Apex Elite Academy, Year 1

Chapter 1 Rune

rune

. . .

“Look at it.” Mom tossed a file onto the kitchen table. The smack rang out as it hit the polished grey and white marble surface.

My fangs dropped at the name printed on the tab. “Mom, what is this?”

“Just look at it.”

I glared at the file before snatching it up and flipping through the measly five papers within. There was no new information on my creep of an ex-boyfriend’s whereabouts. “This is everything I already found.”

She pursed her lips, her dull-green eyes boring into mine. “I know. I’m the best intelligence the Supernatural Council has, and guess what? I couldn’t find anything you didn’t. Sometimes assholes are just that, Rune. None of this is your fault.”

“Damn right it’s not her fault,” Tibby said as he strolled into the kitchen with a grin. “Darian’s a prick. I’m sure he just ran away, unable to deal with the hideous scar I gave him for fucking with my little sister.”

I smiled as my toast popped out of the toaster and grabbed it, spreading butter over the bread. “Thanks, Tibby.”

“You’re my sister.” He shrugged. “I’m just sorry that asshole was once my best friend.”

“You should be sorry for hanging around someone like that, Tobias. You need to learn to assesss every sssingle being you allow around you,” Mom hissed at him. “Understand?”

Mom’s speech impediment rarely came out when she was around just family. However, when she was irritated, she couldn’t hold back the hissing.

“Sorry, Mom.” His black brows furrowed together in a frown. “I didn’t know.”

“For the record,” I interjected with a fang-filled grin as I set my plate of toast on the table, “I know it’s not my fault that Darian’s a closet psycho. There were clear red flags.”

“Red flags, huh? You mean the way you were hiding that he was keeping tabs on your whereabouts constantly? That was one, I agree. But that’s also not something that I would think would escalate the way it did,” Tibby muttered bitterly. “Unless, of course, you’re not telling us the full story.”

I’d dated Tibby’s icedrake best friend for an entire year and only realized how much of an absolute vile man he was recently. I’d met him just after Tibby did. They attended Apex Elite Academy together and both graduated Veil-Year, the first year of the academy.

Tibby and Darian were placed into House of Fortitude, where they trained as enforcers. Though, a week ago, Darian had shown up at our home, screaming in my face about not answering his calls.

I broke up with him, because honestly, who the fuck did he think he was? Darian didn’t agree. He pinned me against my front door, and when his lips slanted over mine in a weak attempt to convince me to stay with him, I let my venom seep into his lips, paralyzing him completely.

I hadn’t known that Tibby had just arrived home from the Market to grab fae wine for dinner, and he’d seen the entire encounter.

As soon as Darian dropped to the ground from my venom, Tibby lost control. My brother was always protective, but I’d never seen him use his phoenix fire the way he had on Darian. He burned the left half of his face, and since it was phoenix fire, second only to drake fire, it definitely scarred.

Safe to say, he no longer considered Darian his best friend.

We left him on the ground in front of our home, but by the time we checked again, he was gone. At first, I was relieved, but we hadn’t heard a word from him since.

It was as if he’d disappeared.

Even his mother hadn’t heard from him, according to Dad’s sources. He could still show up at the academy to attend his second year, but that would be stupid considering my brother and parents wanted him flayed alive.

Best case scenario, he’d stay gone.

“It’s not a complete surprise,” I admitted with a scowl. “Anyway, do you have any brotherly advice for the entrance exams, Tibby?”

He smoothed back his short black hair with dark green lowlights and shot me a feral grin. “Duh, Roo. First things first, never trust your fellow applicants. You’re competing for the same thing, and while loyalty is expected, one bad egg can screw you up.”

“I know that,” I emphasized, waving my hands. “Give me something more substantial. Like, about the trials, maybe?”

“Even if Tobias tells you, it won’t help,” Dad said gruffly, coming in and kissing Mom on her cheek. His golden eyes narrowed at me. “Entrance Exams are changed every year.”

“Lake,” Mom tsked. “She knows that.”

“Then why’d she ask?” He raised a black brow at me.

“It’s good to have all the information I can get ahold of.” I grinned, blinking innocently. “Past information is always useful.”

“She’s got you there,” Pops came in and kissed Mom’s other cheek. His red hair was sticking up every which way. “Besides, I think her asking is showing a lot of initiative. That’s great for an agent.”

“Gavin’s got a point,” Mom told Dad as she fixed Pops’s hair.

“I didn’t even want Rune to go to the academy,” Dad muttered under his breath.

“But you let Tibby go,” I pointed out. “Encouraged it, even.”

He frowned. “But you’re my little girl.”

“And I’m your little boy,” Tibby teased.

Dad rolled his eyes.

“I think they should both have the same opportunity,” Pops said, his brown eyes glinting in the light as Mom finally smoothed his hair down.

“Agreed,” she said.

Dad huffed. “I just wish you wouldn’t put yourself in danger. Women agents deal with different kinds of dangers than men. I worry about your mother enough as it is.”

Pops snorted. “Sabine could kill anyone who looks at her wrong.”

“And Rune’s technically more lethal,” Tibby pointed out. “She can leak venom from anywhere on her body, and her special power is fucking scary.”

“You’re right,” Dad consented.

“He is.” I smirked, grabbing a jar of poison from my special cabinet and poured it over the melted butter on my toast with a smirk before placing it back and locking it up.

I walked over and bit into the toast, feeling the tang of the neurotoxin.

Dad and Pops glanced at me for only a moment before they registered what I was doing.

“Was that the new strand the lab was working on?” Pops asked.

“It was in the same bottle,” Dad choked out.

“Yes,” Mom confirmed. “It was.”

