Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
My second class of the year was after lunch.
I’d been looking forward to having Monday afternoons free for napping after having to get up so early for Dragon Riding, so was quite resentful as I walked toward my Inner Beast Management class.
I still blamed Taggart, which perhaps wasn’t fair since the events during Dragon Riding that morning had nothing to do with him and would probably have still brought me to the attention of administration.
In other words, it was probably inevitable that I would be forced to take this class, but I still resented it and was going to always blame Taggart, regardless of whether it was fair or not.
The only saving grace was my budding hope that I might learn something to help me calm and soothe my leopard when she was agitated and ready to start mauling people.
It was a slim hope, but it was all I had, so I was clinging to it with all my strength.
When I saw the Inner Beast Management professor, that hope cracked a little .
I hate to be shallow and to base people on their appearances, but frankly, I’d expected something, some one different. Rumor had it the Inner Beast professor had a truly terrifying beast of her own, which was what qualified her to teach this class.
Except I now doubted there was any truth at all to that rumor.
Frankly, the professor was tiny. And old .
Although I suppose the young who have inner beasts eventually grow into the old with inner beasts.
But again, she was tiny. I swear when she stood, she was no taller than when she’d been seated. If she was an inch over four feet, I’d be shocked.
Her hair was so white, I wasn’t sure it had ever had any color to it at all. It was in a long braid down her back and her face was covered in fine lines that indicated an unimaginable age.
Though she seemed ancient to me, her eyes were piercing and full of life.
Perhaps she would surprise me.
I settled into a seat toward the back of the room and nodded to shifters and other supernaturals I recognized as they wandered in.
I almost lost it, though, when Taggart sauntered in, saw me and grinned. He headed toward me and I could see by the look on his face that he was planning to sit beside me and make it his mission in life, or at least in this class, to piss me off.
This was how I ended up dragging an unsuspecting student whom I’d never met into the seat beside me. “Just stay here until that idiot Taggart finds a different spot to settle, then you can go wherever you want,” I promised the startled-looking woman sitting next to me.
She just grinned. “You’re Mikaela, aren’t you?”
I looked at her closer, but didn’t recognize her at all. “Have we met?”
“No, not really. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Tabitha, Taggart’s twin sister.”
Oh, shit.
Shit .
She burst into laughter at the look on my face. “It’s all good,” she said when she finally got control of herself. “I’m just so happy to meet you. I’ve been warning Taggart for years that one of these days, he was going to try his shit with someone who wouldn’t put up with it and I really hoped I’d be there to witness it. Watching you toss him across the room yesterday was the highlight of my year.”
I could feel myself turning red. “I really want to apologize right now, but it wouldn’t be sincere.”
She giggled. “I should hope not. I don’t even know what he did, but I have no doubt, whatever it was, he earned that trip across the room.”
I grinned and was about to reply, but Professor Diaz began class and there was no more time for talking.
I can’t begin to express the amount of horror I felt when I realized our first lesson in Inner Beast Management was learning how to meditate.
Meditate.
As in turning our brains off and just living in the moment. Being at peace.
Since any time I did anything close to resembling turning off my brain, like say when I tried to fall asleep at night, nightmares would sneak in, I wasn’t exactly on board with this whole “be at one with the universe” crap, but whatever.
I did my best to make it seem like I was making an effort and was hopeful we’d get more practical advice in future classes.
“Please tell me it’s not all meditation techniques,” I said to Tabitha as we left the classroom.
She snickered. “No, not at all. Well, for year ones, it’s mostly that, at least for the first semester, but by now, we’re expected to have those techniques mastered. Professor Diaz just likes to review those techniques the first day of class. Trust me, you’ll be grateful for the review next class when she tosses us into some crazy lab and expects us to keep our cool.”
“Lab?”
She nodded. “Last year, we spent about half our time in labs and the other half of our time studying disasters. I think third and fourth years, though, are just all lab, all the time. At least that’s what I hear anyway.”
Great. So I missed all the fundamentals during years one and two and now they were planning to throw me in the deep end.
I scowled as I realized Headmistress Blackthorn had undoubtedly known what she was doing when she’d told me I had to be with my classmates rather than go into an earlier year.
“Don’t worry,” Tabitha said. “Your leopard may be new, but trust me. She won’t let you down.”
Right.
I was honestly about to panic when I remembered Elliot.
Or more specifically, my tutoring session with him.
I had just enough time to grab a snack and come up with a game plan for how to approach him. After all, if I had to have a tutor, I was going to make it work for me.
