It was dark out when the three of them left the dormitory suite. Stacy had locked herself away and most likely wouldn’t be opening the door until much later. Chances were that Wolf would have to bang on the door and beg and plead for Stacy to let her in, which was a bit ridiculous, to be honest.
If they hadn’t been friends, she would have complained to the school.
But they were friends, so Wolf dealt with it.
She could sleep in the living room and it wouldn’t really be a big deal. It was more annoying than anything else. She didn’t like the idea that she couldn’t get into her bedroom more than she minded crashing on the cozy pillows that were spread throughout the living room.
“Where are we going?” Jessica asked. They walked quietly down the hallway and started the descent to the first floor. They lived on the 8th floor of the dorms and there was no elevator. It was hellish, to say the least. Wolf was convinced that the headmistress only put students she strongly disliked on the top floor.
Either that, or the students she felt needed to be in better physical shape.
Wolf looked down at herself and frowned. She was slender, but she had almost no endurance these days. Oh, when she shifted into her wolf form, she could do anything. She could run any race. She could jump. She could hunt. Anything she wanted to do, she could do. Her human form, though, well...it was lacking. She hated how weak she felt as a human. If she shifted more frequently, she’d probably feel healthier and stronger, but Wolf knew that witches like her mother didn’t like shifters to begin with.
They definitely wouldn’t approve of her shifting on school grounds.
Besides, making it quickly up the stairs to the 8th floor wasn’t so bad.
Was it?
Some of the students, like Tinkerbell, for example, had no problem jaunting up the stairs. She lived on the third floor with Snow White and many of the other fairies and princesses, but she never complained about visiting other floors, and in some ways, Wolf was quite envious of her. Tinkerbell made life at Enchanted Academy seem very easy.
She made it seem almost idyllic, actually.
“You don’t need to know where we’re going,” Wolf finally answered Jessica’s question.
The human frowned.
“That’s not very fair.”
“Life isn’t always fair.”
“Come on, where are we going?”
“Out,” Wolf said.
“Natasha,” Belle hissed. “Maybe we should rethink this.”
“Natasha?” Jessica looked at Wolf in surprise. “Is that your first name?” Oh, great. Now there was another thing the non-magical girl knew about Wolf. She was going to have to chew Belle out later. Once they were alone, anyway.
She’d never told Jessica her name. Wolf made it a point not to tell most people her name. Going by Wolf was so much easier. It was a fierce sort of name, and it suited her. She was a wolf-shifter, after all. Not that everyone knew that little tidbit. There were a few other students at Enchanted Academy who were shifters, too, but they all seemed to keep to themselves, and they all kind of just minded their own business. They didn’t cause a ruckus and in return, the other students almost completely ignored them.
It was the circle of life.
“Thanks a lot,” Wolf said to Belle, rolling her eyes. “You didn’t have to call me that.”
“She was going to find out sooner or later,” Belle pointed out. “I mean, we do live together.”
“I’d rather it be later.”
“What’s wrong with your name?” Jessica asked. “I think it’s quite nice.”
Of course, she would.
“Nice?” Natasha asked, raising an eyebrow. “Do I look like the kind of girl who wants to be nice?”
She wasn’t exactly fierce to look at. She wore her hair in twin buns as much as possible. Coupled with a scowl and canines that were just a little bit too long for her to blend in with ordinary people, Natasha wasn’t anyone’s idea of nice.
Not once people knew who she was.
Not once they knew what she was.
“Well, I guess not,” Jessica said slowly.
By then, they had reached the bottom floor, and Wolf was grateful for that. She shook her head and motioned for the girls to follow her. They walked nonchalantly through the lobby, past the old woman baking cookies and brewing coffee from her nice little stand, and out the front door. There wasn’t really a curfew at Enchanted Academy. How could there be? Some of the students had classes at night and besides, they all knew magic. They could just magic themselves back into the building if they wanted to.
That said, it was strongly suggested by the headmistress that everyone return to their bedrooms by ten each night. It was a suggestion that wasn’t exactly a rule, but that most students chose to follow because they didn’t want to get on Helena Hex’s bad side.
Wolf didn’t blame them.
Helena could be a bit...intimidating.
Wolf wasn’t scared, though, and it was 9:45PM when the trio walked out of the dormitory building and into the night. If Jessica was worried about their decision to leave the dormitory so close to bedtime, she was smart enough not to say anything. Good. If she had, Wolf would have just sent her right back inside and gone off on an adventure without Jessica. She didn’t mind exploring the woods or the school grounds on her own. She’d done it a million times.
“Stay quiet,” Wolf told Jessica. “And act normal.” She raised her eyebrows at the girl, silently asking her if she was going to be able to be cool.
“Uh, okay,” Jessica shrugged, but she nodded. She wouldn’t do anything weird or crazy. Good. That was what Wolf had thought her response would be.
Jessica was a pretty normal girl, at least for the most part. Everything about her was totally ordinary. She was very plain-looking and she spoke in a way that was really blunt and to-the-point. She didn’t seem to be affected by the fact that there were magical kids from rich, wealthy, or powerful families attending the school with her.
