by Leela Ash
“Amen to that,” Lia said with a small smile.
Courtney looked at her curiously and Lia smiled to herself. The shifters had a completely different belief system than the one she had been raised in. Their spiritual world was full of mystery and secrets, and frankly, fascinating.
Magic ruled the shifters’ world, and their society, while Lia had been raised with only one possibility in her mind. It was comforting in times of need, though she had a feeling there was more to the world than what she had been taught to believe. The shifters were proof of that. Perhaps they had come from another planet, or another dimension, where the rules she had grown to understand didn’t apply. But that was a question for another time.
“All right, let’s get this shit over with so I can get to bed.”
Kane’s deep voice filled the room and Lia’s heart panged in her chest.
“Hey, are you all right?”
The edge in Kane’s voice was immediately gone when he rushed to his daughter’s side.
“I’m fine, dad, don’t worry about it,” Courtney said, brushing his hands away from her face. “We were just talking about mom.”
“Oh,” Kane said, his face darkening.
He sat down heavily at one of the stools across from the two girls at the island in his kitchen.
“Give me that book.”
They spent the next few hours reviewing. Lia was surprised by just how comfortable Kane was with all subject matter. He was a history teacher first and foremost, but the skill with which he handled numbers was incredible. By the time they were finished, Lia felt like she had a new grasp on math that she had never had before.
“Thanks, Mr. Desmond,” she said, closing her book at the end of the session. “Professor Fredrickson doesn’t ever go over things in that much detail.”
Kane’s face darkened. “Max is an idiot. He chose math, of all things, because it’s the easiest to make people feel inferior at. That’s how he gets his sense of self-worth. Don’t let it get to you too much.”
Courtney snorted as Lia gaped at Kane in surprise. Clearly, there was some animosity there.
“I take it you and Professor Fredrickson don’t get along very well?” she asked.
“I can’t stand the prick, actually,” Kane said. “And it’s no secret either, so don’t feel like you’re getting away with something by blabbing it all over the school, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Lia was taken aback. “I would never!”
A quick emotion flashed in Kane’s eyes – regret maybe? – as he glanced away from her and continued speaking. “Max is a pain in my ass, actually. He’s leader of a group of teachers at the school who are hoping to turn the tides of the educational system here.”
“What do you mean?” Lia asked, frowning.
She knew shifter customs were different, but she honestly had little clue how the board worked at the school. Lia had gone there as an exciting opportunity to become part of the delegation between shifters and humans to make the world a more inclusive place for shifters and a safer place for humans. She had witnessed injustice toward the shifters and the messy, violent situations that it could lead to far too often to just stand by and allow it to happen. It was time for things to change.
“The council is in charge of most of what happens at the school,” Kane mumbled. “It is governed by ancient law, but some laws are given more importance over others, and there is a group of renegades who are trying to change the way the youth are being raised. They want to abolish some old laws that are truly important, and draw importance to some old laws that are truly dated, replacing it all with a regime of their own construct and an agenda that, frankly, makes me question their loyalty to the wolf shifters.”
“Why would they want to do that?” Courtney asked, frowning. Clearly, it was the first she was hearing of this as well.
“I can only speculate,” Kane said, “But I’m wondering if they are hoping to rise to power and make way for the bear shifters to interfere with Stonybrooke. They’re probably after the true source of power – the Serah Stone.”
“What is the Serah Stone?” Lia asked. But now, both Courtney and Kane were glaring at her. She had asked too many questions.
“Actually, that is a sacred subject that we’re not supposed to speak about. Especially in the presence of humans. No offense.”
Courtney said this to Lia unapologetically, and Lia knew when to back off.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “So tell me then. What does Max have to do with any of this?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet,” Kane admitted. “I get a bad feeling from that guy, though. I feel like if anything is going to go down, he’s going to be right in the center of it all.”
“Why do you say that?” Courtney asked. “I mean, I know he’s a total big-headed creep and all, but what makes you think he’s a traitor? Is it really that serious or are you being competitive again?”
Kane pursed his lips at his daughter, a rare glimpse of humor in his eyes before his face turned serious again.
“He came by tonight to tell me about a meeting. A mandatory emergency meeting tomorrow. I have no choice but to attend. The way he said it just makes my hackles raise. Call it intuition.”
Courtney nodded gravely.
“I understand,” she said.
Lia still had a million questions, but it was obvious that Kane was eager to leave the kitchen and get back to having his own life. He rose from the stool and caught Lia’s eye, his dark, brooding eyes electric. She felt her heart quiver under his gaze, and a gentle heat wafted through her body unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. He was certainly tall.
“I don’t think you should leave alone tonight,” Kane said. “It’s already getting too late. The streets here can be dangerous for a human at night. Courtney?”
“Yeah! It’s fine. She can stay in my room. We’ll try not to make too much noise.”
“Thank you,” Kane said, turning his back on Lia without another look at her.
Lia sighed as she found herself wishing he would take just one more glance back so she could study his perfect features one more time before disappearing for the rest of the night. The next time she would see him, he would be a few hundred feet away from her, sitting at a desk with a million other things on his mind. Who knew when they would get a chance to speak one-on-one again?
