Clash of Claws (Shifter Guardians Academy #1)

Chapter 1

AVERY

“Your beast was seen.”

I looked up from where I was scratching away some dried blood that lingered on my thigh.

Dad leaned against the heavy door of my hospital room, his broad shoulders hardly fitting within the frame.

He wore a look of concerned resignation as he raked a hand through his thick brown hair, the room’s harsh fluorescent lights illuminating the tired lines of his face.

“I’m not surprised,” I said. “It was a loud and conspicuous fight. Who was it?”

“The Martins. They were walking their dog down the street from where Ian found you.”

Damn it. I blew out a breath, slumping where I sat cross-legged on top of the itchy bed covers. My leg, which had been nearly shredded to pieces earlier in the night, had healed almost completely, with only jagged pink scars marring my skin. Those would disappear in a week or two, hopefully.

Since I was no longer on the brink of death, I’d been allowed out of my hospital gown and wore a baggy sweatshirt and pajama shorts. The needle of my IV drip was still buried in my hand. I’d fought an extremely surly nurse to have that removed and lost.

“And you think they might cause us trouble?” I asked.

The Martins were middle-aged, soft-spoken, and had seemed kind in the few interactions I’d had with them. Mr. Martin was a minor shifter of some kind, and I assumed his wife was latent, as most females were. Not the type to stick their noses in the business of Primes.

“I don’t know,” Dad replied. “But Daniel Martin has a well-connected brother who lives up in the Hills. You’re a rarity, and it’s not hard to imagine that he might mention what he saw. Who knows where that information could go within the shifter community and what might be done with it.”

“You’re being paranoid,” I replied with a dismissive wave. “And it’s not like I had any other choice. I had to shift.”

My beast half, who was sleepy and quiet as I healed, gave a little growl of pride. She didn’t get to come out often, but we’d held our own against some shitty odds tonight.

He swallowed roughly. “I know, honey. We’re lucky Ian arrived when he did.”

Ian, my younger brother by thirteen months, sat in the single plastic chair next to my bed.

His katana was in his lap, and he was also babysitting my two wakizashi blades.

He’d tucked them neatly into their sheaths, which were attached to the vinyl harness I wore like a backpack when I was out on patrol.

They hung over the arm of his chair, a little too far out of my reach for my comfort.

Ian hadn’t moved from that spot since I’d been brought in, apparently, and he glared at me, his usual devil-may-care smile nowhere to be seen.

“Yes, it was indeed lucky for me to stumble upon my sister, shifted into her beast and bleeding all over the street, as she fought two wraiths, alone, that were definitely a Ripper and probably a fucking Giant.”

I’d had to shift because that Giant had destroyed my leg.

I’d needed to heal, and quickly. I’d managed to tear up the wraiths, first with my blades and then with my claws, just enough that they’d weakened by the time Ian arrived.

He was able to get his blade through both of their necks with what little help I’d had left to give.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “We’d cleared the block, and we hadn’t seen anything besides swarmers all night.” I looked at Dad. “What the hell were wraiths like that doing all the way down here in the city?”

“I have no idea,” he replied. “Joseph and Kai ran the entire block again after we moved you, but they didn’t find anything else.”

My stomach swooped at that news. My other dads were deadly with their blades, but if they had run into more wraiths of the caliber that’d attacked me, they’d have been in quite the pinch without Rand—the dad that was currently scowling at me from the doorway—on hand to throw his beast into the fight.

Kai’s cougar was vicious, but he wasn’t very large, and Joseph shifted into a fox, which was no good in a fight with most wraiths.

Rand’s beast was a mighty Alpha wolf and a true Prime on the power scale, but he’d been occupied carrying me five blocks to the only small inpatient facility in the city that was run and staffed by shifters.

Or so they’d told me. I’d passed right out after Ian had cleaved the last monster’s head off.

“Did those two bastards kill anyone before they found me?” I asked.

Dad nodded, his face grim. “Two. No one we know. They’re in the small morgue in the basement.”

How moondamned terrible. It wasn’t the first time—and it wouldn’t be the last—that the wraiths managed to kill those of us who lived here in the city, away from the shifter communities, but my family and a few others had been doing our best to keep the casualties to a minimum.

No one else was going to do it, since the Guardians couldn’t be bothered to patrol this close to the city.

“And we’ll find out over the next few days if they managed to get to any humans,” Dad added. “There were a few revelers out and about.”

What a disaster this night had been. Ian and I had easily eliminated a small horde of swarmers that’d made their way into our neighborhood, and my dads had cleared another batch of them, along with a weak Ripper.

It’d been quiet after that, so I’d just skipped off down the block to see if I could catch the kebab cart before it closed at midnight.

Then everything had gone completely to shit.

But I’d survived, and the fallout of my beast battling wraiths out in the open wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle. I sat up a little straighter in bed and pasted on my best confident face. “Dad, it will be okay. I know you think the same thing could happen to me that happened to Mom—”

“I don’t think, Avery. I know.”

“—but we’ll be careful. Plus, things are evolving. There are more and more females with a beast soul in every generation. It’s not so uncommon anymore. Only regressive weirdos think we’re an abomination.”

His face hardened, and the Alpha wolf appeared in his stare.

“It is not the fact that you can shift that is the problem. It is what you shift into that is the problem, and you know that. I will not gamble with your life. Your mother was targeted and killed because of what she was, and we will not lose you the way we did her.”

A knock sounded at the door, saving me from having to formulate a response to the reminder of the worst thing that’d ever happened to us.

