by S. L. Morgan
“Everyone, in formation,” he said, arms crossed, as he turned to face Melanie’s bright, glittery smile when we filed into rows, facing our master.
She glared at me where I stood, front and center, since that’s where my last drill had me lining up at the command. Her eyes drifted back to where Dominic stood, silently and intimidatingly, facing her.
“You didn’t have to stop their class for me,” she said in the most mature tone I’d heard her use since dealing with this nightmare.
“You out here to join my unit?”
She braced her heart, cheeks flushing under Dom’s stance. “Heavens, no. I’m a fairy, not a shifter.”
“Then, please tell me why I’m talking to a fairy when I should be working with my group of shifters.”
“I…I…” she stammered. “Listen, Dom, I—”
“I’m known as Master Dominic in front of my unit. I assume that even a fairy could respect that,” he cut her off, and I could tell Dom was more pissed than I’d seen him since realizing he wasn’t shaking this leprechaun off so easily.
“Master Dominic, then. Sorry about that.” She laughed nervously out toward the silent rows of shifters who studied her with annoyance for interrupting.
“Why are you here?” he asked tersely. “You’ve successfully interrupted my training, and I think you owe all of us an explanation for it.”
I saw her eyes spark with a flame of anger before she answered him.
“My dad said that you are no longer allowed to let these shifters shift outside their one hour a day,” she said sternly.
“Is that so? Last I recall, I determine when my shifters shift and when they don’t. The president of the school might need to check the rules of his own academy again.”
“If my dad says it needs to stop, then it needs to stop. Besides,” she looked at me as if she knew I was the reason Dom was allowing us to shift in our morning classes, “I don’t see any of the other masters allowing it.”
Dom’s lips were pressed in a fine line as I watched the veins in his stiff, biceps pop. I could tell he was doing everything in his power not to knock the sparkles out of this fairy’s brains.
“Scott, Fin, Ian!” Dom called out to the masters who were working with the other units in our area, never once taking his eyes off the leprechaun in front of him.
“Master Dominic?” Ian was the closest and first to approach. “Is there a problem?”
“It would appear so. It seems like the school president doesn’t want me allowing my unit to shift in our morning drills.” He glanced over at Finley and Scott, jogging over with confused looks on their faces.
“Why are you down here with the shifters?” Finley asked Melanie with a look of irritation on her face. Finley was as ballsy as I was with this chick and held nothing back when the girl did something entirely out of line to disturb Dominic.
“She’s down here to let us know that the masters no longer have authority over their units.”
“Give me a break,” Scott sighed as he rolled his eyes at the leprechaun. “Of course, we have control over our units. This is how we master them,” he said, glancing over to me and giving me a look of what the hell is this chick up to now?
“Nah,” Dominic said, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes, but we could all tell he was effing pissed beyond belief. “Apparently, I’m not allowed—by order of the school’s president—to let my unit shift as I have been doing the past few months.”
“Really?” Finley glared at Melanie. “Did the school board and Elite Council change the rules, and we weren’t made aware?”
“I’m pretty sure Samson would have informed us before a random fairy got the chance,” Ian added.
“Yeah, me too,” Dom answered. “Tell your dad I appreciate his suggestion, but I think I’ll keep my routine as is.”
“My dad makes the final call on this and everything else,” she literally stomped in protest.
Oh, damn, this shit is going down! No way in hell Dom is backing down from a fight in this mood.
“Your dad can take it up with the masters. He can also go through the proper chain of command…the one put in place by Immortal Academy decades before he came around. If he has a problem with the way I train my unit, then he should have brought that to Professor Samson’s attention and not sent his fairy daughter down to inform me in the middle of class,” Dom said in a low voice, and I could sense his wolf was present in his tone alone.
“Fine!” She lifted her chin. “You won’t be running your unit much longer anyway.”
“I know that. We cut out on our vacation in a week,” Dom answered, all masters flanking his sides.
