61 #2
“How?” Shay asks. “I mean, you knocked the White Mountain Lion of Palisandre on his ass.”
I just shrug. “Luck,” I guess.
When I look up, I find Riven leaning with his back against a wooden post, arms crossed while he’s watching me intently, and my stomach flips. Did he see what I drew? And if he did, what does that mean? His aura is shielded as always, but his look burns a hole in me.
“That was badass,” Blair drawls, slinging an arm around me.
I jump, as I didn’t hear her coming. “Sneaky witch.” I slap her arm, but she just pulls me close.
“Crafty halfling. How the hells did you manage to hand Kyrith fucking Kriannon his ass?”
“Secret,” I smirk, just because I don’t want to spill that secret.
All my friends pass the exam, but no one manages to come remotely close to defeating Kyrith, and the victorious grin stays on my lips throughout the day…until Evanalora’s class.
The beautiful professor—who might, or might not, be fucking Riven—throws me a warm smile, which I find really hard to reciprocate, when we pour into her classroom.
I know that Riven’s standing somewhere at the end of the room and try hard to ignore his presence or the fact that he’s gonna see me turn into an ugly, furry monster in a matter of minutes.
Evanalora has us put our flacon—the potion we prepared—on the table before she places four different red flacons in front of each of us.
“The exam will consist of two steps,” she says smoothly. “First, we’ll test your brewing skills. Second, your ability to identify the antidote by scent. One of the four red flacons in front of you contains the correct antidote.”
She smiles faintly. “If your potion was brewed correctly, you should grow a wolf tail and gain the enhanced sense of smell of a real wolf. That should make identifying the antidote…trivial.”
My stomach sinks.
“For those of you who fail the first step,” she continues, almost cheerfully, “be warned. The other three flacons contain various combinations of Mermaid Tears, Vanity, Bardic Inspiration, and Forget-Me Knots.”
“What are those?” I whisper to Shay, nerves fluttering wildly in my chest.
“Vanity turns you into a peacock,” she murmurs back. “Bardic Inspiration makes you unable to stop singing and dancing. Mermaid Tears give you gills for a short period of time. And Forget-Me Knots makes your hair grow. And grow. And grow.”
My eyes widen in undisguised horror. “What?”
“Yeah. I guess that’s Evanalora’s sense of humor,” Shay mutters. “But you trained your sense of smell, right?”
I shake my head. No. Of course not. I didn’t even know I’d need to. And since my Wolf’s Howling is probably going to fail abysmally, I’m guessing I’ll walk away from this with at least two additional mortifying afflictions.
Hells.
I glance toward the door, seriously considering how much trouble I’d be in if I just ran.
“Perhaps it goes without saying,” Evanalora adds lightly, “that the red flacons have been placed in completely random order. So glancing at your neighbors will be entirely pointless.”
She clasps her hands. “Now,” she says, smiling, “let’s begin.”
I watch a few students unscrewing their potions, and my stomach sinks further as I spot all of them growing hairy, wolfy tails.
Granted, they vary in color and size, and my guess is that this affects their sense of smell, too, because one suddenly gets up from his seat and starts to actually sing and dance.
Students start to giggle while my face goes cold.
With a deep breath, I grab my flacon, then frown when tiny, sparkling script appears dancing along the glass.
My pleasure. I love you, little star wolf. Blair.
My eyes widen when I realize this is not the flacon I distilled my potion into.
I quickly glance around to see whether anyone saw the message flaring up, but all of them are too focused on their own potions and antidotes.
I spot a few more students, one shrieking as her hair starts to grow longer and longer, already winding around the legs of her stool.
Two more sprout gargantuan tentacles. One student, clearly having a lucky streak, starts dancing and howling, wriggling his tentacles in the air.
It looks so funny I might have laughed if I wasn’t so nervous.
With a last breath, I down my potion.
My world warps and tilts, and then I’m suddenly on the ground. Wow. A rush of smells assaults my nose, and the walls are screaming with too many loud sounds.
It takes a few moments for me to understand what happened. But when I look down at my body, I find two silvery, furry paws instead of, well, arms. When I turn my head, I find the body of an actual wolf. Whoa. What?
My head darts around. I spot Evanalora staring at me with awe before she comes over to my desk.
Abyss, I’m a very tall wolf, because when she stops in front of me, I have to bend down to actually nuzzle her face. She smiles, clearly mistaking my lack of coordination and control over my sudden wolf instincts as affection.
“Dear students, this is a demonstration of a perfectly conducted Advanced Wolf’s Howling.” She brushes my fur appreciatively, and I can’t help but like her touch. Weird wolf.
Ryder flashes me a grin, having somehow managed to escape his cruel fate.
He shifts into his wolf form and comes bounding toward me.
Before I know it, the two of us are caught up in a wolfy-game where we try to catch each other’s ears and tails.
He howls suddenly, and I follow suit, overwhelmed by joy and fun when he bolts toward the door.
