by Jody Morse
I wasn’t sure if it really applied in this situation. It wasn’t like Kaden, Brett or Avery were dragon shifters.
There was also the fact that I wasn’t just a dragon shifter. Maybe I had picked up on the genes from my other paranormal races when it came to the romance department. I wasn’t sure. The only thing I did know was that I loved the idea of having one soulmate and being with only one guy, even though I wasn’t entirely sure if that was in the cards for me.
I also sometimes still wondered if I was meant to be with a guy from every paranormal race, but I could have been wrong about that. Now that Avery was gone, I was beginning to feel that devotion towards Kaden… even though I wasn’t entirely sure if I should let myself fall hard and completely for him, not after the way he had abandoned me last year. I was so afraid that he would end up doing it again.
“I can tell that you don’t have that the same way other dragon shifters do,” Nellie said, her voice slicing through my thoughts.
I glanced over at her. “How?”
“You’re thinking about a guy right now. Who is he?” she asked.
At that moment, I heard someone clear their throat from behind us. I nearly jumped a mile.
When I turned around, I found Kaden standing there, his blue eyes on me. “Juliana, you really shouldn’t be here. It’s against the rules.”
“Really, Kaden?” I asked. “I come here with you after curfew all the freaking time.”
“Yeah, well. Headmaster Crane is on his way here,” he said.
“Oh, shit. We need to get the hell out of here,” Noah said.
Nellie glanced over at me. “It was so good to meet you. Come visit me at my dorm sometime, okay? Room 18C. We gotta get the hell out of dodge.”
“See ya,” Jacob added.
Before I even knew what was happening, all three of them were standing with their heads to the ground. I watched as their bodies morphed; their skin became covered with scales, and their hands formed talons. Their long, bat-like wings appeared then, spanning across their backs.
Under the moonlight, I could tell that Jacob and Noah were both shades of green in color; Jacob was a shade of emerald green, while Noah was closer to a shade of teal, and Nellie was royal purple in color.
I watched as all three of them began to fly away from us then. I hoped that their dragon forms wouldn’t draw attention from Headmaster Crane, but I was pretty sure that they must have done things like this literally all the time without getting caught.
I turned to Kaden then. “Why did you come after me—” I started to ask, but he interrupted me by putting a finger to his lips.
Then he closed his eyes, and I saw a red glow surround us.
“I just used a dark magic spell to hide us in sight, sound, and smell,” Kaden explained. “I had Corbin teach me this spell. It’s supposed to be the strongest, most powerful veiling spell there is. They don’t even teach it here—probably because Headmaster Crane doesn’t want anyone learning how to hide themselves from him. But we should probably still hide from him, anyway, just in case. And we should hide fast—he’s headed in our direction as we speak. I can hear the sound of his footsteps.”
I glanced around and then pointed to some bushes.
We both knelt on the ground, close to one another.
“He can’t see this red glow around us?” I whispered.
“No. Only we can,” Kaden replied, keeping his eyes on Headmaster Crane.
I watched as he walked right past us, towards the stream. “He must be headed for the castle.”
“Yeah, that would be my guess.” He glanced over at me then. “Do you want to follow him?”
I hesitated. Every part of me told me that this was a bad idea. No, not even just a bad idea, but an absolutely horrible idea.
We already knew Headmaster Crane was the King of the Raven Shifters, one of the deadliest—if not the deadliest—paranormal race. Absolutely nothing good come of us following him.
And yet, every part of me wanted to follow him. I wasn’t sure what we would learn by following him, but I was convinced that we would find out something.
“Okay, let’s do it,” I found myself saying.
Kaden’s blue eyes found mine through the darkness. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Yeah, come on.”
I darted across the clearing, heading in the direction we had just watched Headmaster Crane go.
It didn’t take us long to catch up to him. We were just feet behind him as he jumped into the water, near where the portal was located.
The strangest thing happened then.
The stream, which normally casted that bright pink glow, changed colors. A shade of silvery light glowed off of it then, casting its glow out into the dark night.
“Why do you think the color changed?” I asked quietly.
“I’m not sure,” he replied, shaking his head.
“Let’s go after him.” I was just about to jump into the water when Kaden grabbed my arm.
“Let’s give it a few minutes so he can get to the other side of the portal before us. We don’t want him to hear the sound of the splash as we submerge ourselves in the water.”
“Oh, good point.”
We stood there for a few moments, and that was when we heard it: the sound of something screeching loudly—roaring, almost.
“It’s the dragon opening the portal,” Kaden said quietly, reading my mind.
We waited for a moment longer before entering the water.
Even as we submerged ourselves in the water, the red glow from the veiling spell encircled us. It acted as a flashlight as we swam to the murky depths of the water.
When we reached the gold dragon, we found that it was back in its usual place.
“Enter,” I thought as we approached the dragon.
I wasn’t sure if it would be able to hear or see me, since we had this masking spell on us, but within seconds, the dragon was making that roaring sound again and opening the ground up, revealing the dark hole that led to the other side.