After saying goodbye to Tabitha, I grabbed an energy bar from the cafeteria and ate it on the run as I hurried downstairs to the library in the basement. Once I got there, I asked Mr. Brecken, the librarian, for the textbooks that were used in years one and two of Inner Beast Management.
Apparently, third years didn’t need textbooks because it was all about the practical experience.
Yay me.
“There’s only one textbook,” Mr. Brecken told me. “We do have a copy in the library, but it’s part of the Academy’s special collections and can’t be checked out. You can look at it here, though, and if you wish to purchase your own copy, I’m sure you can buy one from Mrs. Diaz.”
That seemed a strange arrangement, but when I saw the actual book, I realized it wasn’t so strange after all.
The book was massive.
Hardback.
A thousand pages at least.
And the author of the book, which was titled Principles and Techniques for Managing An Unruly Inner Beast, was Julieta Diaz.
I opened the book and perused the table of contents, not even a little surprised at what I found there.
Breath control: breathing with your inner beast
Mindfulness: being in the moment with your inner beast
Mantras and visualization: communicating with your inner beast
Meditation: becoming one with your inner beast
Movement: moving with your inner beast as if you were one being
Only five chapters for a book of a thousand pages ?
I opened the book to the middle and immediately realized why it was so huge.
It was a how-to picture book. There were pictures of positions to take when meditating, pictures of how to do breathing exercises—I thought I already knew how to breathe, but whatever—and pictures of movements to practice.
Oh, and chapter three was full of actual mantras.
Things like, “I embrace my inner beast. We are one. I embrace my inner beast. We are one.” The mantras also came with suggested movements. This particular one suggested lifting one’s arms as if to offer an embrace to someone across the room while reciting the first line, then pulling your hands in, elbows out, to touch the chest while reciting the second line, and repeat.
There were even suggestions around how to breathe during the mantra—when to inhale and when to exhale—and what tone to use when saying the mantra.
This book was crazy.
I was starting to wonder if our professor was too.
I gave Mr. Brecken a look, wondering if this was some sort of hazing experience for the new shifter gal, but he’d walked away and wasn’t paying me any attention at all.
“I am one with my inner beast?” I muttered.
“Are you?” Elliot asked as he plopped down in the chair next to mine.
Not beast. Leopard.
Unbelievable. Of course, she woke the minute Elliot arrived .
“Because I wasn’t exactly sensing that earlier today,” Elliot said.
Bad-Dragon.
Totally, I agreed, glaring at Elliot before turning the book toward him so that he could see the mantra written across the page.
“Ah, I see you’ve found Professor Diaz’s masterpiece. I know what you’re thinking because it’s what most students think when they see the book for the first time.”
“Oh, yeah, what’s that?”
“What a bunch of hooey.”
I couldn’t restrain the snort of laughter. “I mean, you have to admit, it sounds kind of crazy.”
“Absolutely. The thing is, I’ve been in control of my dragon since I was seven. Do you know how?”
Bad-Dragon smell yummy.
I shook my head and tried not to smile.
“I didn’t know either. I figured I was just a natural or something. Then I took Professor Diaz’s class and realized I wasn’t special at all. I was just blessed to have a grandfather who started me on these exercises when I was a toddler. I grew up practicing breath control, meditating and communing with my dragon.”
Miki-Leopard commune Bad-Dragon. She sent a very explicit image of what that communing might look like. Let’s just say it was absolutely anatomically impossible. For a newborn, she sure had some interesting ideas.
“He didn’t call it that, of course,” Elliot continued, dragging my attention back to what he was saying. “He called it a game. He’d say something like, ‘Let’s see if you can get your dragon to breathe with you.’ And when I did, he’d clap and tell me I’d won the game.”
Miki-Leopard win Bad-Dragon.
I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, so I just stared at Elliot and said, very slowly, “Huh.” Honestly, it was a good response to both conversations.
He grinned. “I’m just saying, don’t discount the power of a good breath.”
Bad-Dragon give breath Mikaela. She sent another explicit image, this one of Elliot and me kissing.
Heat rolled through me and a couple sparks flew from my fingers, catching the edge of the book on fire. I grabbed the flames in both hands and extinguished them quickly, but the damage was already done .
The book now had scorch marks all along the spine.
Great. Mr. Brecken was never going to trust me with any books again.
Elliot stared wide-eyed at me. “You really do control fire.”
I shrugged. “I’m a fire witch. It’s my main source of power.”
Miki-Leopard-Fire-Witch.
No. Just Miki-Leopard. Not Fire-Witch. “Unfortunately, since gaining my leopard, the fire’s not exactly fully under my control anymore.”
