Hybrid Academy Box Set

by L. C. Mortimer

  She was going to make it into a place where anything could happen.

  She was going to make it into a place where dreams could come true.

  Henry came over to me and I looked up at him.

  “Did you get taller?”

  “Maybe you got smaller.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He shrugged.

  “So…what’s with the suit?” I’d known him for years, mostly as my cat, but I’d never seen him in a suit. It wasn’t the type of thing he would ever be caught wearing, so I wondered why he had one on now. It didn’t make sense.

  Then again, nothing really made sense anymore.

  I hadn’t seen Henry very much in the past few weeks. It had been a crazy time dealing with all of the changes that came to Hybrid Academy. The entire school kind of disintegrated and then was slowly built back up through the help and guidance of several dozen teachers who had managed to stay behind to help Erin revamp what Alicia had tried to destroy. The teachers had thought about taking an entire year to change things up, but nobody wanted to wait that long to go back to school. Kiera, Patricia, and I certainly didn’t. We were ready for our third and final year to finally start, albeit a little bit late.

  Now I was looking up at Henry, and I realized with a sharp pain just how much I really had missed him. He was so important to me in every way. He was kind. He was wonderful. He was…Well, he was Henry.

  I knew that Henry had been spending time with his family, and I had missed him terribly. I couldn’t put into words how happy I was to see him now, in this moment.

  “I’ve got a new job,” he said with a smile. “And it’s my first day.”

  “A new job?” I asked. “You mean, you aren’t just going to stay my familiar forever?”

  He laughed heartily and reached for me. He pulled me into a tight hug. When he stepped back, he looked at me differently than he ever had before.

  “I’m the new shifting instructor at Hybrid Academy. I’ll be working with the year one students.”

  “No!” I screeched. “Shut up!”

  “Uh, okay.”

  “No, I mean,” I shook my head. “That’s so great, Henry! That’s amazing.”

  I was thrilled for him. I was seriously, totally, and completely thrilled because there was no one who would be better at teaching than Henry. He’d been endlessly patient with me on my own shifting journey and now he’d have the chance to help other people.

  “And what about you?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

  I held up a little badge that Erin had given me.

  “Student assistant to the potions director?” He asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe I’m not ready,” I said. “But it is my third year, and Erin said one of the changes she wants to make is giving the third-year students more responsibilities.”

  “You’ll be great, Maxine. You’ll be great.”

  Henry pulled me close again and hugged me. This time, he didn’t let me go right away. Things were very different now than they used to be. We’d both grown and changed and learned so much. We’d almost died, and then we’d been okay. We’d been apart, and now we were back together. We would be working together now, along with Kiera and Patricia, who had also opted to return for their third and final year at Hybrid. They would be student-teaching, as well, and together, we’d work to make sure that the next generation of students had a better, stronger, and more magical experience than we could have ever hoped for.

  We still had a lot to learn together. The world was different, and more dangerous, and more volatile, but somehow, I knew that no matter what happened next, everything was going to be okay.

  Henry kissed me on the forehead and pulled me close, and I realized that even when I thought I’d been alone, I never had. He’d been with me the entire time, and I never wanted that to change. For the rest of my life, I wanted Henry to stay close. Even if it wasn’t as my familiar, then maybe it would be as the person I’d chosen to love.

  Hybrid Academy was nestled in the foothills of the Dragon Mountains. It was beautiful, and it was fantastical, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

  Nowhere.

  THE END

  Deleted Scenes

  Dear Readers,

  In the editing process, a lot of decisions have to be made.

  Some of those, like correcting typos or clarifying sentences, are easy.

  Others, like cutting entire scenes, are hard.

  If you want just a little bit more of Hybrid Academy, I’m happy to oblige. You’ll find here a collection of deleted scenes from the original text. They appear in chronological order and are from the viewpoint of different characters. I hope these scenes make you laugh, make you unwind, and make you forget, for a little while, that life can be cruel. Instead, I hope that these scenes give you a gentle reminder that sometimes, life can be truly incredible.

  Thank you for reading.

  Love,

  L.C. Mortimer

  *

  Alicia

  Alicia leaned back in her comfortable desk chair and looked around the office that was now hers. It was all for her. After years of fighting, of worrying, and of trying, she had finally done it. She had managed to make Hybrid Academy hers, and there was no going back.

  Was she doing all of this for love?

  Yeah, sure, absolutely.

  But there was more to it than that.

  She’d wanted to feel powerful ever since she’d first gone to Hybrid Academy as a student. She never had. She’d never felt strong or worthy or important, but she did now. Now, as she sat in the center of the headmistress’ office, she felt totally and completely unbeatable.

  It was all hers.

  She could do whatever she wanted now, and no one could stop her.

  She could bring students in. She could kick them out. She could do anything.

  Her only limitation was her dear, sweet husband who had never exactly been what she would call patient. He had wanted to kill Maxine the moment she stepped foot at Hybrid Academy, but Alicia had demanded they wait for the perfect moment.