The new poison was more tangy than spicy, but it was still better than plain toast.

“Rune!” my dads barked.

It didn’t matter how long I’d been adding poisons to my food; they always freaked out.

I scarfed one piece of toast down and snatched my other piece up as they leapt over a couple of chairs in an attempt to stop me from consuming the new neurotoxin that the lab had created.

Tibby and Mom were laughing as I bolted around the table, but I was too slow.

“Don’t eat so much of it!” Dad’s arms banded around my waist, and I shoved the rest of the toast into my mouth.

“At least wait until you see how you react!” Pops tried to pry my mouth open, but I swallowed the hefty mouthful with a painful gulp.

They groaned, letting me go with disappointed sighs.

“Rune, what if you had reacted to that one?” Pops asked, crossing his arms.

“There is no antidote to that,” Dad added with a scowl.

“I don’t need an antidote,” I reminded him with an innocent smile. “And I needed breakfast.”

“Okay, come on,” Mom announced, clapping her hands. “We need to get Rune to her entrance exams.”

“Fine,” Dad grumbled.

“She’s going to do great,” Pops said begrudgingly.

“Wouldn’t kill her to make some friends, though,” Tibby muttered under his breath.

“Why would I need a friend when I have you as a brother?” I hip-bumped him with a maniacal laugh.

“Rune, I’m serious,” he urged, his dull green eyes narrowing at me. “You deserve a friend.”

“I’ve been texting Pandora every now and then,” I pointed out my blooming friendship with the soul eater representative on the Supernatural Council. “She’s awesome.”

“Maybe friends who aren’t quite as deadly as she is?” he suggested weakly.

Mom and I cackled as the five of us entered Mom’s office upstairs.

Tibby had been very vocal about his fear of the soul eater.

I personally thought she was a fucking badass.

Plus, she had five mates who also held spots on the council for their demon sub-species.

They blew the term ‘power couple’ out of the water.

I paused at the threshold of Mom’s modernly decorated office. It was the same marble-esque theme that the Supernatural Council Headquarters was bathed in. “Wait, I thought we were going to Apex Elite Academy for the exam?”

“We are.” Mom smirked, gesturing to a large foggy white crystal platform on the floor in the corner. I sensed a lot of magical energy within it.

It made my fangs seep venom, and I licked it away with a hum. “What’s that?”

“It’s a teleportation device that we’re about to roll out to all of the council members for beta testing,” Mom explained, running a hand through her short green hair. “It was created by our magical and technological specialists.”

“With help from current agents-in-training from the House of Innovation and the House of Arcane,” Dad added cheekily, and I knew he was proud of his students as the headmaster.

With luck, he’ll be my headmaster soon.

“How does it work? What is it made of?” I asked in awe of just how much power was vibrating within it.

“It’s a teleportation crystal from the Air Kingdom in the fae realm.

Rowan’s brother-mate is an ice fae and was able to get his hands on an entire grove of them.

They’re abundant in the Air Kingdom,” she explained.

“Fae can use their connection to the crystals to help them learn to phase, but our magic differs from fae magic, so we had to use some technological advancements to be able to do the same thing. Though, it’s not really phasing.

For us, it’s teleporting. It’s called a wayfaer quartz.

It grows inside twilight-blooming trees in the Air Kingdom, fed by moonlight and wind.

It’s gifted, traded, or stolen from the fae.

In our case, gifted but also has been traded now that we are trying to roll the teleportation crystal pads out to the public soon.

We have tweaked these crystals a lot with magical essence.

Drecken Grimsworn actually worked with Thorn on this to get this invention to work.

It only used to work at dusk, dawn, or under a full moon.

Somehow, they were able to make it recharge with sunlight and moonlight.

The only time the crystal doesn’t work is during a new moon. ”

A squeal tore out of me as I grabbed Tibby’s arm. “Oh my Fates! We can teleport now? How have we never heard of this before?”

Tibby smirked smugly. “Third and fourth years have been using them for six months already as students. It goes from the houses to the academy. I knew about it, but I’ve never used it myself.”

“You said Thorn and Drecken built this together?” I gaped at it, ignoring my brother’s smugness. “That’s incredible.”

“Drecken did most of it,” Dad admitted.

“Thorn provided the crystal and fae knowledge of it,” Pops added. “But Drecken ran with it.”

“Drecken’s incredibly smart,” I murmured, inspecting the wayfaer portal.

“He’s a genius, but he’s rather eccentric,” Pops said.

Mom blew out a breath of air. “You mean weird?”

“Yes,” Dad agreed with a low chuckle. “But we’ve finally convinced him to teach at the academy for four full years because of you.”

“That cost me a full vial of my venom, you know,” Mom grumbled, crossing her arms. “He wouldn’t agree without the ability to study and attempt to recreate my venom.”

Dad pouted but nodded. “Thanks, love.”

“You’re welcome.” She half-smiled back at him.

Pops wrapped an arm around Mom’s shoulders and kissed her temple. “You didn’t have to give him anything.”

“I didn’t love that your venom was a bargaining chip,” Dad growled.

“No need to get jealous,” she told them with a sigh. “Drecken is not one to entertain any romance. I don’t believe he’s ever shown interest in any other being in his long life.”

“As true as that is, you’re ours,” Dad said.

“Agreed,” Pops added.

“Interesting,” I stated, placing a hand on my hip.

Tibby cleared his throat, awkwardly patting Dad and Pops on the shoulders. “Let’s get Roo to her exams.”

A rush of nervousness flooded me as Mom led us all to stand onto the wayfaer crystal, and a cold pricking sensation spread over me as my vision faded.

Entrance exams, here I come.