Hekate’s Bride

I stare back at my reflection. Somehow, I have gone from being special to being scum. My icy blue eyes are red rimmed and tired. I clutch the sink and spit into the ceramic bowl before turning off the faucet.

I’m gonna survive the shit hole and return where I am meant to be.

Fuck Rune and the rest of the stupid students here. I am Astrid, and no one, absolutely no one can trample on me.

I’ll fight every one of them if I have to, and it doesn’t matter if they are Lycans are naturally stronger than me. I’ll win.

Why? Because I am Astrid Blackwood, daughter of the Alpha King. I’ll thrive in the godsdamned school.

*******

I’m late.

I know this because I can hear the sounds coming from the halls. It was hard locating my classroom. I have walked through three different halls, trying to figure out where Lycan History is holding.

My fingers squeeze around the only note in my hands as I try to take in deep calming breaths. I’m nervous and my heart is racing.

“It is just a damn class,” I repeat to myself over and over again, until I muster enough courage to step into what should be my first class of the day.

As I cross the threshold, a wave of silence washes over me. Every eye turns in my direction as I enter, footsteps echoing on the tiled floors. I swallow, giving the class a quick once over.

The room is large and rectangular, with rows of wooden desks arranged in perfect symmetry. At the front of the classroom stands the a woman, tall and stern with a sharp glare that seems to cut right through me. The walls are white and bare, sterile in every way, and the board… it’s a smartboard.

There is only one empty seat, and it is all the way back. A small mercy, thanks to the Goddess.

I make my way towards the desk, feeling the weight and heat of judgement from every angle. I’ve never quite felt this way before. It is odd. My back is hunched and my nails are biting deeply into my palms. I can’t deal. It feels like every movement I make in this place, every breath I take, every thought sets off some sort of alarm. I am used to being watched by people, but this is way out of my comfort zone.

The woman clears her throat just as my rump hits the chair, her voice ringing out like a cracked whip. “Stand.”

Fucking hell.

Clenching my jaw, I rise. A year of this. I have to do this for a year, and then I get to go back home. A year, and I get to make them apologize for treating me this way.

I can do this–

The female’s brown gaze drills into me and an unfamiliar pang of fear twist my guts as head begins to drop in absolute submission. I tremble as I hold my ground against her aura of sheer dominance.

This is why the Goddess separated all three races, never to be mingled with ever again. This isn’t even a fair fight.

“For it is your first class,” she says to the entire class, even if she’s looking only at me. “Your tardiness will be overlooked. However, starting tomorrow, you will be punished if you show up to your lessons late. A minute late will earn you a day cleaning the floors of the Star Halls during your first period. Two minutes, two days. An hour? Two months.”

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from whimpering. With each word that leaves her lips, the pressure in the atmosphere thickens. The students around me look nearly as sick as I do–but I look much, much worse.

The harder I fight the urge to kneel before her, the more my vision blurs and soon, something trickles down my nostril.

“And you know what missing my classes will earn you?”

I find myself shaking my head, fear overwhelming me.

“Failure, and what happens when you fail here?”

As one, the entire class, myself included, speaks the word that makes me shudder. “Expulsion.”

“Good.” To me she says, “Sit.”

I fall back on my chair as the heaviness in the air clears.

For the entirety of the class, I stare at nothing but the table as I wipe blood dribbling down from my nose. I try to concentrate on the pictures flickering on the screen and the words Mistress Zara speaks as explains them, but I find that I can’t.

My head hurts.

***********

I look around the hall allocated for combat training, and note the racks of weapons that decorate the walls. Ancient swords, spears, twin daggers, staffs, shotguns, bows and arrows, and clubs. So many weapons.

There are a few dozen already gathered in the vast hall, and more are still pouring in. They all look dazed, some in awe.

I’m pretty good with combat, having trained with the royal sentinels all my life.

However, training with werewolf sentinels and training lycans are very different. I can only hope the nuances aren’t too great.

I pace to the wall, leaning against it as more people come in, crowding the lower half of the hall.

“Hey,” comes a voice beside me, and I tilt my head lightly to have a look.

Hot damn.

A pair of golden eyes meets my gaze. It belongs to a face that is too beautiful to look at. His beauty is nothing like Rune’s that is a wild, uncultivated thing. His is a delicate, timeless beauty, and his features are soft. Touching him would be like touching a wet, striking painting.

His uniform is blue, but it isn’t like the kind everyone else is wearing. His has a silver star emblem on the breast of it, just above his front pocket.

