Forsaken by E. M. Moore
3
Panic flutters in my chest. It isn’t as bad as Sean already deciding to send me Feral, but it’s up there. There’s a time limit now. I’ll actually know the date I have to leave this place. I never liked Greystone Academy much, but the alternative is worse.
“Does that come as a shock to you?” Ms. Ebon asks.
Honestly, nothing comes as a shock to me anymore. I nibble on that thought to see if I should say it out loud. Whatever Kinsey thinks, Ms. Ebon does still work for Greystone. I’m not sure how far my insolence will get me.
“Should it?” I ask, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of my tone. “I’ve been the longest matriculated student here ever. There had to be a day when that ride ended.”
Ms. Ebon glares at me. The look is so fierce that I’m almost taken aback by it. I’m the one that was told I’m on death row with an execution date, so shouldn’t I be giving her that look?
I wonder how long I’ll last outside the pack boundaries alone?
My mind swerves to Nathan. He’ll be here all by himself. Well, if he doesn’t follow me soon after.
“Miss Adams?” Ms. Ebon’s sharp tone makes me focus on her again. She leans back in her seat. “You seem resolved. I assumed since you were a friend of Kinsey’s you might be more....”
She weighs her next words, but I don’t give her a chance to voice them. “More prickly? Kinsey and Jonah didn’t have the weight of a year’s separation between them.” When I first came here, I tried so damn hard. I can still conjure the sting of his rejection as if I were feeling it for the first time. But lately, everything circles back to the standoff we’re having. “Sometimes, it’s even hard to remember Sean before he was an asshole to me.”
Inside, my wolf winces, and I don’t try to cover up the hurt. I have a working hypothesis that for wolves, the feeling of rejection is much more acute than for us as humans. For instance, when I’m fully shifted, I feel the tether pulling me back to Daybreak more than when I’m a human, but over the year, it’s lessened.
“So, you’ve decided to accept your fate?”
Just from the tone of her voice, I can tell Ms. Ebon thinks I’m wrong. Like I haven’t tried for a year to get Sean to see me as his mate instead of whatever the fuck is blocking him from accepting me. I’ve spent every ounce of my being on getting him back. I’m. Fucking. Exhausted. By it all. “What do you think I can do that I haven’t already tried?”
Ms. Ebon purses her lips as she regards me. My skin awakens at her inspection. Nathan is the only person who really sees me anymore. The shifters who walk these halls are just another statistic to manage for the authority figures here. Ms. Ebon, though, is actually looking at me as if I matter. She licks her bottom lip and pulls out a folder. “I wasn’t going to say prickly earlier. I was going to say fighter. Kinsey was a fighter. A stubborn one at that.” Her words come out on an exasperated sigh, but I’m pretty sure there’s some affection there, too.
“I’m a fighter,” I tell her. “I’ve been fighting.”
“Not with me in your corner,” she says flatly.
I rear back in surprise, my fingers sinking into the purple velvet of the armrest. “You’re going to help me? Is that even allowed?”
“I don’t have a student right now, and I have a very good success rate. Lydia Greystone herself asked me to take a look at your folder.”
“When she gave you the deadline,” I state. I find nothing helpful about what Lydia Greystone has done. In fact, I can’t stand her. All the packs agreed to the Rejected Mate Academy, but it was the Lunar Pack’s line that implemented it. Rumor is they’re the strictest pack of them all. I don’t know about that, seems like Daybreak is just as bad.
“Let’s get down to business,” Ms. Ebon directs, maneuvering the conversation as if she could do this in her sleep. So many Lunar Pack shifters have sat in this very chair, and they’ve succeeded. I suppose she is the person to listen to. “The Winter Solstice party is coming up. Since Daybreak is hosting, I’m going to petition for Daybreak shifters to return to their pack territories.”
“W-what? Why?”
Ms. Ebon glances up from the paperwork in front of her. “For you, Miss Adams. I’ve read through your file and the sparse notes your own advisor has left. I see nothing has progressed in your relationship with your mate for quite some time. It’s obvious that will still be the case, even with the deadline looming over our heads. However, a change of scenery might do you both good. Returning to Daybreak and seeing you more often than the bi-weekly mandatory meetings, might show your fated mate what he’s been missing.”
“I...don’t think—”
“You don’t think, but you don’t know, either, Miss Adams. You’ve been here for a very long time. Your mate has obviously not given up because he hasn’t filled out the final paperwork. There is hope for you yet. The Winter Solstice party is your last chance. I suggest you use it wisely.”
Her words are uttered in a way that I shouldn’t argue, but I’m sick and tired of bending over backward for Sean when he might be with Gayle, not even thinking twice about me. Actually, I’m not doing myself any favors by only suspecting their transgressions. I know. I just don’t have the evidence. “Ms. Ebon…” I clear my throat as nerves set in, “I suspect that my mate is with someone else in Daybreak. I don’t think going back there will change anything.”
She lifts a judgmental brow. “Is there any proof?”
“I’m here, so no, I don’t have proof. Do I have any recourse if that’s what I find when I return to Daybreak? What if he is with another shifter and that’s why he won’t accept me? Does that seem fair to you? Made to go Feral when he’s the one who’s breaking the mate laws?”
She doesn’t rise to my bait. She’s like an emotionless marble statue. “I suppose there is more than one reason why you should return to Daybreak, then, isn’t there?” She doesn’t pause long enough for me to answer. “I must impress upon you the urgency of this, Miss Adams. Lydia Greystone has set the time limit on your fate with us. It’s now up to you to make the future happen.”
