“We’ll see,” she said. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?”
“Be my guest,” Dean said, rolling his eyes.
I looked to Mei.
“I don’t mind going first, if you want,” she said. I nodded my thanks. My stomach was churning. The memory of my agonising change in the dungeon was all too vivid in my mind. If the cornerstones of control were discipline, patience and determination, then I definitely needed a moment to compose myself.
“Right,” Brendon said. “Everyone through the door at the back of the room, please.”
I pivoted round in my seat. Set into the back wall was a solid-looking wooden door, with large metal hinges attaching it to the stonework, and a heavy ring for a handle. It reminded me a lot of the door to the dungeon, in all the wrong ways.
Get a grip, Jade. It’s just a door.
The rest of the students were already on their feet, so I tagged along behind them as they filtered into the room. This room was much bigger than the one we’d come from – and far more menacing.
Set into the wall on my left and right were a dozen cages, each fronted with a row of bars that ran from floor to ceiling. I could smell the distinctive tang of silver, and as I got closer, I could see arcane symbols etched into the bars, not unlike the ones from the cell in the dungeon.
I suppose it had been naïve of me to think we might learn about controlling our shifted forms in a nice, calm way. They were expecting us to lose control, and judging from the claw marks gouged into the solid stone flooring, plenty of others had before us.
Heavy locks were set into each cage’s door, and I suppressed a shudder, reminding myself that it was a good thing that none of us would be able to break out while we were in our shifted forms. No-one needed a pack of feral wolves rampaging through the castle.
The rest of the room was in stark contrast to the nefarious cages – clean, spacious and airy, with light streaming in through several large windows – though I could pick out the flecks of silver in the bars covering them from here. I was getting good at recognising even trace amounts of what was rapidly becoming my least favourite metal.
“Those who are working first, please find yourselves a cage. I will come round and lock your doors. No-one is to begin their shift until I say so. Those of you observing, collect a clipboard and stopwatch from the desk and sit opposite your partners.”
There was a flurry of movement as half the students stepped into cages, and the rest of us headed to the front of the room to pick up stopwatches, clipboards, and pens.
I grabbed a chair and dragged it over to the cage Mei had chosen, while Brendon started working his way round, locking students inside. The cage was maybe eight foot wide and six deep, and in the middle of it the Chinese girl stood looking completely relaxed – except for the way she kept hooking and unhooking her hair from behind one ear.
“Hey, you okay?” I asked. She nodded.
“Fine. I… I’ve only shifted twice. Neither time on purpose.”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a bit relieved to discover I wasn’t the only one who was shitting themselves at the prospect of trying to change forms on demand. But of course I didn’t tell her that.
“You can do it, Mei.”
She nodded again, a curt, sharp motion.
“Yes. I must.”
“Observers,” Brendon said, as he passed in front of me and locked Mei’s cage, then rattled it to double check, “your job is to record your partner’s shift. You will complete the form you each have in front of you, detailing how long each part of their shift takes, any difficulties they run into, and any other observations you make.”
He gave Mei’s cage door one more rattle – he was thorough, I had to give him that – then moved on to the next cage.
Mei removed her trainers from her feet, then pulled her hoodie over her head, folded it neatly and set it in one corner of the cage. Then she grabbed the hem of her t-shirt.
“Mei, what are you doing?” I hissed.
“The same as everyone else,” she said with a shrug. “If we don’t remove our clothes, they’ll be destroyed.”
I blinked and swept my eyes round the room. She was right – everyone inside a cage was starting to get undressed. I twisted back round to her, trying to not get an eyeful of what anyone had been hiding under their clothes. Especially the fit Scottish guy in the end cage. I remained convinced that one look at him would ruin me for life. These people had weird standards when it came to nudity.
Mei was watching me, her eyes sparkling with amusement.
“What?” I said, my voice tinged with a hint of irritation. “It’s not like I’ve had my whole life to get used to this. Anyway, it’s a mixed sex class. This is crazy.”