All wolf and unable to stop myself—and honestly, not wanting to—I dart after him.
Gods this is…incredible. This body moves with an ease I always dreamed about. We chase each other out of the building and into the meadow. Ryder howls again, and soon we’re surrounded by more wolves as his pack comes running, dashing past me toward the woods in a blur of black, brown, and white.
I have no trouble keeping up with them, play-biting and pawing at them every time I get close to one.
I forget time. I forget everything for a few precious hours, and only when we make it back to the campus once the moon is out, already almost full, its pull so strong it makes the wolf in me sing at it again and again and again, do I realize we’ve definitely missed the rest of the exam.
I wonder vaguely when the potion will wear off.
We dart into the great hall for dinner. All the mouthwatering, intoxicating scents and smells hit me, amplified by a hundred, and I start salivating.
Only to suddenly shift back.
I unfurl myself from my wolf form. Ryder tosses me some spare clothes when we all shift in the middle of dinner hall, standing there butt-naked in front of everyone.
For once, I don’t care. I just grin my face off while I slip into the oversized clothes, the wolves still teasing and playing with me and each other, even long after we’re back in our human forms.
My heart suddenly aches with an unknown longing. Because this afternoon has been the best damn afternoon of my whole life. And I would give everything to be a wolf. To be able to shift and be just like them.
“That’s quite something, huh?” Ryder teases, licking my damn cheek before I push him away, laughing, not minding his tongue on my cheek. It’s nothing sexual. It’s just wolfish, and I understand that better now than ever.
“We all passed,” Shay confirms with a wide grin.
My heart soars, flying even higher when I spot Faye behind her, flashing me a proud smile before falling around my neck.
“I wanted to see you. I knew you would make it,” she squeals before squeezing the air from my lungs with impressive strength. I guess that’s down to Blair’s training.
Blair ruffles my hair, then Faye’s. Ryder finally lets go of me when he notices Faye, and Blair swings me up into a cheerful spin before setting me back down again.
We spend a while longer performing stupid, squealing victory spins with each other, which eventually end with me dancing with Aris wedged against my chest—him grumbling and throwing complaints at my mental wall—before we finally dig into the food.
***
I end up in my bed with Faye and Shay and Blair, all clad in cute pink pajamas the campus conjured, Aris long since curled up under the blanket muttering something about letting an old man sleep before dozing off. He snores while we stay up talking and laughing and eating ice cream.
“So are you coming to the ball too?” I ask when Faye’s eyes finally find the clock on my nightstand.
Her face turns all red. “Gods. I should have been in my bed five hours ago,” she stammers, jumping up from the bed.
“Then just sleep over. This bed is large enough for a damn Nefarian orgy,” Blair drawls lazily, smirking when she notices our—and especially my —shocked gazes. “Just saying. In case anyone ever dreamed of having an orgy with Nefarians,” she teases me.
“Funny,” I mutter.
“I think she just wants a very particular Nefarian,” Faye says quietly, winking at me before opening the door to my room.
“Just like someone wants a particular wolf,” I tease, but she’s long since slinked away.
“Speaking of wanting and men…” Shay says with a cocky grin on her full lips. “I might just seek out a certain fellow student. See you tomorrow,” she says before following Faye.
I finally force myself up from the bed. “What about you?” I ask Blair once they are all gone. “Have you sorted things out with Meanara?”
Blair’s been decidedly quiet after our last conversation, and I haven’t seen her hanging out with the beautiful healer since.
But I have seen her casting long glances at her whenever she spots her.
And we have to sometimes—very accidentally —walk up to the temple, because Blair wants some herbs, or to pick berries or mushrooms, or whatever is close by.
“No.”
“You could ask her to come to the ball with you.”
“Not if I don’t get that fucking necklace back. I think she knows, Melody.”
I bite down on my lower lip as I start to rifle through the drawer of my nightstand and come up with a tiny box. “Here. I don’t know why I didn’t think about this sooner.”
I hand it to Blair and she opens it, peering inside. She gasps as she looks at the tiny, blue dragon scale shimmering in it. Blue with golden specks. “Don’t tell me it’s one of Aris’s scales.”
“Well, he wasn’t happy. But it was his idea.”
“Tell her it was one close to my anus,” Aris cuts into my mind.
“Yeah, and I should tell you it’s one of those around his asshole,” I add with a laugh. “Although that’s total bullshit.”
“Demon-shit,” he mutters sleepily, but I can see that he’s damn smug about that scale.
As an answer, Blair grabs him, lifts him into her arms, and starts pressing kisses all over him. He looks at me with a mixture of horror and a plea for help until she finally lets him go. Then she jumps up from the bed, rips off her pajamas, and dons her fighting leathers.
“Where are you going?” I ask, but she’s almost out the door, the box with the scale in her hand.
“Well, I’ve got to make some shit right. And tomorrow’s the ball, so—”