took one step forward, towering over me as I sat on the floor, glowering down at me.
“What you want doesn’t matter.” His eyes pinned me to the spot. “You’re not the same person you were a week ago. You have responsibilities now.”
I tried to force my eyes to meet his, but I couldn’t raise them higher than his chin. I gritted my tee
th and tried again, but it was like there was some invisible pressure, some compulsion that kept my eyes averted.
He squatted next to me, and the pressure eased.
“I know you didn’t ask for this, but it’s yours now, and you have to learn to control it. If you leave here before you can, then it’s not a question of if you kill someone, it’s a question of when, and it won’t be long. I will not let that happen.”
“Like you didn’t let one of your kind attack me in the first place?”
He straightened with a shake of his head.
“You’re staying here until you learn control, so start getting used to the idea.”
“Wait.” I reached out and touched the bars, my anger ebbing for a moment. Shifting hurt, but that wasn’t what scared me. “In here, here?”
“Well, that depends on you, doesn’t it?” Shaun said. “The semester starts tomorrow, but you’re not going to learn a lot down here. So you get a choice. Accept what happened to you, and make the best of it, or keep trying to run from your problems.”
My defiance fell away, and my shoulders slumped. My voice came out as a whisper.
“I can’t run from this.”
“No. You can’t. And you don’t have to. We can teach you to control it. That’s why we’re here, and it’s why you’re here.”
“Fine. Give me my clothes and let me out of here.”
“You’re sitting next to them.”
I glanced at the pile of clothes next to the bottle. A folded hoodie sat on top.
“That’s a uniform, and I am not wearing it. Where are my clothes?”
He jerked his chin at something behind me, and I twisted round, careful to keep the blanket in place. Scraps of shredded fabric were strewn all round the cell. I recognised a few strips of pale denim.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He shook his head slowly.
“Fuck’s sake.”
“If you’re going to join the other students, you might as well look like them.”
Join the other students? I rolled my head back to stare up at the ceiling of my cell, then my forehead wrinkled.
“How the hell did I get blood up there?”
“Your shifted form is quite… agile.”
“No shit.” I let out a low whistle. That ceiling had to be fifteen foot high.
“Come on, Jade,” Shaun said. “It’s decision time.”
I jerked my eyes back down to him. He was holding out two cuffs. The first, one of the set I’d been wearing since I got here. The second, a single, smaller cuff, similar to the other but lighter and only half as wide. It seemed to shimmer with the faintest green glow as it caught the dungeon’s dim lighting, so faint I was sure human eyes would never have detected it.
“Are you staying here, or joining the academy?”
I clutched the blanket in front of me and stood up. I just knew I was going to regret this. I stretched my right arm through the bars.
“Academy.”
“Good choice.”
He snapped the smaller cuff shut around my wrist and a shudder ran through me as the metal came into contact with my skin. Unlike the suppressor cuffs, it didn’t mute my senses, but I felt something almost perceptible change, like the rabid power inside me was being held in check, just enough that I could think clearly.
I stared at Shaun. He stared back. I rolled my eyes.
“Well,” I said. “Are you going to turn around so I can put this stupid uniform on, or what?”
Chapter Eight
I trudged from the cell with poor grace, smarting with every step inside my crappy new uniform. It wasn’t the clothes themselves that I had a problem with – trainers, black cargo pants, white tee, grey hoodie – but what they stood for. They meant I was staying, and a big part of me was not cool with that. A bigger part of me told that part to shut the hell up, because better a crappy uniform in a crappy room, than a crappy blanket in a crappy cell.
And better a green cuff than a silver one.
“I know it’s not easy for you, being here,” Shaun said, holding the door open for me. I stalked through it, glaring at him. That was the understatement of the damned century.
“You’ve got an attitude,” he said. “Did anyone ever tell you that?”
“Shockingly, no. Because I didn’t have one until I got here.”
“Now that I do find shocking.”
“Gee, thanks.” I shot him a sarcastic smile, then stopped at an intersection in the corridor. “Well, which way?”
“Here’s the thing, Jade,” Shaun said, squaring his shoulders and stepping in my path. He stared at me, doing that weird thing where I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I meant what I said. I want to help. But you’ve got to help yourself. And this attitude, it’s not helping.”
“Excuse me if it’s been a bit of an adjustment having my whole future wiped out.”