“Crazier than turning into an animal?”
Well, she had me there.
“Besides,” she said, as she pulled off her t-shirt and folded it, “everyone’s going to be too busy worrying about their own problems to be looking at each other.”
If she’d gone to the same high school as I had, I didn’t think she’d be quite so confident on that point. She set her t-shirt on top of her hoodie.
“Don’t worry, look – there are privacy curtains.”
I followed the direction of her eyes and realised she was right. Pushed up against one wall was a heavy curtain I hadn’t noticed – on account of my attention being diverted by the dozen individual cells in what would otherwise have been a nice room – and its runner along the ceiling divided the room in two. As I watched, Brendon grabbed the curtain and pulled it the length of the room, so that I could no longer see any of the students behind us – and none of them could see Mei. I was the only one who could see her, and because of the depth of the cages, I couldn’t see the people in the cages on either side of me. I still didn’t like it, but at least no-one was going to be getting an eyeful.
She wriggled out of her trousers and I dropped my gaze to the floor. I’d never been a communal locker room sort of girl, and the fact that I had a tendency to sprout fangs and claws when I got angry wasn’t about to change that.
The sound of Mei’s laughter made me frown.
“If you don’t look at me, how are you going to take notes on my shift?”
Oh, right. I blushed and lifted my eyes, trying to see her without seeing her. I was starting to understand why Madison had wanted to pair up with Dean – I bet she was flaunting herself at him. Poor bastard. Well, he couldn’t say I hadn’t warned him about the whole seduction thing. There’s no way someone gets that bitchy about her ex’s friends unless she’s jealous.
“Okay everyone, prepare to shift.”
Mei settled herself on the floor, sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed. I positioned my thumb over the button on the stopwatch, then looked down at my sheet. Under ‘position’ I ticked ‘lotus’, mildly amused to see the list also included mountain, bound ankle, plank, and corpse, all next to little diagrams of the positions. They did not seem likely positions to prepare yourself to shift. Seemed to me like Mei had picked the only logical one.
“Begin.”
Nothing happened. There wasn’t a sound throughout the entire room. I glanced over my shoulder to see if anyone was having any more luck than Mei, but of course the curtain blocked my view. It sure didn’t sound like anyone was shifting, though.
Several minutes passed with no sign of any movement from Mei, and I doodled on the edge of the sheet. Who knew shifter training was going to be so boring?
I was on the verge of drifting off, pen dangling lazily from my hand, when a scream of pain ripped through the air from somewhere behind me. I spun round, but I could see nothing through the curtain. At least someone was having some success.
“Come on, you can do it.” I recognised Dean’s voice, and my hand twitched in irritation. It figured that Madison would be the first one to get anywhere. There would be no stopping her gloating after this. But at least for now I could listen to the sounds of her pain.
Nope. It d
idn’t matter how much I hated her, I just couldn’t quite convince myself I was enjoying that. Why the hell would anyone choose to put themselves through this? If any of them had an ounce of sense, they’d just get fitted with cuffs permanently, and be done with the whole painful business.
A gasp rent the air in front of me and my eyes snapped back to Mei. Her head was flung back and her back arched. Trembles ran through her entire body, and her face was twisted with pain. Her hands curled into fists, and as I watched, their edges blurred. Then the skin rippled, and the knuckles under it moved, cracking and reforming. Her fingers splayed wide, and each became wider, and curved, and fur broke through the skin on the back of her hands.
One of her shoulders twisted, like some unseen force had dislocated it, and she cried out in pain, then snapped her jaw shut again. The same unseen force rocked her forwards so that she was on all fours, and her tail bone elongated and flexed into a long, lean tail.
Belatedly, I remembered my clipboard and jotted down a half dozen notes, my pen scratching across the paper as I described the process, marking down what changed first, which parts seemed to take longer to reform in their new shapes, and which caused her to shake with pain.
