Chapter Six #2
“Thank you so much guys. The Director said she would come and get us soon when she had everything ready which should be any minute now. I’ve got no idea where to meet you guys though if we can’t have you already here with us when she turns up.” I ponder.
“It’ll be in the woods. There’s a ritual circle cleared and set up at all times although it doesn’t include the more unique parts of each individual ritual, the basics of every ritual is the same so it makes sense to have it always ready.” Dash says from somewhere in the background.
The only reason that I can tell them apart is because Damon has no volume control and his volume is always switched to high.
“So shall we meet you outside the castle entrance then?”
“Yeah that will work, shoot me a text when you get there and we can rush down. I have a feeling that if we don’t meet you promptly the Director will have her carefully selected witnesses all ready to go in a second.
” Erin says sarcastically. I can practically feel her rolling her eyes through the phone.
“I don’t know her that well yet but I have to say that sounds about right.” I reply just as a knock sounds at the door, “That’s her, I’ll meet you down there and be prepared for anything.”
“You got this Sage, keep your guard up.”
“Always!” I reply before hanging up and standing as Levi takes the lead like usual and opens the door.
“Ah all ready to go I see,” the Director comments, eyeing us critically.
We choose to stay silent, our masks falling into place.
“I have Becky picking up your witnesses for the ceremony now. I think you’ll like them. I mentioned them earlier. Before you came along they were the Soulmate Bonded group whose Centre had the most Bonded mates that we had seen in a long time.”
Fantastic, so they’re going to be bitchy because they were the shit and no doubt think that we’re going to steal their limelight and thunder just because there’s fucking more of us.
“Actually we have already asked Erin and her team to be witnesses for us. We know them from previous missions and due to our delicate position, as you pointed out earlier, we would rather have people we know and trust be close to our situation and what might happen than people that we know nothing about.” Levi explains in a matter of fact kind of way that leaves no room for argument.
As he speaks the Director’s face starts to turn bright red, until her lips are pursed in such a way that it makes her look like she’s sucked on a lemon. By the end of it though she clearly realises that she’s got no argument to give.
“Erin and her team are humans though and we don’t usually allow the human students amongst us to attend a ritual of this magnitude.” She tries to explain in a feeble and last ditch attempt to dissuade us from using Erin and the guys as our witnesses.
It instantly raises my suspicions even further.
“Whilst we understand that, we have already told them about the ritual and as we stated before would feel much more comfortable having them their instead.” Levi once again firmly.
“Very well,” she sighs after a moment of silence and turns on her heel abruptly, not glancing over her shoulder and just assuming we will follow her snooty ass.
Unfortunately she’s not wrong. We don’t have any other choice but to follow her if we want all of our gifts unblocked.
I’m not going to lie, I feel incredibly vulnerable here, surrounded by creatures that on their worst days are infinitely stronger than us and that’s not even taking into account their gifts and the things about them that make them distinctly supernatural.
Jax threads his fingers through mine giving it a reassuring squeeze as we all follow the Director down the hall.
I steadfastly ignore the open doors and curious faces pretending they aren’t watching us walk past. We step out of the supernatural corridor and down two more random corridors that I could swear Becky didn’t bring us down when she bought us to our room.
She then takes us through another corridor of dorms with people peering out just like when we walked down the supernatural corridor.
I’m pretty damn certain this is the human half of the dorms.
It’s also pretty damn clear that the Director is parading us around and making sure everyone gets a good look.
Which is pretty contradictory to what she was saying earlier about not bringing attention to us or showing us preferential treatment.
I swear to god this woman has multiple personalities and dangerous ones at that.
I decide to distract myself since there’s not much I can do about it right now anyway so I study the human students.
It’s actually quite interesting getting a closer look at them.
My fathers said this was a training academy for supernaturals and humans that have been exposed to the supernatural in not so nice ways.
So I assumed that the human half at least would have some variant in age.
I was expecting people from my age up to their thirties.
For some reason though that’s not the case.
All the faces that I can see peering back at me are all around the age of me and the guys and from what I can tell the oldest only being, at a guess, twenty-six.
Unsurprisingly though all of them look more wary and suspicious than normal people our age.
It’s pretty damn clear that like me they’ve seen some shit that they really wished they hadn’t.
I can’t imagine that it’s easy to be attending the same school as the species that potentially gave them their introduction to the supernatural.
I seriously hope that there’s a good screening process and none of them are of the ‘one member of the species did me wrong so that means they’re all evil’ illogical mentality that some people might end up with.
“Oh silly me. I took a wrong turn.” The Director says cheerily as we reach the end of the hallway and a dead end.
Kai snickers ahead of me and manages to push a shaky thought down the mental connection that’s spotty at best.
“Does she seriously think we’re going to believe this shit?”
“She seems to underestimate us a lot. Lets keep it that way.” Hunter suggests and we all nod slightly in agreement.
It’s probably best if she underestimates us for as long as possible.
We all choose not to reply as she smiles in a way that I’m sure is meant to be unassuming but makes her look fake as fuck.
She spins on her heel and leads us back down the corridor and down the wide staircase we should’ve gone down the first time we passed.
Its fucking big enough that it would be impossible to accidentally miss.
I barely hold in my eye roll.
Finally making it downstairs we rapidly walk through the large entrance hall, the Director clearly done with her show and ready to get on with the unbinding ritual.
“Hey!” Erin calls as soon as we step foot outside and I grin.
She wraps me in a giant hug as the guys all do the manly shake hands and one armed hug thing that they tend to do.
“Alright, we really don’t have time for this!” The Director snaps, full on tapping her foot, she’s that irritated.
“Well . . .” Kai starts and fortunately Maverick gets there in time to put his hand over Kai’s mouth. Preventing him from no doubt making a comment about the roundabout route she just took us on.
The Director raises her eyebrow and smirks like she’s just won something important and I paste my fakest and sweetest smile on.
“This way.” She says, stomping off towards the woods.
“What was that about?” Erin mouths at me.
“I’ll explain later.” I mouth back.
The other team clearly have worked with my guys before because after a couple of exchanged looks they all fall into line with us, staying silent and alert.
We follow the Director into the woods and the trees seem to pull us further in, the darkness becoming all-encompassing.
Instead of it becoming silent the noises seem to increase in volume as I clearly hear creatures roaming around us and judging from the sound of their footfalls they aren’t small creatures at all.
I start to get the impression that the magnified sounds are actually being produced on purpose in order to unnerve us.
However they’re having the opposite effect on me, I take deep breaths as I soak in the magic of the forest and its supernatural creatures around me.
I feel each of their light probing magics making curious probes towards mine and I can’t wait until I can connect properly to my supernatural side as my own magic swirls uneasily and I get a sense of yearning coming from it.
I sense the unease coming off of my guys, Erin and her men too, so following the whisper of intuition that seems to show up at random times, I push my feelings of safety and joy towards them, instantly calming them just as we step out of the thick forest.