2. Riley
Riley
“We’ve stabilized your mother,” the doctor with the wavy brown hair told me. “She’s lucky you found her when you did.” Or she’d be dead, was the subtext.
I nodded, unable to conjure up an emotional reaction to his revelation. Mom had always been a drunk, but in the last few years she’d started using drugs to numb her emotions, a habit facilitated by the cheap pills distributed by the shifter mafia.
I’d tried to get her clean, but it never lasted. Mom didn’t care enough to want to quit her addictions. About me or anything.
“Look, kid. I gotta be honest with you.” The doctor stared down at me with two bloodshot eyes, his pale complexion gray in the harsh lighting. The poor guy looked wrecked. Hardly surprising after a late shift in the hospital serving the city’s most deprived residents.
“If she doesn’t get clean, she won’t last much longer.”
“We can’t afford rehab,” I pointed out. Besides, Mom had no motivation to get clean. She used drugs to escape her demons, and those fuckers refused to leave her alone.
My asshole father had a lot to answer for.
“I’ll see what I can do to smooth the way,” the doctor said with a sigh, surreptitiously checking his watch. “There are some government-funded places in a rehab clinic in Silver City. I’ll put a call in. They might take her if you’re agreeable?”
“Silver City is for shifters.”
“Yes, but you’re a shifter.”
How did he know? He wasn’t a shifter. Perhaps he was a mage? They looked human. A full-blooded shifter could smell the magic, but my nose wasn’t that sensitive.
I took a step back, not trusting mages as far as I could throw them.
“Kind of,” I hedged. “Mom is human.”
The doctor shrugged, unfazed by my hybrid status. “If you have shifter blood, your family qualifies.” He glanced once again at the expensive timepiece on his wrist. Yeah, definitely a mage. “Give me an hour and I’ll see what I can do.”
Since I wasn’t eager to return home to our vomit-encrusted trailer, I shrugged and found a seat next to a vending machine. I had no money, but one hard kick when nobody was looking yielded a chocolate bar.
The rich, sugary chocolate melted on my tongue, replenishing a few of the calories I’d burned in the gym. A few minutes later, Felix ambled into the waiting room carrying two cups of coffee.
I grabbed one and slurped the bitter liquid down, not caring that it was hot enough to sear the skin from my mouth.
“Is she still alive?” he asked, blunt as usual. It was partly why I loved him so much. Felix, unlike the human social workers who’d tried their best to help me when I was younger, never tried to sugarcoat reality.
“Yeah,” I mumbled while chewing my chocolate.
“The doctor’s trying to find her a place in a rehab clinic.
” A rogue emotion bubbled to the surface, catching me by surprise.
“I need to find Lorna in case...” My voice trailed off.
Mom was living on borrowed time, and Lorna was the only other family I had. My father didn’t count.
“Your mom will be okay.” Felix took hold of my hand and squeezed it tightly. “A stint in rehab will get her back on the path to sobriety.”
“I doubt it, but I appreciate your positivity.” We sat in silence for a while as harried medics bustled up and down the corridor. A child screamed from somewhere nearby, making me wince. Then I spoke.
“Lorna didn’t ghost me.” His comments from earlier still stung.
“Something must have happened to her.” While Felix thought Lorna had disappeared for reasons she’d failed to communicate with me, I knew in my gut my sister was in some kind of trouble.
“She had a job, somewhere to live, and she’d started dating,” I reminded him while scrolling through the messages she’d sent.
“It makes no sense at all that she suddenly went dark.”
“Perhaps she found her soul-bonded mate and is in heat,” he suggested with a faint smirk.
“Gross.” I shuddered, not wanting to think of my sister having sex.
Felix snorted. “Shifter mating heats are perfectly natural, Riley. Don’t be such a prude.”
“Whatever.” I turned to face him. “So anyway, she’d mentioned dating hot shifters, and Trinity Falls is not far from Moonfall Academy, right?
So it seems likely the males she dated were from the academy.
I’m pretty sure she mentioned at least one of her dates was a student from Moonfall.
If I go to Trinity Falls, I can talk to people. Find out if any of them knew Lorna.”
Lorna’s messages had mostly been about the fun places she’d visited before she arrived in Trinity Falls. But once she settled there, she began dating. I smiled when I recalled how excited she’d been about it. She’d never dated before and was desperate to experience life as a single female.
“You could go there,” Felix admitted. “But then what?”
I chewed my lip. Lorna flew to Europe to escape our father. I, meanwhile, had never been on a plane, or even left the state. Was I brave enough to travel halfway around the world when I had no clue what awaited me?
“I can do it,” I insisted. “I’ll stick around until I work out which assholes dated my sister. One of them must know something, Felix.”
“Moonfall Academy is an elite shifter school. It’s full of entitled pricks from high-ranking packs and families.