And then I stopped, my pen freezing mid-word. Her legs were long and lean, her fur close cropped, and her snout short. I wasn’t looking at the form of a wolf. Mei was a leopard.
She locked eyes with me through the bars and snarled, then paced the small space with an easy, feline grace, lashing her tail as she moved. I stared at her, my mouth hanging slightly agape. I mean, I know Dean had said there were one or two students who weren’t wolves, but… And then Madison’s comments made sense. She didn’t hate Mei because she wasn’t the same race. She hated her because she wasn’t the same species.
The leopard snarled again and swiped at the air with one claw. The cuff glinted in the sunlight, now much wider than it had been, still sitting snug against the animal’s leg.
“Mei… Mei?” I whispered, leaning forward in my seat. Her head whipped round, and she stared at me through amber eyes. She understood me. Or at least, I thought she did, but I didn’t know how in control of herself she was right now.
“Excellent work,” a voice said from beside me.
I yelped in surprise and almost fell right out of my seat. I hadn’t heard Brandon approach.
“Let’s get you changed back.”
There was a baton of some sort hanging from his belt, and he unhooked it then flicked it out, doubling its length, and fed it through the bars. Mei lashed out at it, but the baton just flexed under the blow. With deft hands, Brandon pressed the end of the baton to the gleaming cuff, and a shudder ran the length of Mei’s entire body.
Her outline blurred again, and the hair along her body became sparser. She snarled in pain, and her body shrank, getting closer to its former size. No wonder they made everyone wear these cuffs. It wasn’t just about taking the edge off our feral power. One touch from that baton and we returned to our human form. I wondered if all the instructors carried them. And I wondered if I could get hold of one.
“Alright everyone,” Brandon said, moving away. “Once your partners are back in their human forms, you can collect the cage keys from the front and switch places with them. Don’t worry if you haven’t managed to shift, there’s plenty of time to get the hang of it.”
I headed up to the front and grabbed the key marked ‘cage nine’, and by the time I got back to Mei, she was fully clothed.
“Nice work,” I said, unlocking her cage. “You totally nailed it. Didn’t scream like a little bitch either, like some people round here.”
I cast a glance in the general direction of Madison, and Mei’s lips curled into a tired smile.
“By the way, your shifted form is badass. Way cooler than a wolf.”
The smile dropped from her lips and her face darkened.
“Uh… isn’t it?” I asked, this time uncertain. Because if my shifted form looked half as cool as hers, I might not hate it quite so much. Mei cocked her head at me.
“What am I missing?” I asked, as I pulled the door open. Because, as always, it was evident that I was missing something.
“Most wolves despise other types of shifter,” she said, slipping out. “Or at best, tolerate them. The packs do not welcome other species.”
“Ah. Well, I don’t have a pack,” I said. “So there’s that.”
“You’re stalling,” she said, holding the door wide for me. Crap.
“Alright,” I said, slinking inside. “Here goes nothing.”
Chapter Eleven
Nothing, it turned out, was exactly what happened. The class finished for lunch, and I hadn’t managed even a hint of a shift. My only consolation was that I wasn’t the only one – about a quarter of the class hadn’t managed it, either.
Of course, Madison and her two besties were firmly in the category of those who achieved a shift, as was Dean, and she still had her arm wrapped around his waist as we left the lecture room. He delicately disentangled himself, and she pouted as he joined me and Mei on our way to the main hall for lunch. It turned out even my non-shift had given me an appetite. Honestly, I was just amazed that being in the same room as Madison for three damned hours hadn’t put me off food for life. The way she flaunted herself at Dean was enough to turn anyone’s stomach. Which was weird, because when he spoke about her yesterday, I got the impression that she was the one who broke things off. Maybe she’d had a change of heart. Maybe she just couldn’t handle the fact that he wasn’t pining after her. Whatever the reason, if I ever went panting after a guy like that, I hoped someone would do the decent thing and put me down. Like, eugh, where was her self-respect?