Kaden and I exchanged a look. Then grabbing each other’s hand, we dove into the portal together.
Chapter 16
When we landed on the ground on the other side, I was surprised to see Headmaster Crane was walking through the woods in the direction of the castle. I had been expecting that he would be far ahead of us, but we had apparently traveled through the portal so soon after him that we’d ended up here. Feet away from him.
It was both nerve-wracking and adrenaline rush-inducing. Even though he couldn’t see us now, I was scared shitless of getting caught. But then there was another part of me that was excited to see what this would lead to… if it led to anything at all.
“This works out perfectly,” Kaden whispered to me—even though he didn’t actually need to be whispering. “I don’t have to spell the guards or anything. We can just follow him into the castle.” He paused, noticing how quickly Headmaster Crane was moving. “If we can keep up with him, that is.”
Grabbing my hand, Kaden and I both ran. Together, we both moved as fast as our feet would carry us.
We were about fifteen feet behind Headmaster Crane. Close, but not close enough.
I wished that I had the ability to shift into a dragon; if I did, I could have shifted right then and there. But instead, we just continued to run after the Headmaster.
As he approached the front of the castle, we tried to hasten our speed. We were now about ten feet behind him. If there was any chance of us sneaking into the castle with him, we had to get closer.
“Why do you think he’s in such a rush?” I asked Kaden. “I’ve never seen him move this fast before.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it must be something big.”
At that moment, Headmaster Crane pressed a code to get into the front door of the castle. He slipped inside.
The door was about to close behind him, but Kaden made a mad dash to it… just in time to hold it open with his
foot.
He then held the door open with his arm, allowing me to walk into the castle before him.
Headmaster Crane glanced over his shoulder then at the door.
I realized how this must have looked to him. From his point of view, the door was just randomly staying open in the dark night.
His face twisted into an unusual expression, and I wondered if he had somehow figured out that we were there.
I took a deep breath. We had made it this far, into the castle after him. We couldn’t get caught.
I couldn’t even imagine what the repercussions would be if we did get caught. I was pretty sure that we would both get expelled from school, even though Kaden hadn’t gotten expelled when Headmaster Crane had caught him here before. But this time was even worse. Headmaster Crane had warned him to stay away from me, and now here we were, sneaking into the castle together.
No, I was pretty sure that if the Headmaster figured out that we were here, he wouldn’t let us off as easy as he had let Kaden off last time. I was probably sure that he also wouldn’t have just expelled us, either. That would have been too easy. There was a good chance that he would have killed us. Even worse, he probably would have handed me over to the Dark Coven.
Kaden shot me a nervous look as he quickly—and carefully—closed the door behind us.
Headmaster Crane stared at it for a moment longer before continuing his way down the hallway.
I breathed a deep sigh of relief. We hadn’t been caught… yet. I hoped we could somehow keep it that way.
We followed him down the hallway. I was careful not to make too much noise with my feet, even though I knew it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like he, or anyone else, could hear us or our movements through this veiling spell that we were under. But I still didn’t feel comfortable making a lot of noise in case he could somehow overhear, or the sound aspect of the veiling spell stopped working.
Headmaster Crane continued his way down the hallway before finally turning into one of the rooms.
The door was open, and I heard people talking from inside. As I peered inside, I noticed that the room sort of reminded me of a court room, except there were two thrones at the very front of the room overlooking the seats lined up for the other people to sit in.
As Kaden and I slowly followed Headmaster Crane into the room, I noticed that there were a bunch of paranormal beings who I had never seen before, of all ages.
“It’s the Dark Coven,” Kaden whispered to me.
Oh shit.
That was the absolute last thing I had been expecting to find here, but it made sense. Why else would Headmaster Crane have to sneak off to his castle in the middle of the night?
What made me more nervous was knowing that I was about to hear everything Headmaster Crane was about to talk about with the Dark Coven. And even though I wanted to hear what he had to say, I also couldn’t help but feel like ignorance was also bliss.
I was about to hear how much danger my life was about to be in, and I wasn’t really prepared for that.
Kaden led me to the back of the room where there were two open seats.
We sat down and watched as Headmaster Crane continued to make his way to the front of the room.
“Welcome to all of the members of the Dark Coven,” Headmaster Crane began. “I’m afraid that no one else from the Kingdom of Raven Shifters is able to join us here today, but they are very excited to meet with all of you at a later time. For now, I thought it important for us to go over our plans. While some of these plans are subject to change over the course of the year, I am pleased to say that we are committed to building this alliance with you. As all of you know, the Kingdom of Raven Shifters is devoted to removing good magic from this world and replacing it with bad magic. It has long been our goal to ensure that this entire world—and the human world—eventually operates on dark magic. This is why we feel this war between good magic users and dark magic users isn’t only just essential. It’s inevitable. And I am personally taking steps to ensure that the odds are in our favor.