None of them will talk to you once they figure out you’re a hybrid shifter.
And besides, I doubt they’re hanging out in a quaint little town like Trinity Falls outside of classes.
An academy like Moonfall is pretty full-on, especially for seniors. ”
“Maybe I could apply to Moonfall as a student,” I mused. “I’m a shifter, so I’d qualify for a place.”
“Moonfall Academy is a male-only school,” Felix said with a snort. “You can’t go there. And besides, you’re an unregistered shifter,” he added under his breath.
Mom had raised me as a human so my father wouldn’t find out I existed; it was safer that way.
My brain processed what he’d just told me.
“Why would the school be male only? And shifter only, for that matter.” Magical schools in the US accepted all magicals, not just shifters. “Good to know rampant misogyny is alive and well over there.”
I sipped my coffee while silently wishing I could afford to buy something more filling than chocolate. It had been hours since I last ate, and my stomach wasn’t happy about it.
“Female shifters go to Moonrise Academy, Moonfall’s sister school. The two operate independently, but there are joint social events to allow shifters to find their mates.”
“And get laid,” I added.
As ignorant as I was about shifter culture, thanks to my mother’s dogged insistence on treating me as a human child until my wolf manifested, I was well aware shifters typically had high libidos.
Keeping horny males and females apart would be an immense challenge to the faculty, especially around the full moon, so it made sense that there were plenty of opportunities for the student bodies to mix in a safe environment.
“So both academies let the students attend the full moon parties?” Lorna must have found out about the parties from the males she dated.
“Yeah, the local pack organizes them. My cousin Roland told me the full moon parties are very popular.”
“Wait, is Roland at Moonfall now?” I’d met Felix’s cousin a few times, but not in the last year.
Roland was insanely bright and a fox shifter like Felix, but he lacked social skills.
The poor guy had blushed scarlet every time I glanced his way, and when I tried to talk to him, he stuttered so hard I couldn’t understand a word.
“Yeah. Roland won a scholarship place at Moonfall. He lasted a month before he suffered a serious injury in some hazing bullshit. Once he recovered, he requested a transfer to Cedar Valley College upstate.”
“Sounds like Moonfall Academy is a truly awesome school.” Not. Goddess, I hoped Lorna hadn’t hooked up with some alphahole wolf shifter waving a bunch of red flags.
“It has a reputation,” Felix admitted. “Wolves are in the majority there, and many of the students belong to high-ranking packs, so there’s a lot of testosterone in the air.” My friend licked his lips, and it took zero effort to figure out that the idea of a bunch of ripped alphas turned him on.
“How come Moonfall didn’t offer you a scholarship? You are way cleverer than your cousin.”
Felix winked. “It did, but I deferred it.”
“So you could still attend?” Excitement sparked in my veins. If Felix took up his place, he could investigate on my behalf!
He read my mind.
“Nope. As much as I love the idea of meeting a bunch of hot shifter dudes, I don’t fancy being the next target for the wolf mafia heirs.”
“Hang on…are you saying some students at Moonfall are wolf mafia heirs?”
“So Roland said.”
Okay, so perhaps it would be dangerous for a fox shifter thrown in among a pack of murderous wolves with antisocial behavior disorders.
I shrugged.
“You’d be fine, Felix. I have faith in your survival abilities. Fox shifters are cunning and clever. If anyone can stay out of trouble, it’s you.”
“Thank you for your vote of confidence,” Felix snorted. “But as much as I love you, Riles, I’m not risking my hot ass. Besides, I’m too busy building my data consultancy business to bother with school. It’s not like I’ll learn anything useful there.”
“Data consultancy?!” I snorted loudly. “Is that what they’re calling hacking these days?” Felix ignored me, more interested in a hot doctor walking past. I gazed longingly at the snack vending machine. If I kicked it again, would it dispense more chocolate?
“Look, if you want to fly to Europe and visit Trinity Falls, then fine. But I strongly suggest you stay well away from the males that go to Moonfall Academy. At least some of them have links to the shifter mafia, and I don’t want you kicking up a hornet’s nest by talking to the wrong people.”
“Yeah, but it sounds like I need to get a foot in the door at Moonfall Academy,” I insisted.
Finding out which students dated Lorna and spending time with them so I could rule them out would take forever if I only had access to them when they bothered taking time out from their busy timetable to visit Trinity Falls.
“Riley, forget it,” Felix began, obviously reading my mind. “Moonfall is for male shifters, and you don’t have a dick.”
My positivity balloon popped. The more time I wasted, the harder it would be to find Lorna.
My mind made up, I fixed Felix with my best steely glare, the one that said I was not taking no for an answer.
“Then you need to get me into Moonfall Academy as a fake male shifter.”