His lips curve into a smile that somehow makes my day seem less bleak and every warning signal in my head goes off at once.Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

“Run from this one,” my instinct says to me. Even Sloan, my wolf, seems to have an opinion on this one.

No. He’s not my mate either.

Lycans don’t have the luxury that we do of having mates given to us by the Goddess. They get to choose who they want and soul bind with them. A mutual agreement, much like the ceremony the humans call ‘marriage’, but it goes deeper than even the mate bond between werewolves. Erasthai is what they call their chosen mates.

Unlike mating bonds that can either be rejected, accepted or severed, once lycans bond with their Erasthais, nothing short of the Goddess’s intervention can rip the bond.

I lean back on my heel and peer down at him even if he’s taller than me. “Not interested.”

He chuckles. “There’s a… uh… tag on your back.”

“What?”

“A tag–” He pauses when he realizes that I do not understand a word he is saying. He suddenly reaches around me, startling me.

I’m about asking what he thinks he is doing when he pulls something out from behind me.

It is a big card of some sorts.

He squeezes it in his hands before I can see what is written on it.

“Give me that,” I say, snatching it from his grip before he can throw it away.

My jaw clenches when I see what is written on it.

I’M A WEREWOLF PRINCESS, CUNT. MEET ME IN THE RESTROOM FOR A QUICKIE.

I crush the paper in my hand and look around. It must have gotten placed on my back when we were pouring into the hall. I peer into as much faces as I can. Who could have done that?

“Throw it away. It’s nothing important,” he says and begins to strut forward to join the rest where they have begun to converge.

I find myself saying, “Thank you…”

“Darian,” he says. “See you around, princess.”

I want to say more but the sound of a whistle cuts through the air, along with a barked order; “Twelve lines! Immediately! According to your colours. Do not waste my time!”

I shove the paper into my pocket and shuffle around, looking for the best line to stand in.

At the end of the shuffling, I am sandwiched between a man several feet taller than me and a round female.

I look around the male to the podium and there is a man standing atop it, all dressed in black from head to toe.

He makes the lot of us look like candy wrappers beneath him as our combat uniforms are decorated in different colours.

Mine is golden and there are a handful of students who also have on gold uniforms–that’s not the point. The point is, the man looks dark and ready to kick ass and we look absolutely ridiculous.

“I am Master Kaelan, your Combat Supervisor. Usually, trained sentinels are hired to be your combat partners for the session, however, the chancellor has decided to try a new approach this year. Instead, you will be fighting against each other under my supervision.”

His condition causes murmuring and hushed whispers. Even I am curious. Every year, my father hand picks sentinels trained for war to be taken into the Werewolf Academy, to aid our training and expose us to what we will face once the Blood Moon arrives.

“We will fight each other?” Someone asks on a different line, interrupting him and Master Kaelan’s head snaps in that direction.

“What is your name?”

“Alaric Grimshaw,” the student says haughtily, like he is someone to be taken note of.

Master Kaelan nods. “Good. Alaric, do you wish to continue where I left off?”

His voice is low and soft. That, right there, could have fooled me if I wasn’t looking at his face.

“No. I just–we all want to–”

He turns from Alaric, dismissing him. I’m starting to think the teachers here are just sadists. They just get off of making people look and feel stupid.

But I guess all lycans are wired that way.

There is sudden movement behind Master Kaelan and a couple of people file in. Men and women alike. Just when I think these people can’t get any hotter, I am struck to the chest with their finesse. I spy Darian among them and I wonder what he’s doing over there. Shouldn’t he be down here with us?

“For each colour, you are assigned a Star Student who will overlook your trainings, teach you and occasionally spar with you. If you have on white uniforms, Star Darian will be your instructor for this session. If you have on Blue Uniforms, Star Raven is your–”

Darian is a star student? Wow. Though I have no idea what that means but they seem to be very important people.

I am already sorting through the students lined behind Master Kaelan impatiently, searching for which has the golden star and who has been assigned to us.

But I don’t find a golden star. Twelve lines… so there should be twelve students. However, there are only nine.

I look towards the door from which they had come and the mystery is solved.

My gut is churning with a very sick feeling. My throat closes and my mouth runs dry as despair takes a hold of me.

Rune walks in through the door and the two bastards who made me lick his boots trail behind him. One has a green star on his uniform, the other has a red one.

That leaves…

My eyes drop down on Rune’s shirt and a shiny gold star sits proudly atop it.

Fuck.