Chapter 5 Avery
AVERY
We were getting some looks. Proteus College was small enough that most of the students would recognize one another by sight, so two random new students in a spring-semester freshman class would’ve been noticeable, and that was before they found out neither of us was actually a freshman.
A girl let out an audible sigh somewhere behind me.
Ian chuckled. “Maybe remedial magic won’t be so bad after all.”
Our professor was, first and foremost, young.
He couldn’t have been more than two or three years older than I was.
He was at least six-foot-two, with broad shoulders and a solid torso that tapered down to trim hips and strong thighs.
His chocolate-brown hair was wavy, curling over his forehead and at his temples.
He wore stylish dark-framed glasses, tailored gray slacks, and a black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, which put his corded forearms on display.
He also moved with a languid grace that hid the coiled power of a Prime shifter.
“Feline,” I whispered to Ian.
“Definitely.”
Our professor was also the third utterly gorgeous Prime male to wander into my path on the first damn day of school, when I’d arrived here adamant that I wanted nothing to do with them. Was the Moon playing a trick on me?
“Good morning,” he said briskly as he pulled a laptop from his leather bag and set it on the lectern. “I’m Professor Aiden Blackwell. Welcome to Lunar Magic 101.”
I snorted under my breath, and Ian elbowed me.
Aiden Blackwell. The third member of the school’s power quad. Heath Blackwell’s older brother.
Of course he was as hot as the other two.
My beast gave a little rustle of interest.
Nope, stop that.
Aiden pressed a few keys on his laptop, and the day’s slide deck appeared on the large screen that hung over the top of the blackboard at the front of the room.
“Now,” he began, observing the class with only fleeting interest, “I understand that much of what we’ll cover in this class, especially in the beginning, may feel extremely rudimentary to some of you.
But there are many of you for whom the Proteus curriculum is your first magical education, and the school requires that everyone have a solid grasp on the basics before you can move onto more exciting things. ”
Some girls giggled behind me. “My parents had me in magical training by the age of five, but I’d take this class every semester if I could,” one of them whispered.
Her friend snickered some more. “Yes, Bernice, Professor Blackwell is going to just pluck a freshman girl out of his class to present to his quad for bonding.”
“We can all dream, Madeline.”
On Aiden’s first slide was a simple lunar calendar—this month’s, by the look of it—with the phases of the Moon illustrated and set off by the week.
“We’ll begin with what I hope is not a revelation to any of you—the source of all magic that we as shifters are able to harness and use, to varying degrees. The Moon.”
While neither Ian nor I had ever attended anything other than human school, our dads were not slouches in either the magic department or the teaching department. None of this would be news to us. Still, I found myself at least mildly interested in what a formal magical education looked like.
And Aiden seemed only mildly interested in teaching it. His tenure as a professor here might’ve had more to do with his need to stick around with his quad until they graduated than his desire to be in the profession. He was likely bound for the Guardians when Heath and the others graduated.
“All shifters are born with the Moon’s magic in our blood,” Aiden continued, “whether you develop the ability to shift or not. We believe it is both genetics and luck that determine whether the magic within you can meld with a beast soul.”
“Do you think he’ll give us a demonstration and shift?” Bernice asked breathlessly behind me.
“You just want to see him naked,” Madeline replied.
Couldn’t say I blamed her there.
“Obviously,” Bernice said, “but I’ve heard his jaguar is one of the largest and fastest felines the school’s ever seen. We’re all curious.”
Another flick of the ears from my beast.
Cut it out.
Madeline sighed. “Hopefully we’ll get to see it at the Guardian competition in the spring.”
“The strength of the Moon’s magic—and our sensitivity to it,” Aiden went on, “is determined by the lunar cycle. Our magic is the strongest at the Full Moon and the days surrounding it, while our ability to wield magic weakens as we approach the New Moon.”
On his slide, a bright border lit up, surrounding the January New Moon and the two days on either side of it.
My family had been in the streets on those nights last week, culling the few swarmers that’d managed to find their way into the city.
Down the row from us, a girl raised her hand.
Aiden nodded at her. “Yes?”