“No, you won’t be going on vacation. We’re both instructed to work on all of the material for my project and introduce it to the Elite Council this summer.”
I watched Dom’s fingers as they dug into where he had his arms folded. It was easy to see he was fighting everything not to come undone in front of everyone. I would have punched her out by now, but he was in supreme, livid-pissed control.
“Did you hear me?” she insisted.
“He’s a shifter. He could hear you from across the school if he wanted,” Finley snapped. “Get out of here. We’ll request a meeting with Samson and your daddy once we’re done drilling our units.”
“In fact,” Scott clapped Dom on his rigid shoulder, “we’re all going to let our units shift with yours, Master Dominic. Let’s let them challenge each other their last week of school, eh?”
Dom nodded, and I could tell while Finley was rising to fight the leprechaun’s idiocy, Scott was working to keep Dom chill.
“Then, that’s that,” Dom said.
“And about this summer? You and I—”
“You…” Dom interrupted with a growl. His arms dropped to his side, and it was a split-second move when I saw him nearly reach out to the chick before stopping himself. “You and I will be very, very far from each other this summer. Is that clear?”
“I’m not one of your students. I don’t appreciate you—”
“No, you’re not,” Dom said. “My students aren’t rude. They have respect for their peers, and they don’t interrupt others’ learning time. You’ve crossed way too many lines just by coming down here and interrupting my class, not to mention all of the other lines you crossed once you started talking. All this coming from a freshman who shouldn’t be at IA in the first place? I don’t think so. Why don’t you and I go and take this issue to the school president ourselves, along with my professor, and we can work out all the details of the offenses you have perpetrated against my students and me?”
“It doesn’t have to come down to this, Dom.”
“Like I said, I’m Master Dominic to you from here on out, is that clear, fairy?” Dom said, his tone so dangerous it sent a chill up my spine. “Let’s go,” he held an arm out. “I’m sure Samson and the president will love us rudely interrupting their staff meeting this morning because a freshman can’t follow a simple rule at this school.” He looked back at us, “You’re free to shift and follow Master Scott’s unit.”
I hoped to God that doing this would let her dad see that while she might’ve been smart, she was too immature to be around college students, and then maybe he would kick her back to the school she came from. Perhaps he’d already seen her obsessive crush on Dominic and would get Dom’s back on the whole thing.
That night, I sat with Vannah under the rainbow trees, not having seen Dom for the rest of the day.
“Do it again,” Vannah said with a smile. “Ethan, watch. She’s got this.”
I smiled at the comfort of having Ethan with us, and I was more determined to get this done because E said Dominic had been studying in his room all day and wanted to be left alone. Up until Ethan joined us, I had assumed the worse had happened in Dom’s impromptu meeting with the president, but now I knew that even if it may have gone badly, at least Dom was still here and Ethan was chill.
“Jenna?” Ethan cut through my th
oughts. “Do it again, but don’t let it glow. Think about Dominic needing you to make this work.”
“Got it,” I answered.
I closed my eyes and imagined myself in Dominic’s room, showing him the progress I’d made by creating this cloaking bubble and watching me disappear when I walked into his room to where he slept across from Ethan’s area of their shared dorm.
“She did it. I can’t see you here or even the bushes all around you!” Ethan said, then he started laughing, “but I still see the bubble.”
I reopened my eyes. “Agh, dammit!” I said, my bubble popping, literally. “Well, it works, and by the end of this stupid last week of school, I’ll have it down for good.”
“Yes.” Ethan nodded. “Dominic needs you with him.”
“So, you’ll be cool with a new roommate?”
Ethan grinned. “Yes. This is healthy for Dominic. You need to work faster.”
“I’m working as fast as I can. Is he okay? I missed him today.”
“He has to study, Jenna. You have to study too,” he informed me. “There are a lot of finals starting tomorrow. You need to pass them.”
“Yes, she does,” Vannah grinned. “Alright, let’s head up. I’m sure Dom wants to see his girl before bed.”