Jessica either didn’t know or she didn’t care.
Wolf both loved and hated that about her friend.
In some ways, it was nice that Jessica treated everyone equally. In other ways, it was endlessly frustrating that she didn’t seem to notice or care when important students were around. Some of the students at Enchanted Academy had incredible influence in the world of magic. Jessica would need to learn to tone down her antics and her comments when working with them in classes. If she stepped out of line or upset the wrong person, those kids could ruin her chances of having a magic-centered career.
Like Beast, for example.
Wolf shook her head a little.
That guy was big trouble.
Big trouble.
She knew Jessica wouldn’t listen to her if she tried to warn her, though. After all, Beast was handsome. He was one of the best-looking guys on campus and he rarely dated. He always seemed to have trouble finding someone who could put up with his attitude for very long. He was a grumpy sort of guy, and a little bit of a troublemaker, and Wolf thought that if he and Jessica dated, that Beast would hurt her.
Wolf didn’t want anyone hurting her friend.
Not now.
Not ever.
“It’s a nice night,” Belle commented, breaking the silence.
“Definitely,” Jessica agreed. “And you can see the stars.”
Wolf looked up.
So, they could.
“Don’t get too distracted,” she said. “We’re just getting started.”
They walked away from the dormitories. There were two buildings located side-by-side: one for the boys and one for the girls. Wolf thought it was antiquated and a little bit strange that the dormitories were separated like that. She wouldn’t have cared if there had simply been one big bunkhouse where the students stayed, but some parents still had old-fashioned ideas about where the students should sleep, and the school abided by those.
They made their way past several other build
ings. In the darkness of the evening, the stars shined down and illuminated the campus. Any other night, Wolf might think it looked beautiful or lovely. Normally, she’d stop and admire them with her friends. She could see Jessica peeking up at them every so often, but Wolf couldn’t do that tonight.
Tonight was different.
Tonight she wasn’t out to have fun with her friends because it was a silly thing to do or because she wanted to unwind.
Tonight she just wanted to forget.
Everything.
She knew what people thought about her.
She knew that people looked at her and saw some private school whiz kid who had gotten into an incredible high school that was unbeatably wonderful. She understood. People saw her and thought she’d gotten lucky, or that she hadn’t earned it. They saw her and went, “Wow, that kid must have good parents.”
They thought she was a stuck-up brat who was superior to everyone.
But they didn’t know how lonely she was.
They didn’t know how much she wanted her mother to be proud of her.
They didn’t know how hard it was to keep going when your own parent couldn’t accept you for who – and what – you were.
Tonight had been the worst night in a long time. Usually, Wolf managed to keep her pain under wraps. She managed to keep things civil with her mom and she managed to keep her emotions in check. Something had bothered her about tonight, though.
Maybe it was the way Stacy was so self-assured about her cooking.
Maybe it was the way everyone else seemed to have their lives together.
She didn’t know.
All she knew was that tonight was another example of how she just didn’t fit in, and oh, she wanted to fit in. That was what Wolf wanted more than anything else, and she hated herself for it. She would never fit in with the other kids because she was a shifter, and shifters were weird.
That was just the way it had always been.
They walked quietly, the three of them. They went past a greenhouse and a garden shed and the big, main castle where their classes were. There were a few smaller buildings they walked past, too. The path they were on curved down around the school and went behind it. Together, the three of them walked in silence.
Wolf knew where they were going. So did Belle. Jessica, however, had never been over here, at least as far as Wolf knew. While Jessica was curious and brave, she was also usually quite the rule-follower. She’d broken several in order to save Belle from an enchantment gone wrong, but Wolf suspected that was about as wild as Jessica got.
“So how much homework do you have when we get back?” Jessica asked, breaking the silence.
“Stop,” Wolf said.
“What?”
“This is a school-free zone,” Wolf said.
“Yep,” Belle agreed. “No talking about classes or homework or responsibility out here, okay? This is a happy place.”
“But you love school,” Jessica pointed out. She seemed surprised that Belle wouldn’t want to talk about classes.
“I enjoy my classes,” she agreed. “But I also enjoy taking a break. Jessica, this is like, the one chance we have to just let it all go. So, let it go.”
They stepped off of the path and kept walking. Wolf could see perfectly in the darkness. She knew that her friends couldn’t see nearly as well as she could, despite the fact that the stars were shining very brightly on this part of the campus. It was one of those weird perks that came from her genetic makeup. She could see just about everything. The others? Not so much.
“Woah,” Jessica said. “Kind of dark out here.” She looked around and squinted. Wolf could tell her friend was getting a little nervous. Jessica was much too polite to actually say that she was scared or that she wanted to go back or that this wasn’t working for her. Belle noticed, too.
“Stop a second,” Belle said. She pulled out her wand. “Look at me.”
“Um, why?” Jessica’s posture instantly changed. She no longer looked relaxed and curious. Now she looked suspicious and a little intense. Why? Oh, Wolf knew why. She could smell the fear radiating off of her friend.
“I’m just going to cast a night vision spell on us,” Belle said.
“You can do that?”