  Life was always about opportunities, and you had to know when to strike.

  When Maxine first came to the school, she was completely useless. She couldn’t do anything at all. She couldn’t even unlock a door. Then, in her second year, she’d started to learn. This year, she’d be even more powerful, and it would be time. They could harvest the students, plucking them from their very existence, and use them for food. Not Max, though. Max wouldn’t be vampire fodder. She would be something else.

  She’d be a source of knowledge and of information.

  It had been her parents who had started this all, anyway. They were the ones who had worked to help Alicia complete the spell in the first place. They had helped her track down the ruby flowers and they’d helped her create their first – and only – batch of the potion.

  They had done so much and then they’d destroyed it all.

  Maxine had their knowledge, though. She had their blood. She was theirs.

  She could help Alicia make the potion once more.

  She could read the old woman’s spell book.

  She could.

  Alicia just had to catch her and get her alone, but she would keep waiting for just the right moment.

  *

  Henry

  Being a familiar was harder than it looked.

  Cats got a bad rap. Everyone knew that witches loved their cats, but what people didn’t know was that their familiars loved them, too.

  And Henry?

  He’d loved his witch since the moment he’d met her.

  Oh, she hadn’t known she was a witch yet. Not back then. Back then, Maxine had been perfectly content to run around the backyard with Henry. They’d gone everywhere together, the two of them. They’d been totally and completely inseparable.

  There had just been one problem: Max didn’t know he was a boy.

  He thought sometimes that she must k
now. Surely, she had realized that he wasn’t exactly familiar material. There were a lot of things he didn’t know about how “normal” housecats acted. Every so often, someone would comment on just what a good cat he was, and he’d try to be a little bit naughty so that nobody got the wrong idea about him.

  He’d managed to keep it up for years, but then Hybrid Academy had changed everything.

  It had been hard for him to control himself when they were at the school. He’d struggled to stay in his cat form because his human side wanted to come out so many times. Everyone was having so much fun at the school that eventually, he’d decided to join in. He’d decided to go for it and have some fun.

  And he was so, so glad that he had.

  Now he had gotten to know Max on a deeper level, and no matter what happened next, he would be able to know that he had tried.

  He had given it his all.

  *

  Max

  It wasn’t like I’d never been on a date before.

  I’d been on dates before.

  Daniel Montgomery in the third grade counted, right? We were at day camp together before Mom and Dad left. We hung out all day together and even did the painting activities as a couple. Everyone made fun of us, but we didn’t care.

  That counted, didn’t it?

  It had to have counted.

  Because for me to be 21 years old and have no experience in the world of dating, well, that would just be a little pathetic.

  And I wasn’t pathetic.

  So, what was I?

  Nervous.

  I was a huge, nervous, unpredictably horrible mess.

  And I had my first real date in less than an hour.

  “Are you ready?” Patricia asked, peeking into my room.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Kiera appeared beside Patricia. The two of them stood in the doorway and just kind of gawked at my bedroom. There were clothes thrown literally everywhere. It was a horrible display of what not to do when you wanted to go on a date.

  “Well, this is okay,” Patricia said nicely.

  “Not really,” I shrugged.

  “It could be worse,” Kiera said.

  “Nope. It couldn’t.”

  “Okay, stop with the moping,” Patricia said. She pulled out her wand, waved it at me, and instantly, I was silenced.

  What the hell?

  I tried to move and jump at her, but she took a step back as I stumbled to the ground instead.

  “Woah, what did you do to her?” Kiera seemed more curious about my situation than afraid.

  “I just gave her something to help her calm down. When she can’t complain or talk badly about herself, finding the perfect outfit becomes a lot easier. You’ll see.”

  Together, my friends went through my closet. They held up outfit after outfit. They tried over and over to locate something that was “me.”

  I sat still like a good, willing participant, and I allowed them to search through my entire wardrobe until they produced a simple purple dress. It had a plunging neckline and a black lace overlay, but it was quite pretty, and it was something I’d never actually worn.

  I’d purchased it on impulse one day while out shopping with Erin. It had sat in my closet ever since. It wasn’t a big deal, really. It’s not like I wore many different types of clothing while I was at Hybrid, but it was nice to have some choices during the summers and now that I was out of school.

  I nodded, happy to share my input.

  “Good,” Patricia said. She snapped her fingers, and suddenly, I could speak.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked, rubbing my mouth. It didn’t hurt. It hadn’t hurt at all, actually. I was more emotionally traumatized than physically scarred.

  She shrugged. “You were stressing. Figured I’d help you calm down.”

  “It wasn’t super nice,” Kiera said. “But she’s not wrong. You were panicking. Now you have something perfect. Now dress.”

  She tossed the purple dress at me and I held it up in front of me. It really was pretty, but would I be able to do it justice? Would I be able to make this dress, out of all of the dresses in the world, work?