“Yes.” Ethan nodded, “I will tell him how well you’re doing.”
“I need him to focus on school, E, or I’d tell him. I can’t give him false hope in letting him know what I’m trying to do until I get it down for good.”
“Do not give him false hope. Never do that.”
“Yes.” I linked my arm through my owl shifter’s, “Let’s go say goodnight to Dom.”
“Then you have to study.”
Too bad studying consumed all of us so much that I was worried about whether or not I was going to get this cloaking thing down, but as the last day of school rolled around, I knew I’d gotten it down.
I couldn’t wait to finish my finals, and then school was going to be out of my way. We’d get to sleep in if we wanted to and do fun courses and activities until virtual summer vacation started in three days, but I’d planned to spend the next day and the entire night alone with Dominic, cloaked under my bubble. Unfortunately, the psycho fairy ended up roping Dom into writing the material for her dumbass project for the Elite Council, so we were working out the lies for the group to tell the inquiring leprechaun when she came sniffing around.
Luckily, Vannah was already prepared to cut her off if she asked where Dom and I were, telling her we’d taken Ethan on a trial quest to see if his owl could monitor master quests like the hawks do. That would hopefully shut her up until it was vacation time.
Now, I needed to hope that Dom had finished jamming through writing the material for her project, and his good news would be that he was finally done spending every waking moment with a deranged leprechaun for the past week.
35
“How do you think you did?” Bradley asked as we walked toward the exit of our final class in House Fae.
“My mind was all over the place, but I think I nailed the essay section.”
“That was the worst part for me.” Bradley grinned, then stopped at the top of the steps of the building. “Hey, I want to say I’m sorry for giving you a hard time and not wanting to let go of us.”
I smiled at the handsome bear shifter. “My mind has been so busy with that Melanie chick, I hardly noticed if you tried to keep it going. So, with that, I’m sorry if I seemed bitchy while we went through that breakup or whatever.” I rubbed my forehead, looking out and not seeing Dominic waiting anywhere. “God, she’s a nutcase.”
Bradley chuckled. “She’s pretty cool, but I can see where she would bug you and especially Dominic.”
“You think?”
Bradley patted my shoulder. “Well, this is it, last day. My virtual vacation starts tomorrow. Have a good summer, Jenna.”
“You too. Where are you headed?”
“A state called Alaska.” He grinned. “A group of shifters thought it would be cool to get a cabin in the middle of nowhere and shift whenever we wanted. There’s a lot of wildlife there, so I don’t think we’ll come into human problems.”
“That sounds awesome. Have a good one, and I’m glad that in the end, we’re sort of friends?” I questioned, not really knowing how he felt about it all.
“Always.” He answered and then hopped down the steps to a group of shifters. He wasn’t losing much after we broke up; in my opinion, he was gaining a whole heck of a lot more.
After dinner, there was still no Dominic in sight. Apparently, he was with Melanie, trying to cram the last of this program. If I’d seen him at all over the past week, it was for a very short goodnight or morning shift to let our wolves run together.
Thank God Samson and the other masters had Dom’s back on his allowing us to shift during morning routines because the president tried to back his daughter on forcing Dominic to end it altogether.
Tonight, I would see him, I just didn’t think it would take being out here in the rainbow trees at midnight to finally get me, Vannah, and all the trees in this area cloaked. I had to pull that cloak down fast because we couldn’t have the school noticing that their nature had simply vanished. After going back and forth with creating it, manipulating it, and feeling its strength, I had it, and Vannah and I were sneaking back up to our dorms.
“I had Ethan hide you some pajamas,” Vannah said in a low voice. “He’s happy you’re surprising Dom.”
“Well, you both had a lot more confidence in me than I thought.” I chuckled.
“I knew you would do it. Your mind was more relaxed tonight. There are no more finals, and we’re officially on summer vacation.”
“Yes!” I nearly squealed. “I just hope Dom and I can go with you.”
