Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Van
My father regards me in the rearview mirror. His blue eyes are the same shade as my own, and yet, they contain so much anger. And so much disappointment.
Ahead of us, the gates of Godfrey loom. We’ve been told my father must drop me here by the guard. And if it’s one thing my father doesn’t like, it’s being told what to do.
“You were our fucking future,” my father says, his voice so low that a shiver runs down my spine.
“I know I screwed up,” I say.
His mouth curls into an enraged line. “Screwed up doesn’t begin to cover it.
But, the deal has been made. You will attend this school for as long as the dean sees fit, and then we will pretend your time here never happened.
You will go to the college that I went to, that your grandfather and his father before him went to.
And you will take over the company, if you’re worthy. ”
“I understand.” Gripping the handle on the door, I move to open it.
His hand grasp my arm roughly. “You will not fuck up again. Do you hear me? If you become even more of an embarrassment, I will erase you. Your money. Your name. It’ll be gone. And then we’ll see what a screw-up is like when everything good about him is taken away.”
“Got it,” I say through clenched teeth.
He releases my arm. “Your servant will bring the rest of your belongings. Don’t call. Don’t send word to your mother. You don’t exist to us until your time has been served.”
It takes everything inside of me to open the door and step out of that car. A fine rain, like a mist, coats me, and the clouds hang heavy overhead. My father pulls away without a backwards glance, and then I’m there alone.
Moving toward the gate, the guard steps out of his little shack. “Van Wellington?”
“That’s me.”
He glances from me to his paper. “Right this way.”
Going back into his shack, he pushes something, and the massive gates part.
As I stare in wonder, a campus spreads out in front of me.
The buildings are made of a white so perfectly white they’re almost the color of a flawless pearl.
And the lawns are neat, almost creepily so, trimmed to perfection. Just like the brochure.
The guard clears his throat.
I straighten my spine and head inside, trying not to feel a strange kind of doom as the gates close behind me. It’s not like this is my first rodeo. My first time seeing a world of life and privilege. It’s what I was born into. And yet, something about this place feels…off.
Students laugh and talk under the shade of trees as I pass. Others play Frisbee on one lawn, and football on another. Everything about it screams of a normal college, so why do I feel so uncertain?
“Van Wellington?”
I whirl around. A man around my age stands behind me. He’s a massive guy, wider and more muscular than I am, which sets me off immediately. There are few guys as big as I am.
“That’s me.”
He flashes me a toothy smile that almost feels like a threat. “I’m here to make sure nothing bad happens to you on your way to meet the dean.”
I smirk. “This campus doesn’t look exactly dangerous.”
He regards me with a cruelty that makes me dislike him even more. “And you don’t look exactly like the most intelligent of men.”
I raise a brow, and he starts walking. Annoyed, I follow him, even though I don’t want to.
“So is that your thing? Scaring the newbies?”
He laughs. “No, man. If you think I’m scary, you have no shot of making it here.”
“You’re just kind of coming off like a cheesy villain in a high school drama.”
He whirls, and there’s no kindness in his face. “You got a strange way of thanking the only fucking student willing to be seen with one of your kind.”
“My kind?”
He leans in closer. “A fucking manipulative, power-hungry, cruel god.”
I blink at him slowly. That’s not where I thought this conversation was going. “A god?”
His eyes darken. “A god that our kind worked for lifetimes to capture.”
“What the fuck is your problem, man?”
He whirls away from me. “Nothing.”
He leads me to the main building on campus, then down flight after flight of stairs. The urge to run builds inside of me when he finally flings open the door to a room. I take a few steps inside and find a half circle of older people staring directly at me.
“Van Welington, Tyr, the god of war himself.” With that, the strange man closes the door behind me, sealing me in the room.
“Hi,” I say, my voice dry. It feels like a conference room full of lunatics. This has to be some kind of test.
An older woman with hair the startling color of gold tilts her head, studying me. “He doesn’t look like a god.”
Another woman with a tattooed face grins. “That might not be a bad thing.”
A man clears his throat, and the others fall silent. “Because the dean has not yet arrived to greet you, I will make things clear.”
Sure. That’d be nice.
He continues, “This school is a safe place for humans and magical creatures alike to find a second chance. Yes, you will be more powerful than any of us can imagine, and yet, you will obey the same rules as all our students.”
I stare at him. “I don’t get what’s happening here. Is this a joke? Humans and what?”
The tattooed woman rolls her eyes. Lifting a hand, fire explodes in the center of her palm.
“Shit!” I shout, and spring back.
The golden haired lady laughs. “Has the boy really not seen magic?”
“He burned his fucking school down,” the tattooed woman says, with a sharp bark of laughter.
“I didn’t,” I sputter out. “I can’t. That’s not—“
“That’s not. I can’t,” the tattooed woman mocks.
“Silence!” The man in the center of them stands, his dark robes whirling around him.
“None of us might want the petulant gods in this world again in general, or in our school specifically. But the dean’s word is our law, and he has commanded it to be so.
We will not mock a creature that only recently was human. Do I make myself clear?”
“I was just trying to speed along the whole, ‘but magic doesn’t exist’ thing,” she says, making her voice high in mockery.
“Brenda…” the man says, her name a warning, and then his gaze returns to me.
“I am assistant to the dean, Roger of the house of snake shifters. If anyone should give you trouble, come to me. And if you should cause trouble, don’t doubt you’ll live long enough to reap a consequence to your actions.
Now Clifton, head boy to the shifters, will show you to your dorm. ”
I stare, my brain still processing what the hell is happening.
The woman he called Brenda smirks at me. “I hope you catch on faster than this the rest of the year, boy, or things aren’t looking good for you and your friends.”
“My friends?”
She laughs. “Hasn’t anyone told you? All you gods are now under our care. The girl. The brothers. And the jock.”
I stiffen. Izzy is here? And my friends?
“Where are they?”
“An actual question,” she says, laughter in her voice. “But I’m afraid nothing is that easy here.”
The door behind me opens again. The same man waits for me, his expression expectant. I walk out of the room, more confused than I’ve ever been in my life. We go back up the stairs, and I look at the man beside me.
“You’re a shifter?”
He laughs. “A werewolf.”
“And…I’m a god?”
He takes longer to answer. “You are.”
“I knew it…I’m high somewhere, aren’t I?”
He grips my shoulder. “If only it was that easy. Now come on, let’s get you your sword. I hate thinking about you defenseless right now, not when half the school is betting who will kill you before morning.”
Kill me before morning? Holy hell.