But why did it matter? It was just Courtney’s dad. It wasn’t as if they had the best relationship in the world anyway. Their conversation had only consisted of numbers and Kane’s burning resentment toward one of his colleagues. That was no reason to try to get any more of the man’s attention than he was willing to give. Lia shook her head. She was just being stupid.
“Come on,” Courtney said, slamming her book shut. “Let’s go upstairs.”
***
It was still somewhat early in the night, and Courtney and Lia couldn’t sleep. Courtney had set up a sleeping bag on the floor beside her bed, where Lia got comfortable, and they lay in the dark chatting casually.
“Do you miss Eric?” Lia asked, toying with the pink flowered sheets she was covered with. They seemed so unlike Courtney, who, although bubbly, was quite a dark and brooding character herself, much like her father. Apples didn’t fall very far from the tree.
“Not so loud,” Courtney hushed. “My dad doesn’t know about him yet. If he’s within a hundred feet of here, he’ll hear you.”
“I didn’t realize that shifters could hear that well,” Lia said, amazed by the thought.
“There are a lot of things that we can do really well,” Courtney teased, slapping Lia with a pillow. “But you’d have to date one to find out. Speaking of, Darren seemed pretty interested in you at that party last week. What do you think of him? You think you’d ever date a shifter?”
Lia’s face grew red. Date a shifter? Sure. But Courtney was actually asking whether or not she would date Darren. As nice as he seemed, though, he was still an immature frat boy, no matte
r which way she looked at it. Lia had always been after something a little bit more stable. Mature, maybe? Childish boys had never quite swept her off her feet the same way they seemed to with other girls her age. That was probably why she was still a virgin.
“I don’t know about Darren,” she said quietly.
“Come on, Lia. In the whole time I’ve known you, you have never shown any interest in anybody I’ve introduced you to. Are you into girls or something? Because you just have to tell me and I’ll bring you the right people…”
“God no,” Lia said, laughing at the absurdity of the thought. She was very much interested in men. It was just that she was interested in men. Nobody her age was very appealing to her. “I just haven’t ever found the kind of guy I’d want hanging around me all the time.”
“But you have dated, right?” Courtney persisted.
Lia sighed. “No, not really.”
“…Lia, you’ve been with a guy, haven’t you?”
Lia’s face burned hot and she pursed her lips. She didn’t have to dignify it with a response. Even though it was true that she hadn’t, it wasn’t an easy thing to admit to somebody like Courtney. Courtney could have all the boys in their class wrapped around her little finger with one flip of her sultry dark hair. Lia held back a snort. Her father would love that.
The thought made Lia laugh out loud, and her heart skipped a beat as she thought about Kane’s sexy smile and his beautiful but hard eyes. He would destroy any man who thought of getting with his little girl. She could tell it from the loving way he looked at her.
“So you have?” Courtney asked, sitting up in confusion.
“Stop trying to read me!” Lia exclaimed. “I already told you how invasive that is.”
“It’s not my fault humans can’t do it!” Courtney cried defensively. “You would do it too if you were a shifter.”
“Well, I’m not. And to answer your question, since it seems so important to you right now, no, I’m a virgin. And I’m happy with that choice. I don’t want to give myself to some egotistical little boy. I’m not even sure I want to date anybody. Ever. Marriage is just a sham anyway. You don’t need a piece of paper to tell the world you love somebody.”
Courtney held her hands up in the air. “It’s fine, Lia, really. Sorry that it’s so personal to you.” She paused. “I didn’t know anybody could feel that way about marriage.”
“Well, I mean, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the right man came along. But he would have to be a real man, not someone like the guys at our school. Yuck.”
They were silent for a moment before Courtney snickered.
“You could marry my dad,” she said. “I don’t know anyone more manly than that.”
“Court!” Lia exclaimed, slapping over her head at her friend who was rolling on the bed giggling.
“Then you would be my step-mom!”
“That’s so wrong, Courtney! Then you go ahead and marry Eric and the four of us can be a happy little family.”
This caused an abrupt halt to Courtney’s laughter and Lia sat up, staring at her friend in concern.
“Actually, that can’t happen. My dad wouldn’t approve of me being with a human. During the war, they had something to do with my mother’s death, though he won’t ever tell me what it was.”
“Oh,” Lia said softly. “Well, I’m sure whatever it was, he can get over it for you. He loves you more than anything. Even some old grudge.”
“Maybe,” Courtney said with a heavy sigh. But that was the end of their light-hearted conversation, and a dark heaviness fell over the room as the young women were quickly lost in their own thoughts.
Lia closed her eyes, and again, she saw the fierce, glittering eyes of Kane staring at her, the devilish simper lighting his face, but onlybriefly before his face clouded over once again. Marry that man? She would be lucky to get him to crack a smile, let alone get anywhere near his heart. It was ridiculous to think she could even get near enough to touch him.