“I am preparing the students from the House of Darkness to fight alongside us,” Headmaster Crane continued. “Their professors are teaching them some of the darkest, most dangerous spells. They don’t know yet that the reason is because they’re being primed to fight against the good magic users. They’ll learn in time. From what I can tell, most of them will be more than willing to fight against the House of Mage—and all of the other Houses, for that matter. There are over two-hundred students belonging to the House of Darkness—more than two-hundred incredibly powerful students.”
I glanced over at Kaden. The look in his blue eyes mirrored my own. This wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all.
Like Everly had pointed out, we needed numbers. And Headmaster Crane was getting them. He had more than 200 students who were going to be fighting against us. Somehow, we had to build an army that was even half as big—and that wasn’t even to mention as strong. How were we going to get their level of strength?
I wasn’t sure, but there was one thing I did know, for certain.
This was far more than the Vixen alone were equipped to handle. Sure, we might have been one of the most powerful covens, and I was, allegedly, going to be one of the most powerful paranormal being of all time. But they outnumbered us by so much.
We needed to build an army.
“The other issue that I would like to discuss with all of you here today is Juliana Montgomery,” Headmaster Crane went on.
My stomach felt like it was doing flip flops. It was bad enough that they were talking about me at all, but the fact that I was in the room with them?
“Would the veiling spell hide my vomit?” I whispered to Kaden. “Because I’m pretty sure I’m going to puke.”
He reached out and took my hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
A woman at the front of the room raised her hand. “Is Juliana Montgomery really as powerful as everyone says she will be?”
“I personally believe that she will be far more powerful than most even believe she will be,” Headmaster Crane replied with a nod. “Her bloodline is far more powerful than anyone realizes.”
His words made me believe that he must have somehow known the truth about Rubeus Draco. I wasn’t sure what else he could have meant.
“I have watched this girl work on unlocking her abilities every single day. She is, no doubt, The Chosen One. What’s most impressive is her ability to control the elements. And the thing is, she doesn’t even realize how strong her affinities for the elements are. It’s quite possible that she could create the world’s deadliest storm without even realizing she did it. Just recently, she conjured a sea monster, and she did it entirely by accident.”
Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. He was leaving out the fact that the only reason I had managed to conjure the sea monster was because someone else had “loaned” me their dark magic. For some reason, Headmaster Crane didn’t seem to want the Dark Coven to know that, but I wasn’t entirely sure why.
“We have to take her down,” a man at the front of the room spoke up loudly. “We have to get rid of her.”
“Actually, this is where I beg to differ,” Headmaster Crane said. “Juliana Montgomery is, no doubt, a threat to our mission. She poses so many dangers—against us, against the world, in general. But we could actually benefit from Juliana Montgomery’s powers and abilities. We could use her.” He glanced around the room, and then his lips twisted upwards, into a smile. “No, rather than getting rid of Juliana Montgomery, we force her to join us.”
The Dark Coven all began to talk amongst themselves then; I could tell that some of them liked the idea, while others hated it.
“How will we get her to join us if she hates the idea?” One of the women in the front asked.
“Easy. We force her to. And the best way to do that is to put someone’s life in risk—someone who she cares about.” Headmaster Crane glanced around the room. “He’s not with us tonight, but he’s one of
you: Kaden Connor. He’s the current object of her affection, and I think it’s safe to say that we can use that to our advantage. If I had to guess, Juliana Montgomery would do anything for Kaden Connor.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong about that.
Kaden gave my hand a little squeeze then. I returned the squeeze. I was so glad he was there with me, because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to keep it together if I was there alone.
“So, what you’re saying is that Kaden is the enemy then,” a guy at the front of the room spoke up.
“What makes you think that?” Headmaster Crane asked.
“If Kaden is the object of Juliana Montgomery’s affection, then the feelings must be mutual, correct?”
“I’m not Kaden Connor,” Headmaster Crane replied, “but from where I stand, it seems that the boy is completely lovestruck by Juliana Montgomery.”
“Well, in that case, Kaden is the enemy,” the guy confirmed. “He can’t be fighting for our mission and believe in our cause the way he claims to, and still be in love with Juliana Montgomery—the most powerful good magic user in the entire world.”
“Yeah, Kaden Connor is the enemy!” Someone on the other side of the room shouted.
“Kaden is the enemy!”
“Kaden is the enemy!”
“Kaden is the enemy!”
The entire Dark Coven began to shout in sync with one another.
I found myself shrinking in our seats, even though no one could even see us. But I knew that if they did, they probably would have wanted to kill us.
Well, except for Headmaster Crane. It was clear that he didn’t want to kill me. He just wanted to use my abilities to his advantage.
To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure which was the worse of two evils: death or being given the opportunity to live, but only if it meant joining the Kingdom of Raven Shifters and the Dark Coven, both who wanted to completely eliminate the world of good magic.
“Now, now. We have time to determine how we feel about Kaden Connor at a later point in time,” Headmaster Crane said, his loud voice slicing through the silence that had entered the room. “Right now, we have to figure out when the best time to plan an attack would be. My vote is after this semester. The House of Darkness will be more powerful and better groomed to fight.”