by Casey Morgan
“It’s not a shame.” Behind me, Big Boy pushed in close. I could feel the heat of his body against my back. His hands massaged my ass cheeks hard, then pulled them apart so that he could explore further. As his thick fingers inched closer to my pussy, I got wet and ready for him. I wanted him to touch me down there so bad, I was trembling.
Red Eyes massaged my breasts, pinching my nipples till they ached. “That’s right,” he agreed with Cade. “I like my dinners fresh. And this girl is as fresh as they come.”
“Put her over the counter,” Archer ordered, stepping to the side.
Before I could say anything, Cade grabbed my waist. He picked me up like I was light as a feather and set me on my stomach on the long wooden counter. My ass was up in the air. Everything was exposed to them.
There was embarrassment mixed with my desire. I knew they were looking over my ass hole and pussy, observing everything, but I didn’t try to cover up. Instead, I found myself opening my legs wider. My hips jerked slightly, begging for them to touch me more.
When a gentle brush of fingers ran over my thigh, I flinched. My breath was coming in pants. Fingers gently traced down the curve of my ass, over my ass hole and down to my folds.
“Open your legs wider,” Archer ordered and laughed when I did. “That’s a good girl. You are going to give us everything.”
One thick fat finger slid up and down my lower lips. The barest brush made my whole body feel hot. My pussy was wet, and I could feel that wetness being rubbed over my lower lips as whoever was touching me teased me more.
“Put it in me,” I moaned, bucking my hips back toward them. “Please, fuck me!”
I woke to the sound of laughter. There was a pale face and body floating inches from mine. The boy laughed again, causing his whole form to shake and turn somewhat invisible. His white eyes stared into mine as his grin got wider.
“What are you dreaming about?” he asked knowingly as if he could tell how damp my panties were.
I screamed.
Chapter Five
He really was floating. The half invisible boy was lying prone, with his head leaning on one hand, while he was about a foot in the air over my bed. I scooted back, grabbing the covers and pulling them up under my chin.
“Angie!” I shrieked, looking over at her bed to have her save me.
She wasn’t there. Her bed was empty except for a medium-sized black cat. I looked back at the floating boy, who was now also looking at Angie’s bed. He tutted and shook his head.
“Sleep shifting. How embarrassing.”
The black cat yowled, drawing my gaze. It shook and trembled like it was having a seizure before its fur ripped open, and it grew about ten sizes bigger and fleshy. It was a pretty ugly transformation, but when it was done, Angie was back in human form.
I, however, felt like I was going to puke. I had to slap a hand over my mouth. The boy, who I now realized was a ghost, looked at me sadly and folded his arms in front of his incorporeal chest.
“First time you’ve ever seen a shift?” he asked kindly.
Keeping my hand clamped to my mouth, I just nodded. I took a few deep breaths to try to settle my stomach.
“It’s not always that ugly,” the ghost continued. “I used to be able to shift in a blink of an eye. No extra fur or skin or clothing lost.”
“Fuck you, Drew,” Angie panted. She pulled up her covers covering her nakedness, but then looked down at herself sadly. “Aww, man. Those were my favorite pajamas.”
“You turn into a cat?” When I found my voice, it was squeaky. I cleared my throat and continued, “Like often?”
Angie nodded. “I’m a shifter, that’s why my major is transformative magic. A lot of the students here can shift, but most are the typical werewolves.”
Before I could argue that werewolves were by no means typical, the floating boy interjected. “Cat shifters are actually rare. They should be more treasured, but the wolves see them as inferior.” He smiled when I looked up at him. I raised my eyebrows questioningly, but he didn’t continue. He just kept smiling and floating over my bed. It was too much for me.
“Who the hell are you?” I snapped, slapping the palms of my hands to the sides of my face.
Angie gestured a hand towards the boy. “This is my dead brother, Andrew. You can call him Drew. That’s what he prefers.” The boy nodded like this was all a normal conversation to be having.
I sighed, closed my eyes, and started rubbing my temples. “Guys, I have to admit, I’m way over my head here.”