  Tonight needed to be perfect.

  It wasn’t just about wants or desires.

  Tonight, I needed to get away from everything that had happened.

  Losing my entire family and then slowly getting them back one-by-one was emotionally exhausting for anyone. It was devastating and exhilarating and sad and torturous. I’d gotten back my aunt, my grandmother, and finally, my mother.

  My dad?

  He wasn’t coming back.

  I still mourned that.

  I still wanted him desperately.

  I missed spending time with him, watching movies, and talking about all of the adventures we were going to have one day.

  “Hey, Max?” Kiera looked worried. “Are you okay?”

  “What? Yeah. I’m fine.” I snatched the dress from her hands and quickly changed clothing. Instantly, both Patricia and Kiera grinned.

  “That’s the one,” Patricia said.

  “It’s perfect,” Kiera agreed.

  I turned and looked in the mirror, and I couldn’t believe the girl I saw staring back at me. She wasn’t a student. She wasn’t a nerd. She wasn’t some lost little lamb. She was just…herself.

  Sometimes that wasn’t enough, but today, it definitely was.

  “Henry isn’t going to know what hit him,” Patricia said.

  “Knock him dead, love,” Kiera kissed me on the cheek and then they practically pushed me out of the door.

  This was it.

  There was no looking back.

  *

  Cara

  Cara stood and looked at the grave.

  She knew in her head that Falcon had been gone for years, but she’d forgotten all of that. Her memory had been stolen from her, captured, and now it was like she was facing his loss for the very first time.

  She hated that.

  She hated how alone she felt so alone and useless in the world now. Once upon a time, she and Falcon had been so very happy together. They’d dared to dream big, and where had that gotten them? They’d been tricked, and that was their own fault, but what she mourned more than anything was all of the time the two of them had lost.

  She and Falcon had missed their baby girl growing up, and now Maxine was…

  Well, she was fine.

  She was okay.

  She was better than okay.

  Max had grown up while Falcon was gone, and Cara had been locked away in a body she couldn’t even remember. Oh, she’d heard the stories. Everyone had told her how she’d found her way to Hybrid Academy and watched over her daughter from her wolf form.

  That hadn’t made her feel better.

  If anything, it had made her feel worse because she just couldn’t remember.

  Sometimes she’d try so desperately to think about how she’d managed to make it all the way to Maxine. The wards that protected her daughter had kept her safe and locked away for years, but once those wards had broken, Cara had been able to find her. She’d been able to scent her and to follow her and to watch over her.

  But she still didn’t know her.

  When Cara and Falcon had left, Maxine was just a little girl. She’d loved dolls and playing dress-up and climbing trees that were much too high for her.

  Now Maxine had a boyfriend.

  Now Maxine could shift.

  “Oh, Falcon,” Cara said. She knelt by the grave and she reached for it, running her hands over the soft stone. How was she going to do this without him? How was she going to survive without her very best friend in the whole entire world?

  Then she heard someone stepping on a twig, and Cara jumped up and spun around.

  It was only Max.

  “It’s you,” she said.

  “And it’s you. Mind if I join you?” Maxine gestured to Falcon’s grave.

  “I…Well…Yes, I suppose that would be all right,” Cara said final
ly. She couldn’t get over just how similar Max looked to her father. They had the same hair and the same jawline. Maxine had so many of his features that it seemed uncanny.

  “I miss him,” Maxine said.

  “You remember him?” Cara asked. She wasn’t sure why she was a little surprised at that, but she was. Maybe she’d thought that there was simply no way her daughter would have been able to remember her father after everything that had happened.

  Yet she claimed that she did.

  “I remember a lot,” Maxine said. “I missed you both so much.” She threw herself into Cara’s arms, not quite sobbing, but definitely crying, and Cara pulled her daughter close.

  Suddenly, she remembered.

  She remembered what it was like to be a mother.

  She remembered this part.

  She may have missed out on her daughter’s life, but this was the part she was actually good at. This was something she could do.

  “Hey,” Cara whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Yes, it is. I promise. We’re together now, right?”

  Maxine looked up at her mother and cupped her cheek.

  “Mom, you have no idea how much I needed you.”

  A tear slid down Cara’s cheek as she looked at her daughter.

  Needed.

  Her daughter needed her.

  And she hadn’t been there.

  She had a pretty good excuse, but that’s all it was: an excuse. She could have made different choices, but she didn’t, and Maxine had grown up in the loving home of Maddison, but she’d grown up without a mother.

  “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there,” Cara said.

  “You had a pretty good reason,” Maxine sniffled.

  “I should never have gone away without you.”

  “How could you have known?” Maxine looked up, and she put into words what Cara was feeling. “Mom, she tricked you. Alicia tricked you. She tricked everyone.”

  “She was always good at getting people to see just as much as she wanted them to see,” Cara admitted. It was one of the things that had always been interesting about Alicia, but Cara had never realized just how deadly it was until it had been too late.