“Why isn’t the strength of your beast affected by the phases of the Moon? My dad’s wolf doesn’t seem to experience any dips in power around the New Moon.”
“Good question,” he replied. “We don’t truly know, but it’s theorized that once the beast soul has melded with our own, usually around age twelve or thirteen, it is magically stable within us. It’s really only our secondary affinities that wax and wane with the Moon.”
Another hand went up. “Is that why shifting doesn’t feel any different day or night?”
“Yes. The gift of the beast soul is permanent. Our secondary affinities require skill and practice to channel the Moon’s power into that activity, whether it be healing, rune work, apothecary work, constructs and illusions, or the techno-magic specialties that have developed over the past few decades.
But the most talented of us are able to store magic like a battery to work secondary magic all throughout the cycle. ”
“Professor!” Bernice said, no doubt raising an eager hand behind me. “Do you subscribe to the theory that latent shifters can often become extra proficient in secondary affinities because we’re able to devote all of our focus and magical abilities to those abilities?”
The preening in her voice was not subtle. Many of the girls in the class perked up, eager for his answer.
Aiden ran his long fingers through his thick brown hair, and anyone closely studying his face—which of course I was not—might’ve caught him smothering an eye roll.
“That is often the case, Miss…?”
“Tanner,” she replied breathlessly. “Bernice Tanner.”
“You are correct, Miss Tanner, that we’ve observed generations of latent shifters, both male and female, who often rise to the top of their field in whichever secondary affinity they’ve developed.
Some of the nation’s top surgeons are latent shifters with powerful healing affinities, for example.
Plenty of us who can shift are proficient with secondary affinities, but it is true that often our animals can muddle the different types of magic and also… divide our power and focus a bit.”
Bernice was a dog with a bone now. “But bonding helps steady the beast and increases your powers and abilities, right?”
I did not smother my eye roll.
Aiden’s hazel gaze landed on me, and he paused for a moment longer than was necessary, his eyes narrowing, before his attention moved over my head, back to Bernice.
“That is often the case, yes,” he replied evenly. “Particularly for those of us with Prime-level beasts.”
I could just feel Ian grinning like a loon next to me.
As Aiden took a few more questions from the class about the mechanics of lunar magic as applied to secondary affinities, I zoned out, doodling a little jaguar on my syllabus.
Then some guy in the back blurted question that ripped my attention away from my drawing.
“So how exactly did the wraiths happen, then? The higher powers sure fucked us with that shit.”
Aiden grimaced. “We will have a whole unit on wraiths later this semester.”
“Come on, Professor,” another guy said. “Give us a preview. You train with the Guardians, so you have all the gory details.”
Ian huffed a disgusted snort, and I was right there with him. It was hitting us how many of our fellow students may have never seen a wraith in their entire lives. Must be nice to hide behind the wards of whatever fancy shifter community these kids came from where the Guardians actually patrolled.
Aiden relented, vacating his spot behind the lectern and taking a seat on the table next to it, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
He leaned back on his hands, which caused the veins in his forearms to pop in a way that was far too sexual for this classroom.
“Fine. I’m aware this is the topic everyone seems to find the most interesting.
Does anyone know the general magical theory behind the origin of the wraiths? ”
A few hands shot up, and he called on a girl seated a few chairs away from me in the front row. “The wraiths are thought to be perversions of beast souls not destined to become part of one of us.”
Aiden nodded. “Or not compatible with our bodies or our magic. Instead, they fester in their realm, which is a cesspool of darkness and rot. Unfortunately for us, the veil between our world and theirs is thin, and when the Moon is at its weakest, they are able to tear through and attack us.”
“Why do they attack us?” someone asked from the back of the room.
I had to stop myself from turning around to shoot an incredulous look in that direction. Was this really something people didn’t know?
“They feed on our souls,” Aiden replied, his tone the appropriate level of foreboding. “It’s thought that wraiths need to consume shifter souls to sustain their forms, and with enough bites at that apple, they become stronger. They can power up and become even more dangerous.”
Bernice jumped in. “Is that why only those of us with shifter blood can see them? And why they don’t affect humans at all?”
What?