Drew hummed. “First experience with a ghost, Ruby?”
I didn’t ask him how he knew my name; I just shot a glare over at his sister. She shrugged. “He pretty much follows me around all day, so he knows what I know.”
“There’s not much else for a ghost to do.” Drew started to float higher. He did a quick somersault in the air, landed, and sat cross-legged. He was still three feet or more above my bed. Out of nothing, he produced a set of translucent marbles and started playing with them.
A realization came to me. “Wait. Is everyone dead a ghost now?”
Angie and Drew looked at one another and then back at me. “If you’re thinking of your grandmother,” Angie started, “it’s possible. Especially since she was a student here.”
“However,” Drew continued as soon as his sister stopped, “since she hasn’t come to visit you here or shown herself to you in the three years she has been gone, it is more likely that she has moved on to the afterlife.” He gave me a sad shrug and frowned.
I found tears coming to my eyes and quickly whipped them away. I wasn’t sure what was worse, that my Grandmother had moved on or that she was refusing to visit me as a ghost. My head swam. Everything I was experiencing was too much.
“It’s nice to meet you, Drew,” I choked out, “but I need to get back to sleep.”
The ghost frowned a bit then glanced over at his sister. Angie shrugged, and they both said goodnight.
****
My first class at Ironwood was potions. Angie said that this was good since we both ended up sleeping in then running late, and she didn’t have time to tell me about focus points — apparently, potions didn’t require that kind of magic. And I have to admit, I was getting into the potions class. It was kind of like cooking. We just had to follow the recipe. Sure, the ingredients were somewhat distasteful looking — eye of newt and what not — but as long as I didn’t think about what I was touching, I was okay. Or, at least, I was until my pot bubbled over, and my badly mixed potion ate through part of the desk I was working on.
Angie was rubbing her temples as we walked out of the classroom. “You really are hopeless,” she grumbled. “I get that you know nothing, but not being able to stir a spell correctly is really bad. It’s just stirring! Don’t you cook?”
I shrugged. “Not really. I mostly got fast food. Had to stick to the dollar menus. My stepfather wasn’t very generous with money. I ate with the change I found in the couch.”
Angie stopped short in the hallway, disrupting the flow of traffic, and looked at me wide-eyed. “Okay,” she said. “Sorry I snapped.” She brought a hand up to rub on her forehead. “It’s just another thing we will have to get you caught up on.”
I sighed, feeling a bit worn down. “There is just so much.” No wonder Thorn didn’t think I would pass the first exam.
“Hey, kitty paws!” The blonde, ice-colored eyed boy I saw the day before came up behind Angie. He smirked at me.
Without even looking at him, Angie rolled her eyes. “What do you want, Jasper?” She turned to look at him, crossing her arms over her chest. “Your master give you leave to run with the cool cats?”
Jasper laughed, closing his eyes slightly. His laughter wasn’t cruel, like some of the others had been the day before.
“As if.” He kept on chuckling. “I just figured that you might want to see a shifter fight.” He pulled a flyer from his notebook and thrust it into her hands.
Angie
looked it over, a bit of curiosity on her face. “There are usually closed,” she muttered.
Jasper shrugged. “Cade likes an audience.” His eyes wandered over to me — giving me a quick look over. “You should come too, new girl.” His grin widened, and a hint of something dangerous flashed through his eyes. “This might give you something to think about.”
I watched the way his slim lips formed the words and knew that I was already thinking about something — mainly how his lips might feel on mine. My pussy was aching, and I found my shoulders trembling slightly. “Do you really turn into a wolf?”
“Ruby!” Angie snapped, giving me an appalled look. I probably just let on that I was a total newby.
Jasper raised his white-blonde eyebrows. A look of realization crossed his face, bringing his lips up into a smirk. “No, babe.” He leaned in closer to me; his lips just inches from my ear. “I’m a bear.” My breath caught in my chest as his voice dropped into a growl. “I’d rip you to shreds.”
“Leave off, jerk,” Angie snapped. She pushed the boy in the shoulder, throwing him off balance so that he stumbled past me.
