Mara
Ilose the thread of my sentence. My students don’t seem to notice, or if they do, they’re too polite to say anything.
The young lionesses sit in a half-circle in the classroom, their tails swaying lazily behind their chairs while I pace the front of the room.
Today’s lesson is one I’m excited to teach: how to stay one with your lion when everything around you is pulling you away from her.
“This Academy was built for all of us,” I say, pausing at the board where I’ve written the words INTEGRATION vs. ASSIMILATION in blocky letters. “The temptation is to shrink. To quiet your lion so you fit in. Don’t.”
My hand drifts to my belly. I press my palm flat against it. Just to feel.
There’s nothing to feel yet. I’m going to be a mother, soon.
“Your lion isn’t separate from you,” I continue, pulling my hand away from my belly and curling it into a fist at my side.
“She’s not something you put away when you walk into a classroom full of wolves.
The moment you start treating her like a thing you carry instead of a thing you are, you lose her. ”
Sarai raises her hand. “What if they don’t understand? The wolves look at me like I’m strange when my tail moves on its own.”
“Let them look.” I smile at her.
My hand finds my belly again while I’m walking back to the front of the room.
Aaron wasn’t himself this morning. Something in that dream broke through the wall he keeps around himself, and whatever it was, he isn’t letting me anywhere near it.
“Alright, that’s enough for today.” I clap my hands and the girls start standing, gathering their bags. “I want you to pay attention this week. Notice the moments when you pull away from your lion to make someone else comfortable. Write them down. We’ll talk about it next class.”
They file out in pairs, chatting and laughing, their tails bumping against each other as they squeeze through the doorway.
I turn to the dry erase board and pick up the eraser, starting to wipe down the diagrams I sketched during the lesson. My other hand rests on my belly and I let it stay this time. There’s no one here to see.
I start humming. The eraser moves in slow circles across the board and I think about nesting. The thought fills me with a warmth so complete my tail lifts and sways gently behind me, the tassel brushing the back of my calf.
I’m going to need blankets. And I’ll need to rearrange the furniture in the cabin so the light comes through the window differently in the mornings because cubs need warmth first thing, need the sun on their skin.
My tail goes rigid.
The humming dies in my throat. A surge of energy prickles across the back of my neck, subtle but distinct, and with it comes a scent. Coffee and something sharper underneath, something that carries the same warmth as Aaron’s but sits differently on my tongue.
I don’t turn around.
“What are you doing here?” I mutter.
“Congratulations on completing the mate bond with my brother.”
Tiana’s voice is smooth, casual. I set the eraser down on the ledge and turn to face her, my brow pulling tight.
She’s sitting at one of my students’ desks with her dark cloak draped over the back of the chair and her legs crossed. She looks completely at ease in a space that isn’t hers.
“I know that’s not why you came here,” I say.
Tiana sighs and leans back in the chair. “You lionesses are always so full of yourselves.”
I manage a smile that doesn’t reach my eyes. “Thank you.”
Tiana rolls her eyes. “Sure.”
“What do you want?” I ask. “I know you aren’t here for me.”
Tiana’s grin widens. “You’re right. I’m not here for you.”
She stands from the desk and walks toward me, her cloak swaying with each step, and stops a few feet away with her hands gripping her elbows.
“Something’s wrong with my brother,” she says. “I just saw him a moment ago and he was acting strange.”
My brow furrows. “Huh? When I left him he wasn’t well. He was in bed. I told Headmistress Ebony he wasn’t going in to work...” I trail off. The words dissolve as the realization catches up to me, and a growl builds low in my throat. “He snuck off the moment I left.”
My tail hisses through the air behind me and my claws itch under my nails.
“He was looking for my mother,” Tiana says, watching my reaction carefully. “But that’s beside the point. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. He...” I pause. Aaron’s business is Aaron’s business, and I’m not sure how much of it belongs to his sister. My mouth closes.
Tiana puts her hands on her hips and shifts her weight to one leg, her mouth set in a thin line of no-nonsense expectation. She looks so much like Angie that a smile pulls at my lips.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re smiling about,” Tiana says flatly. “Look, I’m here for my brother. That’s it. You came to me asking about my father Eric. That means he’s been talking to him.” Her eyes sharpen. “How about you tell me what that’s about.”
I sigh and lean my hip against the edge of my desk. “I don’t know. He introduced me to him. In the forest.”