“That’s what you think?” He leaned back against the wall. I slumped against the wall opposite him and hung my head.
“Well, it has, hasn’t it? Do you know how hard I worked to get into UCL? It was all I ever wanted. Now look at me.”
I gestured to my crappy uniform and choked on a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“I’m looking,” Shaun said. “And what I see is a strong, independent and downright stubborn woman, who is going to get through this.”
“In a crappy uniform.”
“In a crappy uniform,” he agreed. “By the way, handy tip for the future, you’re not supposed to swear in front of the instructors.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll try to bear that in mind.”
“Most of us are pretty relaxed, but Instructor Fletcher will hold you to the rules.”
“Fletcher? Let me guess, Bitey McBiteface who brought me back in with Blake.”
A smile tugged at Shaun’s lips, and he almost slipped up and laughed.
“Yes, that would be him. And you might want to consider not calling him that to his face.”
“You’re just full of helpful advice, aren’t you?” I wrapped my arms around myself and risked a glance at him through my lashes, trying not to let hope plaster itself all over my face. “Do you really think I can do this?”
“I know you can. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s going to be rough. Pack structure is pretty heavily ingrained in these guys, and you’re going to be an outsider.”
“Well, doesn’t that just sound like a barrel of laughs?” I jerked my head away and stared at the ground. High school all over again. Just what I never wanted.
“But you’re not going to go through this on your own,” Shaun continued. “I’m going to schedule you some sessions with me, daily to start with. And you can come and find me any time you need to talk.”
“What, you’re a student counsellor now?”
“And advisor, all wrapped into one. And speaking of advice, I have some for you.”
“Yeah? And what’s that? Wait, let me guess. ‘Embrace my true nature.’”
He laughed.
“Yeah, no.” He wrinkled his nose. “Take a shower before you meet the other students.”
I sniffed myself and frowned. Ah, crap, the compost heap.
“Yeah, that’s good advice,” I admitted. He smiled to himself and carried on down the corridor. I fell in behind him. He glanced back over his shoulder at me.
“Here’s some more. Next time you try to run off – I’m not naïve, Jade, please don’t do me the disrespect of lying to me–”
I snapped my mouth shut mid-way through said lie, and he nodded.
“Next time, don’t roll in the compost heap.”
“I was covering my scent!” I protested. I’d thought it was smart. I was quite pleased with myself for thinking of it.
“Sure. And how many trails that reek of compost do you think there are leading away from the academy?”
“Oh.”
I mulled that over as we climbed a set of stone steps and left the basement.
“
So, um, what would you recommend?” I asked.
“I’d recommend not trying to break out of the academy.”
“Right. Obviously. But you know, just academically speaking…”
I trailed off as he turned round and fixed me with his gaze. A prickling started up at the back of my neck and my eyes itched to look away.
“Would you stop doing that?” I snapped, but my anger was undermined by the fact I was staring at his shoes. Again.
“I’m serious, Jade,” he said. I couldn’t see his face, but I got the feeling he was glaring at me. “You’re wearing a training cuff now. That comes with responsibilities. And if I think for one moment you’re a danger to the mundane population, then I will have to do what it takes to protect them.”
“The cage?” I asked, my voice laced with uncertainty. He shook his head, once, short and sharp.
“No.”
“Worse?”
“Depends on your definition. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure that I did, but I knew one thing. If I decided not to stick around, I was going to have to do better than compost. Shaun seemed to pick the thoughts right off my face.
“Just give it a try, okay? One semester. It’s only a few months. You might even like it here. What’ve you got to lose by finding out?”
Damn him, being all logical like that.
“Come and see me in my office tomorrow after your lessons, and we’ll contact UCL about deferring your place. Just so you’re not burning any bridges.”
He had me, and he knew it – I could see it all over his entirely-too-satisfied smile. I exhaled in a huff.
“Fine.”
“Excellent. Dorm rooms are on the second floor, second corridor on your left. Yours is the eighth door on the right.”
We parted company, and I mulled over his words as I traipsed up the staircase. It was true that I could defer my place at UCL for a while, and it was also true that it would make for a better university experience if I didn’t accidentally kill anyone. And I might not like the rules, and my lack of a choice about being here, but it did seem like Fur ‘n’ Fang was my best chance of making that happen.
Moon Bitten (Fur 'n' Fang Academy Book 1): A Shifter Academy Novel Page 5