Instead of getting angry, Jasper turned and laughed. I liked the way his eyes squinted when he was happy. “No harm done, kitty paws. But, really, come see a show tonight.” He waved at Angie then winked at me while bringing one of his hands up into a claw shape and mimicked scratching at me. “Roar,” he growled coyly, before resuming his way down the hallway. I kept my eyes on him as he passed out more flyers.
“God!” Angie snapped. She was rolling her eyes when I turned back to her. “Do you have to be so obvious? Seriously, Ruby, you cannot ask things like that. Everyone here knows who changes into what. It’s obvious. Just look at their eyes.”
Suddenly, Drew was standing next to her, looking at the flyer from over her shoulder. “We should really go to this,” he said. “It will be very educational.”
Angie crumpled the flyer in her hands and then folded her arms over her chest. “Please, you just want to see some boys rip each other apart.”
“I do,” Drew admitted, then nodded his head in my direction, “but I think Ruby should too. It will be like a field trip.”
I shrugged. “I mean, it does sound educational.”
Angie slapped a hand to her head. “Fine. But don’t blame me if you get scared to death.”
Chapter Six
“Okay. So, here is how you can tell who turns into what.”
It was after ten at night. Our little group had snuck out of the dorms — not like we really had to sneak because most of the students were going to the fight — and were walking across the wide lawn behind the main part of the school. Angie had lent me a sweater, but the air was still chilly, so I had my arms wrapped around me tightly.
“Jasper is a bear, as he said,” Drew picked up where Angie left off. I was getting used to the siblings finishing each other’s sentences. “But you can tell that he changes into a polar bear by the light blue of his eyes.”
I nodded. That made sense.
“Cade, with the amber eyes, is a true werewolf,” Angie continued. “He’s from a very prestigious line. So, he is very powerful. And even though his wolf is smaller than, say, Jasper’s bear form, he’s still stronger.”
Drew nodded, looking slightly paler. “He’s crazy strong physically and in other ways.”
I felt my eyebrows rise. “What kind of other ways?”
“The McWilliams clan, which Cade is the heir to, has strong leadership qualities. They kind of, well, can make people follow them.” Angie bit her lip, before adding, “Sometimes against their will.”
“Oh!” My mind wandered to Archer with his mesmerizing powers. “What does that boy with the gray eyes turn into?”
Angie and Drew looked at each other a moment. Drew shrugged. “Who?”
“The one who you told me to not meet his eyes? With the uniforms?” I tugged at my skirt to clarify.
“Archer?” Angie laughed. She closed her eyes for a second and shook her head. “God, you know nothing. Archer can’t transform. He’s a pure witch.”
“But his eyes?!”
Drew shrugged. “Family trait?”
“Ugh.” I shopped in my tracks and stomped my foot. The heat was starting to bloom in my chest. “Why is nothing about this place easy?! I’m never going to remember all of this.”
Drew floated closer. His ghostly hands hovered just over my shoulders like he was trying to comfort me. “Come now, Ruby. You’ll get it. Don’t get discouraged.”
Angry tears were leaking from my eyes. “I’m going to be homeless,” I murmured. “Thorn is going to fail me and then kick me out of here. Fuck, guys. I don’t know why I’m even bothering in the first place.”
Angie came close. She wrapped an arm over my shoulder and gave me a hug. “Look, Ruby. I’m not going to lie. It’s dangerous here. And well, now that you are here, it’s best that you try to learn as much as you can to protect yourself. Thorn might not be the most dangerous person around here.”
I sighed, leaning into her embrace slightly. “I know that you are trying to be a good friend, Angie, but this really isn’t a great pep talk. Can’t you say something like, ‘you’re a genius, and you’re going to be the most powerful witch ever’?”
She stepped back so she could look me in the face. “Actually, we don’t even know if you are a witch —”
Drew floated in between us, giving his sister a pointed look. “What my sister is trying to say is: Ruby, you are a genius, and you’re going to be the most powerful witch ever!” His half invisible face broke into a goofy grin. It was enough to make me laugh. “Now, come on, the fight is about to start, and I want to see two nice young men beat the crap out of each other.”