“Sort of,” Belle said. “I learned about it in a class last year.”
“Night vision?”
“Not exactly,” Wolf said, stepping in. She couldn’t let Belle completely freak out their new friend. “But it’ll give you enhanced vision abilities. It’ll last for a few days, at least. It’s a good spell,” she added. “Belle’s done it before.”
“But not you?”
“Not me.”
“Why not? How come only Belle and I are using this spell?”
Jessica didn’t miss much. For a human, she was pretty observant, and that was both endearing and annoying as hell. She didn’t like not having answers. She didn’t like it when something didn’t make sense to her. She didn’t like any of that.
What she did like was finding out the truth, and Wolf had learned recently that Jessica was the type of human who would ferret out information even when she really didn’t need to. Even when things didn’t concern her at all, like, at all, she’d find a way to get the answers she wanted.
So she figured she could save them all some time and energy and just be honest.
“I’m a wolf,” Natasha Wolf said.
“Yeah, I know,” Jessica said. “You told me your last name before.”
“No,” Natasha shook her head. “I’m a wolf. That’s my name, but it’s also what I am.”
“Wait, what?” Jessica shook her head. “Like, a....like a werewolf?”
Belle laughed, and Natasha shot her friend a look that instantly silenced her.
“No, not like a werewolf.”
“Then what? I mean, do you turn into a wolf or don’t you?”
“I do, but...”
“Werewolf!” Jessica said. She sounded very excited and very curious: much more curious than she should have, given the situation at hand. Natasha didn’t exactly go around advertising the fact that she was a shifter. Oh, the headmistress, Helena Hex, was more than aware of the situation. She had to be in order to run the school, after all.
But Enchanted Academy was a school where students went to learn how to perform magical spells.
It wasn’t a place where they went to hang out with shapeshifters.
She felt like a freak.
She always had.
That was no secret.
But Enchanted Academy made Wolf feel even more alone. As a kid, she’d always been an outsider. She’d grown up in a coven full of magical witches who were self-assured and knew exactly who and what they were. Wolf had never known her dad. She hadn’t even known she was a shifter until a couple of years ago. Puberty hit and then it was like, “Oh! Hello! I’m the secret other half of you!” She’d shifted into a wolf and then she’d learned to shift back and the rest had been history.
Her mother had been ashamed of her. Mom hadn’t known that Natasha was a wolf. If she had, Natasha suspected that her mother would have spent years trying to figure out a way to squash the wolfish tendencies that had crept up in her life. It was too late for that now. There was no way to get rid of Natasha’s shifter half.
Once she had learned to shift, Natasha had realized that the world really was much harsher than she could have ever imagined. It was harder. Darker. Crueler. The world hardly had room for magic-users. It definitely didn’t have room for shifters, and from Natasha’s incredible scenting abilities to her enhanced eyesight, she really was an animal, through-and-through.
And she hated it.
She despised herself.
What was worse was the need to shift. She needed to change into her wolf form. She needed it constantly, but she squashed those desires down. Instead of shifting regularly, the way she was supposed to, she suppressed those urges until she was tired and cranky and could no longer keep her emotions or her life
bottled up neatly, and then she let everything explode.
And oh, it did.
“Not a werewolf,” Natasha sighed. “And not something I want to talk about. Okay? Let’s go.” She motioned to Belle, who quickly cast the spell. A few little sparks shot out of the end of her wand. That wasn’t unusual for new witches, but Natasha could hear her mother’s voice in the back of her head criticizing the attempt.
Is that what you call magic? A true witch should never have sparks coming out of her wand. That’s not only a sign of ignorance, but of laziness.
Natasha had spent the last year at Enchanted Academy trying to forget about that nasty little voice in the back of her head. Hundreds of miles from her mother, and she still couldn’t seem to shake the anxiety or the stress that accompanied thinking about her childhood or her familial relationships. Her mother had the coven now. She didn’t need to think about Natasha much at all. In fact, Natasha had only heard from her mother once since she’d left for school.
That had been one time too many.
Taking a deep breath, she quietly reminded herself to focus. This wasn’t the time to live in the past. There would be plenty of time for worrying about her mother at a later date. Besides, it wasn’t like her mom could do anything to her now. She was here. She was in the midst of Enchanted Academy. She was here and she was safe, and everything was going to be just fine.
She shook her head and tried to clear out all of the bad thoughts: all of the doubts, all of the frustrations. Then Wolf turned to her friend, and she smiled.
“Good job,” she said to Belle. It had been a good spell. Her friend had been practicing and every time Belle performed this, the magic looked better and better. It looked stronger, more professional. It looked unbelievable.
“Thanks,” Belle said. “I’ve been practicing.”
“I can tell,” Wolf said. “The way you flicked your wrist as you cast the spell looked a lot cleaner this time.”
“Really?” Belle grinned. “That was the part I’ve been working on the hardest. One of my teachers keeps saying that it’s all in the wrists and you know, I think she might be right.”
“Miss May? Yeah. She’s definitely right.”
“How’d you know which teacher it was?”
Enchanted Academy Box Set Page 13