Dad opened it, and Kai slipped into the room, looking tired.

He had on the same dark thermal shirt that we all wore when we were patrolling in the cold weather, and it was torn where something with rather large claws had swiped at his side.

His katana was still strapped to his back, and his black hair stuck out in several directions.

“Hey, you’re awake,” he said softly, padding over to me and dropping a kiss on the top of my head. “You scared the shit out of us, Ave.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I grumbled.

He swept a quick glance over my leg. Satisfied I was not currently at death’s door, he squeezed Ian’s shoulder before perching in the windowsill.

The view of the street outside, shrouded in darkness except for the dim yellow glow of the streetlamps, framed his tall, languid form.

There was no moonlight tonight, which was why we’d all been on watch in the first place.

Kai quirked a dark brow at Rand, who was back to holding up the door. “Did you convince her?”

“Working on it.”

I felt as resigned as Dad looked. I knew what was coming. It was something my parents had brought up several times before, but I’d always refused.

My family was here. The need was here. I didn’t want to leave them.

“It’s time, Avery,” Dad said with finality. “If you enroll at Proteus College, you’ll be away from here if someone comes looking for you, safe behind the wards of the school and blending in with thousands of other shifter students.”

“But Dad—”

“And, more importantly, if you enter the Guardian training program and prove what an asset you could be to the wraith defense efforts, you’ll be better protected there than we can make you here.

The Guardians are a powerful, independent force, and they watch out for their own.

The powers that be will see you as useful and necessary despite what you are. ”

Kai nodded. “Even if tonight hadn’t happened, Ave, you can’t live your life this way forever.

Hiding. Never being able to let your beast run in the woods with the rest of us.

Always looking over your shoulder. Risking your life if you face a wraith or any other powerful opponent that forces a shift, but also risking your life if you don’t shift.

Your mom was careful, but we all got too comfortable.

Too complacent. We will not let that happen again. ”

The air in the room grew heavy with the weight of their worry, the wounds left by their loss that would never fully heal. Tears welled in my eyes, and I rubbed them away.

Having a real college experience did appeal to me, at least a little bit, but I had mixed feelings about the Guardians.

We needed them, and joining their ranks was supposedly one of the highest honors a shifter could achieve.

They were highly respected and paid a very generous salary, but that was because they did one of the most dangerous jobs in existence.

A job my family did several days a month for no pay because the Guardians, like our society at large, didn’t bother with those who chose to live outside the shifter communities.

I turned to my brother. “What do you think?” I asked softly.

He looked as tired as everyone else, but a smile finally crept back onto his face. “I think it’s time for a change in scenery. I’m going with you.”

Joy bloomed in my chest. “Really?”

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously.”

“You really think the school will let us enroll this late in the game?” I asked Dad.

He shrugged a giant shoulder. “Joseph knows one of the faculty there from back in his apothecary training days, and she can get your applications onto the right desk quickly. When we fill out Avery’s, we will heavily imply that I’m her biological father.”

We actually didn’t know which of my dads was my biological father, and I liked it that way.

Ian and I both looked like our mom, with our cornflower-blue eyes and our hair that was so ashy-blond that it almost appeared silver.

But not only was Ian’s beast a fox, he also had a solid secondary affinity for apothecary magic, so we could all guess that Joseph was his bio dad.

I wrinkled my nose. “You’re dangling me as bait for a Prime quad.”

“I can’t help it if they assume you’re a latent female from a Prime shifter line,” he said with another shrug. “And they will fast-track you right into the school because of it, even midyear, which is what we need. We’ll ensure Ian’s acceptance is part of the deal.”

Kai shot me an imploring look from his window perch. “And maybe be open to the whole bonding thing, Ave. There’s no better way to have someone constantly watching your back than bonding with a power quad, especially if they are also highly trained Guardians.”

I scowled. “I will not whore myself out to a bunch of assholes who can’t even be bothered to do their jobs well enough so that shit like this”—I gestured wildly at my healing leg—“doesn’t happen on the doorsteps of Fulton City.”

My dads exchanged a look, but before they could start on me, the door opened again. Joseph appeared, his long golden hair in its usual disheveled knot. He had a gash on his forehead, but at least his clothes were still intact.

He came straight for me and enveloped me in a tight hug as Dad closed the door behind him.

“Don’t do that to us again, honey,” he whispered. “The doctor said you lost a lot of blood.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know why I kept apologizing to my family members like anything that’d happened tonight was my fault, but I was sorry for scaring them. “I’m all better now, though. See?”

He released me, and I made a show of flexing my leg for him.

He didn’t seem impressed. “You still look pale. The doctor says you can come home, but no wraith altercations for the rest of this lunar cycle. If we see any action on the streets tomorrow night, the four of us will handle it. Got it?”

I pouted. “Fine. It sounds like Ian and I have to get packed for college, anyhow.”

“Oh good, you agreed to go,” he replied, his big green eyes filling with pride and also maybe relief. “We’ll miss you both, but this is for the best. You and your brother need to have a real adolescence, and you, Avery, need to be able to do so in the safest possible environment.”

I wasn’t so sure I’d be that much safer behind the warded walls of Proteus College or that the fabled Guardian training program would even accept me, much less protect me from the threats my fathers were convinced were lurking around every corner, but if this was what I needed to do to allow my family to sleep at night, then I’d start packing tomorrow.

A laugh cracked in the back of my dry throat. “Merry Christmas to me, I guess.”