The shifter fight was held in an outdoor amphitheater at the edge of the grounds. It had seating that looked like large stone stairs, leading down to a semicircle stage area. We were slightly late, so the fight was already starting. Angie grabbed my arm and pulled me down to sit on one of the chilly stone seats.
“See that guy,” she pointed to a tall, dark-skinned, muscular man who was standing at the opposite end of the stage from Cade McWilliams. It was hard to tell, but from where we were sitting, it looked like the boy was even taller than Cade — a feat I found hard to believe. “That’s Jacob Savanah. He’s challenging Cade for the alpha position of the shifter group.”
So many of the words she just told me made little sense to my addled brain, but I just nodded, tired of asking questions, and hoping that it would all become clear.
“Can you tell what Jacob shifts into?” Drew asked, hovering in a cross-legged position just at our backs.
I stared down at the stage, trying to focus my eyes on the face of the new boy, but we were much too far away to see his eyes. “I can’t tell,” I admitted at a whisper. “Is he another werewolf?”
“No,” Angie replied. “He’s a lion shifter. That is one of the reasons why this fight is so unusual. Alpha’s at Ironwood are almost always werewolves. In fact, if I remember the history correctly, there hasn’t been a non-wolf alpha at Ironwood for over three hundred years. Not since the dragons died off.”
“The what did what?!” I hissed, turning quickly to stare at her. Angie didn’t answer.
A huge roar brought my eyes back to the stage. Where there once had been a boy, there was now a lion — a full-sized lion with a shaggy brown mane and everything. Jacob had transformed, and I had missed it.
Cade was still in human form. I watched him carefully, hoping to see when he shifted, but he just approached the lion as a man, and the two started circling. Jacob roared again and pounced. Cade twisted, stepping to the side so that the lion missed him. Completing the twist, he balled his fist and punched straight down into the thick mane surrounding the lion’s neck. The force of the punch pushed the animal to the ground. Jacob roared again, but this one was strangled, signaling the pain that he was in.
I was holding my breath, clutching my hands
up to my face so that I could just see the fight through my fingers. Cade seemed so brave, or stupid, to be fighting a lion without shifting. Or maybe, he was just that cocky.
All around me, the crowd was cheering. Cade turned and waved. He seemed to think that the fight was one punch and done, but I watched in horror as Jacob got to his paws, jumped, and sunk his teeth into Cade’s left shoulder. The man grunted. Reaching back, he grabbed the lion’s jaws with both hands and pulled them open. Blood dripped down his shirt.
“Oh, my God!” I hissed. I had never seen such violence before. My stomach was twisting. “Are they going to fight to the death?”
I felt Drew’s nod more that I saw it — like a cool breeze at my back. “They might,” he whispered. “It’s not unusual.”
With the lion’s jaws clutched firmly in his hands, Cade pulled the beast over his shoulder. The body of the big, heavy beast thudded into the stage floor. Cade kept pulling. With his hands wrapped between the fangs, he pulled until the lion started squirming in his grasp. It tried to bite. Its claws raked over the skin on Cade’s arms, but the man never let go, he just kept pulling like he was going to pull the lion’s head apart.
The air around the lion started to shimmer. Its body twisted. Human legs shot out from what was once a lion’s haunches. The tail shrunk and disappeared. Abs, strong muscular abs, showed from split fur. Jacob shifted back to human form. The change in his jaw shape threw off Cade’s grip.
Cade stepped back, narrowly avoiding the kick that Jacob sent towards his head. The momentum of Jacob’s kick brought his body up and around in a flip. Gracefully, he landed on his toes. It was at that point that I realized he was completely nude now. His shift had destroyed his clothing. I could see everything.
Wow, I thought, staring where I shouldn’t be staring. I felt my cheeks flush, and my pussy started to ache. Embarrassed, I glanced around to see if others were shocked, but no one seemed to be. Every person around me was still watching the fight intently. Perhaps nudity wasn’t such a big deal for the magic community.