Chapter 2
AVERY
The drive from our home on the outskirts of Fulton City up to the foothills of the Blue Cliff Mountains, the location of Proteus College, was only about ninety minutes.
As one of the few shifter-exclusive institutions of higher learning in the country and home of the Southeast Region’s Guardian training program, it was the crown jewel that sat atop the conglomeration of shifter communities that made their home in Northern Georgia.
The further away from the city you drove, the higher the concentration of both shifters and wealth in each town until you reached the sweeping gated communities and pristine little cities known collectively as the Hills.
This was where the wealthiest and most powerful shifter families had settled just to the south of the mountains and the college.
We stopped at a coffee shop in a quaint downtown in the Hills.
It was a gloomy winter day, but that didn’t detract from the colorful shopfronts, clean streets, and meticulous landscaping.
It could’ve been any small town in the country—until you spotted the names of the stores.
Hermes, Gucci, Prada, Tiffany, and other things I couldn’t even pronounce.
“Can you imagine living here?” Ian asked.
“It would certainly be a different kind of life,” I replied, sipping the cold iced coffee I held in my even colder hands.
“I bet they don’t have wraith swarms running down the streets three days a month.
There are probably a dozen Guardian posts surrounding the Hills, and I bet they have the top-of-the-line wards around the borders of their gated communities. ”
“Yeah.” He sighed, casting a wistful look around the street, and then he grinned at me. “I still prefer our life.”
“Me too.”
Our parents had lived in a little mountain town in Colorado for years, but they’d packed us up and left after our mom died.
I was three years old at the time, and Ian was only two, so neither of us remembered life before that.
Only shifters who didn’t want to mix much with others would choose to live where we did, so close to a densely populated urban area, and it suited us just fine.
Our little neighborhood had everything we needed, and Ian and I had grown up going to school with human kids and the occasional fellow shifter.
But with that quiet separation from shifter communities, especially those with wealth, came the added danger.
Wraiths were drawn to shifters much more than humans, but they could spawn anywhere.
The Guardians didn’t patrol areas of low shifter concentration, especially in big cities, which meant we’d been on our own.
We climbed into my car and pulled back onto the highway. We were scheduled for a meeting with our assigned guidance counselor later this afternoon, and the spring semester started tomorrow.
“Nice of Dad to let us have one last hurrah before we left,” Ian said. “It was lucky school starts so late in January, so we were able to be home for the New Moon this cycle.”
It’d certainly been quieter this time around, and I’d threatened to stab anyone who tried to keep me home or fussed over my leg, which was still a little sore, yes, but totally functional.
“It’s not like we can’t hop in the car and drive back to help sometimes,” I added.
My chest tightened at the thought of my dads having to defend our neighborhood without Ian and me.
They were perfectly capable, but still. Things had been getting worse lately, as evidenced by my getting tangled up with a Giant in the city.
“Maybe if we get Dad to admit it’s looking like it’ll be a bad one, they’ll ask for our help. ”
Ian snorted. “Sure, keep dreaming, Aves. They want you tucked behind those top-notch wards and bonded to a Prime quad as soon as possible, as delusional as that idea may be. They aren’t going to call us home.”
“I am not going to bond with a quad,” I replied through gritted teeth.
“Has everyone forgotten that I am not, in fact, a latent female? It’ll be pretty damn obvious that’s the case after I kill a few things in Guardian training.
Dad says all those power quads still think a beast soul in their central bond interferes with their ability to share power and settle their animals and all that nonsense. ”
“You never know,” he sang with a shit-eating grin. “Mom had no such issues as a central bond. There might be some more forward-thinking quads running around. Not everyone is scared off by a female with a beast.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled. Time for a subject change. “Did you get to say goodbye to Ricardo before we left? Or are we back to Bryan these days?”
He laughed. “I said goodbye to both of them. Several times. Very thoroughly.”
“Of course you did, you slut.”
He tutted. “Green doesn’t look good on you, Aves. Just because you haven’t gotten laid since Tad went off to teach rock climbing in Colorado….”
I scowled. “That ran its course, and you know it.”
“I do. He was pretty, but you were going to be so bored if that dragged on any longer.”
That about summed it up. My gym situationship last year had been a brief but enjoyable distraction, and I couldn’t say I’d been broken up when it ended.
It was simpler to date humans, who had no clue we were anything other.
Humans weren’t sizing up your genetics, or judging your beast or your secondary affinities to determine whether you were bond material.
Shifter men—powerful Primes in particular—had been conditioned to look for specific things in their mates, and I was not those things.
We settled into comfortable silence for the last thirty minutes of the drive, both of us bopping to Ian’s K-pop playlist. We exited the highway, leaving the Hills behind, and climbed our way up a winding road toward the front gates of Proteus College.
The midafternoon sun had finally broken through the clouds, and it shone down on the radiant blue mountains that rose in the distance.
A redbrick wall stretched as far as we could see on either side of the school’s imposing iron gate.
“What is that?” I asked, slowing the car as we approached the gate. A band of shiny metal as wide as my hand ran the entire length of the exterior wall, set just below the top edge. I could just make out the delicate etching of runes on its surface. “Holy shit, do you think that’s pure silver?”
“Probably,” Ian drawled. “You don’t get the highest-grade wards without the best magic conductor money can buy.”
The cost to run a band of silver around the entire perimeter of the campus would be astronomical, not to mention the fact that anyone with shifter blood would have to wear special gloves to handle it. Lucrative hazard pay was always involved, too—silver was poisonous to us.
“How the other half lives is starting to sink in,” I muttered.
Our parents did plenty well for themselves, but we were solidly middle-class.
We certainly weren’t lining our fence with pure silver.
Our ward runes had been etched into the concrete sidewalk with Kai’s drill.
“Dad’s sure they agreed to a generous financial aid package? ”
“Yes, settle down. Try to act like a fertile latent ready to pop out Prime shifter boys when you get in there.”
“Shut up.”
I parked the car next to the little hut that housed the gate guard and rolled down my window.
The guard briefly glanced at us before turning back to his computer screen and holding out a hand. “IDs.”
The guard was a shifter—we could all scent each other’s rich, earthy pheromones—but that was all we’d be able to discern unless he shifted in front of us or volunteered the information. He could be latent, a powerful Prime, or anything in between.
After confirming we were on whatever list we needed to be on to be allowed to enter the campus, he pressed a button inside his hut, and the gate slowly creaked open.
We drove up the entrance road, lined on both sides by a thick forest of oaks, maples, and other stately trees.
A historical gothic building, its bricks a rusty red color where they were visible through creeping ivy, greeted us as we emerged from the thicket.
Smaller academic buildings in the same architectural style flanked its sides.
Lush lawns, tall trees, and manicured bushes abounded.
A few students and faculty traversed the sidewalks, most bundled in thick coats.
Two small wolves darted across the front lawn and disappeared around the side of the building, followed closely by a hyena.
I blinked. “That will take some getting used to.”
“No kidding.”
I parked in the large lot in front of the main building. Ian and I sat quietly for a few moments, taking in what would be our new home for the next few years.
“I don’t think this is going to be easy,” I said in a low voice. “At all.”
He reached over to squeeze my hand where it rested on my mostly healed leg. “No, it won’t be. But it’s time to spread your paws, Aves. I’m so excited I get to be here with you to see it.”
That brought a smile to my face. He was right—no matter what this place threw at us, we’d tackle it together.