Tiana’s jaw tightens. “Oh, really? He’s reaching out to Eric?”
“I don’t know if he reached out or if Eric reached out to him. He wanted me to meet him, so I did.”
“What else?” Tiana takes a step closer. “I know there’s something else because you came to me.”
“I could feel something was off.” I search for the right words, but they don’t come easy. “I don’t know what it was. But I don’t trust him.”
My ears twitch and swivel toward the door. Below us, through the floor and down the hall, I can hear movement. Footsteps, a chair scraping. Meekah is down there.
Tiana follows my glance toward the floor. “I’ve already distracted Meekah with a temporary spell. It’ll break shortly.”
I stare at her. She says it like it’s nothing.
“Eric is not a good man,” Tiana continues, her voice dropping lower. “He’s manipulating my brother.”
“There’s a veil over him,” I say.
Tiana’s brow creases. “What are you talking about?”
My nose twitches as I pull in her scent again, deeper this time. Peeling back the layers.
“There’s a veil over you too,” I say.
Tiana snickers and waves a dismissive hand. “I’m not cloaked.”
“It’s not magic.” I hold her gaze. “It’s in your blood. The same as Aaron’s. It’s easily masked, though. I didn’t catch it because I wasn’t paying attention.”
Tiana goes quiet. Her hand drops to her side and the sharpness drains from her face. She presses her lips together.
“Hmmm.”
She turns away from me and starts pacing, her cloak trailing behind her across the floor. She crosses to the window and back, her fingers tapping against her thigh.
“I wonder if this has something to do with the Witching Glen,” she murmurs.
“The Witching Glen?” My ears perk forward. “I never understood why it was closed.”
Tiana stops pacing and turns to face me, her expression stern.
“You can thank my mother for that. She had a conscience. When Aya died, dark magic was lifted from the supernaturals she’d cursed, but it didn’t vanish.
” She pauses, letting the weight of the words settle.
“A witch or warlock can still gain access to dark magic. They simply need to know where to look.”
I set the stack of papers I’d been gathering down on the desk. “I don’t understand dark magic. I only know that it’s bad. My father told me it ruined the lives of all supernaturals during the Great War.”
“It did,” Tiana says. “But right now we don’t have time for a history lesson.”
I pick up the eraser again and turn back to the board, wiping at a stubborn mark. “I don’t understand, Tiana. If dark magic is such a bad thing, why not just get rid of it?”
“It’s not that simple.”
I raise an eyebrow over my shoulder. “Oh, really? I know about the Blackwoods. You’re supposed to be even more powerful than King Amir.”
Tiana smirks, and I can smell the pride blooming in her scent. Sharp, rich, pleased with itself. I find it annoying.
“We are,” she says.
Her gaze drifts to the jug of water sitting on the corner of my desk. I follow it.
“I think you need a visual aid,” she says.
Tiana lifts her hand, fingers spread, and blue-gold light pulses at her fingertips.
The water inside the jug shudders, then rises in a smooth column through the opening, climbing into the air.
It pulls free of the glass and hangs suspended between us, reshaping itself until it forms a perfect sphere the size of my fist, rotating slowly.
I forget what I was doing. The eraser hangs limp in my hand and my lips part as I watch the sphere hover and turn.
“You think ‘good’ magic is just healing and sunshine, Mara?” Tiana circles the sphere slowly, her fingers conducting the light that holds it.
“A world with only good magic is a stagnant pond. Beautiful to look at, but nothing under the surface is moving. Nothing is breaking down, and nothing new is growing because there’s nothing feeding the soil.
” She stops circling and meets my eyes. “You need the rot, Mara. Without it, the pond just sits there and chokes on itself.”
I frown. “That’s a strange way to defend dark magic.”
“I’m not defending it. I’m telling you what it is.” She points at the sphere. “Look at this. You need water to live, right?”
“My father told me when I was young that I would always need it,” I answer.
“But drink too much and you don’t become more alive.
” Tiana’s finger traces a line down the side of the sphere and the water inside begins to shift.
At first it’s subtle, a tiny flicker of light deep in the center, like a spark catching.
The sparks multiply, threading through the water in bright veins, and the surface starts to ripple and churn.
“Your cells swell. Your brain shuts down. You die.”
I move closer. Inside the sphere, a storm is building. Miniature clouds form, swirling and folding over each other, and tiny bolts of white light fracture through the churning water. A whole tempest trapped in the palm of her hand.