“Stop thinking,” Vannah corrected me. “Focus on helping him tonight. We’ll worry about the rest later.”
“So, Lusa knows, and thank God Kat left for her vacation after finals today. I can’t believe we’ve been stuck with her this entire time.”
“What I can’t believe is it took a leprechaun for you to finally get along.”
“So damn true. She’s not all that bad, I guess. She just hates me for being with her guy,” I said with a laugh.
“Yet, somehow, you two are talking like decent individuals.”
“Well, we finally have one thing in common. We want the leprechaun transferred to a facility that deals with sociopaths.”
“I think anyone who’s watched her does. She is a leprechaun who’s showing her true colors. That’s never a good thing.”
“Yes.”
Vannah grabbed my arm before I walked down the hall to Dom and Ethan’s room. “You’re doing awesome with everything, but you haven’t really seen him all week. I know it’s naturally bugging you that he’s been with a chick…alone,” she stated. “Can you handle this little reunion?”
“Dom’s probably half awake, and all we’re going to do is snuggle up.” I grinned.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “So, who’s sneaking the food to you two if you both are hiding here until vacation?”
“Maybe we can get one of Dom’s friends to do it. Hopefully, he finished up with the stalker today, seems how I haven’t seen him since this morning. He wasn’t even there when we all shifted tonight.”
“Okay. You may have to keep it chill,” Vannah said. “Don’t want Ethan traumatized.” She clapped my shoulder, “Go.”
“True. Love ya, Vannah, and thank you!”
Vannah smiled and headed down the hall to our dorm room. I started thinking about how I needed to remember to cloak the room once I saw Dom on a personal level for the first time in what felt like a month.
I knocked softly on the door twice, and the door flung open. Dom stood there, seemingly annoyed by my presence. His eyes were dark and his face threatening enough to make me take a step back in confusion.
“Are you okay?” I p
eered into the room to see if Ethan was up.
“Fine. Get in here before someone sees you out here at one in the morning.”
He closed the door behind me, and I had never felt his alpha side pouring out of him so aggressively before.
“Where’s Ethan?” I asked.
“Asleep, like I was, and you should be.”
“I have a surprise for you, and it couldn’t wait.” I held my ground, knowing his attitude was the end result of Dom hitting an emotional rock bottom with that annoying leprechaun and us being separated.
“A surprise?” He looked toward the door to his right. “Was that what E was babbling on about so happily?”
“Yeah, I feel bad I’m so late,” I said.
“It can wait until morning, Jen. I have to sleep. Sleep is the only thing getting me through, resting my mind from the chaos.”
“Watch this,” I said.
I looked at the other side of the living area of this suite. It was the door that I was sure was Dom’s room, and I imagined it disappearing, all the energy gone and never existing. I had to do extremes, or this cloak wouldn’t work for me. Without the bubble we’d seen every time I tried this, it was an energy I felt leave my body, and suddenly the door was gone.
“That’s amazing,” Dom said. “Now, where do I go for the bathroom? You just got rid of it.”
I sighed. “I thought that was your bedroom. Besides, it doesn’t matter if it’s the bathroom or not.” I closed my eyes, held my palms up, and felt more energy leave to cloak the entire room and all of us in it.
I felt Dom’s sturdy hands in mine, and when I reopened my eyes, his somber gaze took my breath away. I missed this perfect face whether or not it was smiling. I could sense he was desperate, hungry, and craving to be with me—almost with a power that seemed stronger than what I’d used to cloak this place.
“I’m sorry I’m not reacting properly. I’ve been so frustrated that…”
I cut him off with a kiss and didn’t expect what was to follow. The kiss was harsh and strong, and I loved it. He pulled me up in his arms, and I heard a door open, and then my feet were on the ground, my back against the wall with Dominic gripping my hands, pulling them above my head as his lips left mine. My knees buckled, having my man yearning for more and his low growls erupting from deep inside him with each kiss he offered my aching body.