Miki-Fire-Witch.
No. Miki-Leopard. “So I need your help. I have a list.” I pulled out the notes I’d jotted down in class. “I need to be prepared for something called the gauntlet and something else called the obstacle course.”
Fire course.
No fire course.
“Ah. So you’re also enrolled in Extreme Sports.”
Extreme fire sports.
No, Miki-Leopard. No extreme—Wait. What?
“What?” I repeated out loud. “Did you say Extreme Sports?”
Elliot nodded.
“Absolutely not!” I scrambled in my bag, looking for my schedule. “I’m not—” I finally found it, pulled it out and just stared at the new class now filling my Tuesday and Thursday mornings. “You’re freaking kidding me!” I finally exploded. “I didn’t sign up for this and I swear it wasn’t on my schedule earlier this morning. ”
“Headmistress Blackthorn probably heard about what happened in Dragon Riding class.”
Bad-Dragon.
“So she added another class to my schedule? She was supposed to let me drop that one!”
Mr. Brecken made a shushing sound from across the library.
Shush.
Yes, I heard him, Miki-Leopard. I dropped my voice to a shouted whisper, “ Why am I now enrolled in a sports class, especially an extreme one? I’m probably the least athletic person you know.”
“Truthfully? It’s a great way for a shifter to run off excess energy.”
Miki-Leopard run. Miki-Leopard fast.
Well, at least one of us was.
“It also really helps us get in sync with our inner beast,” Elliot continued. “A lot of the students enrolled in Inner Beast Management are also enrolled in Extreme Sports Ed.”
I groaned. With my luck, that meant freaking Taggart would be in my class.
Elliot leaned over to look at my schedule. “Hey, cheer up. You’re in the multi-year section, which means you’re in my class. Friendly faces and all that.”
Kissy faces better. She sent me another image of the two of us kissing.
Stop that! I can’t think when you ? —
She sent another image way more explicit than kissing and the table caught fire.
Elliot and I managed to grab our things before they went up in flames, too, and watched as the table crumbled to ash.
“Seriously?” I hissed. “Not only am I dealing with an out-of-control leopard with pyro tendencies, but now I have to take a bunch of classes I never wanted to take in the first place. First Dragon Riding, now this? ”
Bad-Dragon sexy.
I rolled my eyes.
At that moment, Mr. Brecken came around the corner, stumbled to a stop and exclaimed, “What happened to the table?” Seeing the book clutched in my hands, he stormed over and snatched it back. He carefully looked it over, scowling at the scorch marks along the spine, and snapped, “Out. Out of this library right now, before I ban you both for life.”
A few moments later, Elliot and I were standing outside in the hallway and I was thinking how lucky it was that he’d been with me when the table caught fire because if I’d been alone, Mr. Brecken would have known immediately that I was the one responsible for the burned table and the scorched book. Since I had a dragon with me, though, Mr. Brecken couldn’t be certain which of us had done the deed, which was probably the only thing that had saved me from a lifetime ban.
Then I remembered that I had to go to extreme sports in the morning and realized I was deluding myself about being lucky.
I glared down at the schedule still clutched in my hand. Seriously, if something had to burn, why couldn’t it have been this stupid piece of paper? Maybe I could pretend it had burned and that I hadn’t noticed the additional class.
But no. The headmistress probably had a read receipt spell on it, which meant she’d already been notified that I knew about the damn class.
“This is going to be a nightmare.” I began to pace while Elliot just watched me with those sinfully dark eyes. “Bad enough to have to take Extreme Sports at all. But to be thrown in with Year Fours? Students who might have as many as three years more experience in this class than me, not to mention a lifetime more experience managing their inner beasts?”
“Eh, most of the exercises are done in teams,” Elliot said, “so at least you’ll have some of those Year Fours on your side, balancing things out.”
I let out a great big sigh of despair. This was freaking terrible. I wasn’t kidding when I said I was the least athletic person he’d probably ever met.
I hated to exercise. I loathed running. And I thought competitive sports were stupid.
This was going to be an even bigger disaster than Dragon Riding was.
Bad-Dragon, Miki-Leopard announced again , as if she hadn’t already said it every single time I’d referenced or thought about the Dragon Riding class from hell.
“On a completely separate subject,” Elliot said, “why does your leopard keep calling me Bad-Dragon?”
“Wait. You can hear her?”
“Of course, I can. ”
“What do you mean of course? No one else hears her!”
“Yes, but no one else is your mate.”
“WHAT???”