The thought sent a shiver down her spine and she rolled over on the sleeping bag, turning her back to Courtney. She couldn’t even look at her friend while having such inappropriate thoughts about her father. It had been a joke to marry him, yes, but which one of them was going too far with it?
3.
“Desmond! I thought you weren’t going to show up.”
Kane glared at Max, who smiled innocently before sitting down at the large, oval-shaped conference table. Soon, the directors of the board came filing in, and Kane recognized the tension in the room immediately. On one side of the table sat the leader of the rebel group that Max was clearly a part of. They had been advocating harmful dogma to be resurrected in the curriculum and protesting old laws that protected the youth, hoping to replace them with new laws that would make the lives of the students hellish and confusing.
On the other side of the table sat Franklin Greaves, who was the current head of Stonybrooke University. He had a grim expression on his face, and Kane sat down reluctantly on his side of the table. Everybody was aware of how important it had always been to Franklin, founder of SU, to provide students with a top of the line education that would prepare them for life both inside and out of Stonybrooke. He was a strict, noble man who had always intended to lead the newest generations of shifters in the right direction.
But he was much older now than he had been when he’d started the university long before the shifter wars. Not only that, but he was also ailing, so the rumors had stated. Even now, in front of the delegation, his flesh was a pallid grey. Kane frowned. Franklin should probably be at home resting, not at an emergency board meeting. But the man took his duties seriously. It was inspirational.
“Welcome,” Franklin finally said once everybody was settled. “This meeting has now come to order. Elis, the minutes?”
Elis, a young man who had been interning with the council, nodded from the corner and looked down at the typewriter, his fingers poised to type.
“As many of you have already heard, there is an unfortunate situation with my health. My doctor has made it abundantly clear that I am to surrender the full weight of my responsibilities and focus solely on my own healing if I am going to survive this malady. It is my mate’s wish that I resign as soon as possible, but as you all know this cannot be done without the proper ceremony. Somebody is going to have to take my place.”
Max grinned and Kane’s heart lurched. If Max and his cronies took advantage of this position, they would surely use their power to corrupt the school so they could mold future generations of shifters.
Kane had never been entirely clear about where it was on the moral and ethical spectrum that Franklin fell. He seemed not to meddle in the affairs of those beneath his position, leaving his moral compass up for debate. Was he a supporter of the rigid dogma of the shifter tradition as Kane was, but flexible to the changes of time, or was he willing to make compromises and bring back dangerous old ceremonies such as the type that Max and his friends seemed to advocate and new laws that would lead future generations into chaos?
If Franklin weren’t so bull-headedly devoted to the pursuit of education and the freedom to draw one’s own conclusions, he would be a much easier man to peg. As it was, he had always been a fierce advocate of teaching the youth how to think, not what to think, and considered it the ultimate form of freedom; something that made shifters superior over humans. But just how far was he willing to go? He consulted directly with Stonybrooke’s council of Elders on many occasions, but he held such a unique position, power outside of the council, that it was impossible to tell.
“So while I am taking my leave of absence, it is important to me to know that I am leaving the students with a worthwhile mentor. That mentor must abide by the Old Laws in order to qualify as a teacher in such a sacred position. In three weeks’ time, I will return and take a look at the candidates. The man who qualifies will take my place.”
The grin on Max’s face grew wider and Franklin snapped his fingers. Elis j
umped to his feet and grabbed a stack of papers from the table beside himself and began to distribute them among the men sitting at the conference table.
“For those of you who do not already know, these are the requirements for the men who will qualify for candidacy. If you have not met all of these requirements by the time it is time for me to choose a successor, then you will be immediately disqualified. Is that understood?”
Murmurs of understanding rose in the room, and Kane grabbed the paper that was thrust at him and studied it with a frown. He had to admit he was surprised by the rigidity of the guidelines, but Max and the others seemed to have no issues with them.
As he scanned the list, things went from bad to worse when his eyes finally settled on the last requirement.
Every candidate must be engaged to be wed to a virgin. The ceremony must commence to transfer the sacred rite of power to the chosen candidate.
That meant several of the men there, who were currently married and couldn’t have more than one wife, were immediately disqualified.
As a history teacher, Kane had heard of such old, dogmatic laws being in existence, but he himself had never been on the council himself, or known anybody close to the council. Now, though, he was beginning to see just how relevant his people’s laws still were in modern shifter society. And although most humans would find it repellant, there was a way about the world that they were oblivious to; transference of power through ceremony being among them. Magic was a dirty word to most humans. The only human he had ever seen who seemed to believe in the shifter arcana was Lia.
“Take all of these guidelines into consideration. We will meet again here in exactly three weeks’ time,” Franklin said, standing up with his dark eyes moving from man to man around the table. “You are dismissed.”
Kane stood with a heavy sigh, surprised to see the shit-eating grin on Max’s face. He was cackling under his breath with one of the other men at the table, and caught Kane’s eye. The sheer smugness on his face was enough to make Kane’s blood boil, and he turned and left the room before he put his fist through Max’s face. No need in getting disqualified before he even had a chance to try. But try as he might, he just couldn’t wrap his head around the possibility of finding himself a virgin fiancé.