“He doesn’t love me,” I argue.
She shakes her head. “That’s simply impossible. Shifters are bound to their other halves. Find a way to make him see you, Miss Adams. Open yourself up. Fate will do the rest.”
Before I even realize what I’m doing, I’m already shaking my head. My wolf agrees with me. I’ve bared my soul to Sean, only to have him completely forsake me. I don’t think I can go through that again.
“You have two weeks,” Ms. Ebon states.
My heart stops. It’s like a tractor trailer gunning straight for me, its shiny, platinum grill lit up with neon warning signs. In slow motion, the blood stops pumping through my veins, my brain blips out like someone shut me off, and my body practically deflates.
Two weeks.
I’ve been here for over a year, and they expect me to get Sean back in two weeks?
Panic crashes into me, my body coming to life in a thrum of anxiety and worry. Those emotions give way to anger in a split second. “This is bullshit.”
“Be that as it may, Miss Adams, it is reality.”
She returns to flipping through my file, stopping to jot down notes of her own. Adrenaline courses through me like electricity through high-voltage lines. No matter how wrong this is, nothing will change. I can’t change Ms. Ebon’s mind in a few minutes, and hell, it’s not even her mind I need to change. It’s the whole damn system. All eight packs agreed to this barbaric nonsense. Not only is it just not right, but did anyone stop to think that the wrong shifters are at Greystone? Surely Sean should be in here for rejecting me.
I stand, the chair scraping against the stone floor as I move, and Ms. Ebon glances up. “Somewhere to be?”
My fingers fidget near my side. I haven’t exactly been complacent with what’s going on here, but I haven’t bucked the system either. Maybe it’s time I do? I’d rather go Feral than walk my rejected ass back into Daybreak and beg Sean to take me.
Maybe I’m finally as royally pissed off as Nathan seems to be lately.
It’s as if the whole world is against me. Especially Lydia Greystone. She won’t stop until all the rejected shifters are gone. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it earlier. Of course I would be on her radar—I’ve been in limbo for a year. They’re not going to host me here forever.
I spin on my heel and start for the door. Ms. Ebon sighs. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere but here.” My fingers wrap around the doorknob and I yank the huge, wooden door open. Inside, my wolf raises a fur-covered paw in solidarity with me. It’s not exactly visuals that I get while human, it’s feelings. And right now, she’s on my side, riding this wave of not doing what everyone is telling me to do. I’ve been on that route for far too long.
I hang a left out of the office. Too agitated to go back to my room or eat dinner with Nadia, I need an escape. I’ll end up biting the sweet shifter’s face off, and I really don’t want to do that to someone so innocent. Instead, I head right for the arched wooden doors. They must be at least twenty feet in height. Despite their antiqueness, the front doors open easier than Ms. Ebon’s.
I sprint down the stone steps, leaving behind the castle-inspired academy with its turrets that rise so high they’re practically mingling with the clouds. I’m heading away from the awful place. Away from the uncaring people inside.
Briefly, I stop in one of the changing huts gracing the manicured lawn. The string of octagon-shaped structures are available like gym lockers in high school. They’re actually a nice feature to keep our clothes from getting ruined before we shift or to prevent us from walking around naked all the time.
My wolf paws at her home inside me. She can barely wait for me to slip out of my Greystone Academy uniform. The pleated skirt hits the ground first. Then the buttoned blouse. I practically rip off the hideous, long, black socks. Lastly, my bra and underwear are tossed onto the bench. I barely stand up straight before my wolf starts to take over.
My fingers spread out, then curl under first. It’s always started that way with me. Then my ribs, my legs. The sound of bones breaking filters through my ears as fur sprouts over my arms, rippling underneath the surface, then growing at an alarming rate until my body doubles over, paws hitting the ground instead of hands.
I retreat into a small section of my wolf as she takes over. I can hear her, feel her, but it’s like sitting in the backseat while someone else manipulates the wheel. That’s what I need right now—someone else to drive for a while so I can think.
My wolf shakes, brown fur billowing. She paws the door open, and as soon as it slams closed, she lifts her muzzle into the air and howls. Pain and agony cement in our bones. She’s more connected to our pack than I am right now, and this news has hit her like a battering ram to the chest. What she can’t say with words, she says with yelps and howls until she takes off. Her claws dig through the green grass; muscles stretch and thrum with the feeling of being used.
She tears through the tree line and veers left. We’ve been at the academy for so long that we know these woods in our soul. We only have a few acres to run before we’re in Lunar Pack territory, a forbidden territory for someone like me. Thank goodness we’ve explored this area for so long that we know where all the good—and safe—areas are.
My wolf and I must be on the same page because she heads toward our secret place. She drives forward, the rocky peak in the distance small and then hidden completely from view when she enters the tall, forest trees. She keeps running, jumping over fallen limbs and bushes, streams and rocks, until she gets to the base of the hill. Leaping onto the first rock, she digs her paws in as she climbs upward.
The closer we get to the top, the more the sun shines through the canopy of trees above us, glittering on the dew-laden grass. Striations of rock peek between the ground foliage until she bursts through the last set of trees and comes to a halt on top of the flat hill. It’s not a huge space, maybe a swimming pool size, but what I like most is the view from the top. It’s breathtaking. My wolf and I feel one with nature when we’re up here. We feel like we have a purpose.
We feel...free.