And then we reached the main hall, and all thoughts of anything other than food left my head. Feeding several hundred hungry shifters was no mean feat, but from the way it smelled in here, Mickey had it in hand. The queue was about twenty deep, and no-one had started fighting – yet. With all the students back at the academy, it seemed like there’d be no more table service, and no more unlimited menu. There was a board on the wall, detailing the three lunch choices on offer, one of which, of course, was steak. Seemed like it was a staple round here – not that I was complaining. Mickey made the best damned steak I’d ever tasted. I edged further along the queue, eyeing the number of people between me and food. They better not run out of the good stuff before I got there.
The three of us finally made it to the front, grabbed our food – Mickey hadn’t run short – and headed for one of the long wooden tables set out around the hall. I sunk into my seat with a groan, rolling out my shoulders and stretching my spine.
“That was brutal,” I groaned. “I can’t believe we have three hours of that every day.”
“What did you think you were going to learn at a shifter academy?” Dean asked, his lips curving into a smirk.
“I don’t know,” I said, carving my steak with more vigour than strictly necessary. “I hadn’t really thought about it, seeing as how I never planned to come here.”
“Right,” Mei said. “You were going to be a lawyer, right?”
“Am going to be a lawyer,” I corrected her. “Just as soon as I get rid of this.”
I waved my manacled wrist. A tingle on the back of my neck warned me that someone was standing behind me a split second before Madison’s irritating whine hit my ears.
“Well, I think you should just go.”
I eyed at her, waiting for the other shoe to drop, because in my admittedly limited experience, she wasn’t the encouraging, pep-talk type. She pulled out a chair next to Dean without bothering to ask, and Tiffany and Victoria sat with her.
“I’m not even convinced you are a shifter,” she said. Ah, there it was. I took a careful sip of my cola and said nothing.
“I mean, you don’t smell like a shifter. And you don’t move like a shifter. And you can’t shift.”
“Along with a quarter of the class,” Mei said, levelling a cutting glar
e at the blonde.
“Who asked your opinion, feline?”
“Give it a rest, Madison,” Dean said, about a half second before I could thump her.
“Sure, Dean,” she said sweetly, and turned a dazzling smile on him. Damn, her mood swings were giving me whiplash. “Let’s talk about something else. Did you hear my father was given a commendation by the Alpha of Alphas? That makes my pack the fifth most powerful in the country now.”
“Alpha of Alphas?” I asked, pausing with a piece of steak halfway to my mouth. Madison wrinkled her nose at me, and I took a moment to enjoy the mental image of it smeared across her face.
“Well, of course a common cur wouldn’t know anything about the Alpha of Alphas. It’s not as if someone like you has any cause to move in such circles. I mean, you don’t even have an alpha, do you?”
“I think we’ve established that I don’t,” I ground out, and then forced a smile. I’m not going to lie, holding that image of her nose went a long way to helping. “But I guess that just means I don’t have to whore myself to try to further my pack.”
Her jaw ground together so tightly I could hear it. She clenched her hand around the fork she was holding, and the metal crumpled in her grip.
“How dare you speak to me like that? Me?”
“Well, I guess being a lowly cur, I’ve got nothing to lose.” I locked gazes with her over the table. “You should remember that.”
She glared at me for a long moment, then snatched up her plate.
“Come on, girls. There’s a bad smell around here.”
The three of them sauntered off to another table, and I glared at their retreating backs.
“You’re not going to let things lie with her, are you?” Dean said. I leaned back in my seat with a grin.
“Nope. Where’s the fun in that? So, who’s going to answer my question?” I looked between Dean and Mei. “The Alpha of Alphas?”
“Okay, so you know just about every wolf in the country is part of a pack, right?” Dean said. I rolled my eyes.
“I think I got that, yes.”
“Well, every pack has an alpha – the wolf who’s in charge of everyone in the pack.”
Moon Bitten (Fur 'n' Fang Academy Book 1): A Shifter Academy Novel Page 7