Lycan School: Hekate's Bride

NOTE FOR READERS: The point of view character named at the start of a chapter remains the point of view character until someone else is named, then that person continues until the name changes again.

*Prologue*

Astrid.

"You poisoned me!"

"And that too was your fault. You don't get to ruin my relationships because I was trying to save you from your poor taste in women and—"

Rune rears back like I have stabbed him with a sword. "My poor taste in women?"

He leans in, staring deeply in my eyes as he adds in a low, deadly whisper, "And who would you peg as the right choice for me, Red?"

Red.

I hate when he calls me that.

I want to tell him that but his fingers suddenly cup my cheek, pushing my head back so I can look at him. My body jerks from the contact and when I start to move back, I collide with the closet door.

Shit.

My heart slams into my ribcage as pure, feline excitement courses through me. Perhaps it is the alcohol, but my wolf is stirring, purring with excitement.

"You?"

His warm breath that reeks of alcohol tickles my nostrils and somehow, something so little has me trembling with need under his fingertips.

I shouldn't have drank so much. I think he's drunk too. This isn't right. This should not be happening.

"Hands off, Rune," I say, but there is little protest in my voice as I get swept by a warm rising ocean.

His dark eyes drop from my eyes to my lips and a sharp sound escapes him. There, in his eyes, I see a crack. The cold, ruthless demeanor of his cracks and the things I glimpse between those cracks has me melting into his touch.

"This shouldn't—"

Rune's lips slam into mine, knocking the air out of me. My world shatters. I shatter. My knees buckle and I fall.

I fall into him.

My back slams into the door of my closet, hard enough to rip the oak door, but I barely feel it. Not as a fervent, urgent need I have never known with any man fills me to the brim.

His insistent lips part my mouth, filling me with violent tremors as his tongue slides over the roof of my mouth. He presses me harder against the wall and his free hand cups my ass, pulling me against him.

I hate him. I absolutely hate him.

But I moan for him, like I never have for anyone else.

I hate that he can do this to me. I hate that my body reacts to him and betrays me. I hate Rune Wilder.

But I hate myself more.

***

Lounging in my throne beside my parents, I peer down at the revelry below, itching to get into the frenzy with my people, but my mother’s stern look holds me in place.

As the sole heir to the Alpha King’s throne, I must behave with dignity and whatever nonsense it is that is expected of royalty. I weary of having these discussions with my parents and getting grounded when I snarl back at them for trying to keep tabs on me.

I clocked twenty-freaking-one today. It’s my birthday party, as well as the celebration of Solstice. I should be dancing with my friends. I should be getting drunk on smuggled human alcohol and plants. I should be having fun, because come tomorrow, I will be going through the portal that leads to the Werewolf Academy.

My life begins the moment I go through that portal. My responsibilities as heir will begin to weigh down on me, as I will be expected to excel in every single aspect of my training. Werewolf High had been hard enough. The Academy was simply arduous and too demanding for a woman who just wants to enjoy her life.

Come tomorrow, it is also expected that I begin the search for my mate. I know what you must be thinking. Why do I not have a mate at this age?

I must tell you before proceeding further into my story and my life; do discard whatever lore you have heard and learned. My world is more different than anything you have come to know.

Werewolves age slowly, and for that, our growth is slow as well. The age considered as mature in my lands is twenty-one for females, and twenty-five for males. The Goddess has made it so that our mates will always be older than us, and we do not mate until we have reached the required age.

So, anytime now, I will sniffing the air for my soul bound mate. I can’t say I am excited.

I spy Orion Frostclaw make his way over to the gathering and my heart flutters. His blonde hair is slicked back into a bun and his blue eyes glitter like sapphire jewels. He has a white tux on, and he makes white look sinfully hot. He has an easy smile, and you know what the best part is? He’s looking at me.

Not the “I’ve found my mate” sort of look. Nope. Far from it. It’s the “I can’t wait to take off your clothes” type of look.

He jerks his head towards the storeroom in a silent message, and I nod imperceptibly. Hell yeah.

But as I begin to rise from my throne, the herald howls, indicating the arrival of the Lycan King and his entourage.

I always hate this part. Rolling my eyes, I join my father and mother, walking down the dais to welcome our most important guests. Private time with Orion will have to wait then.

The crowd parts, creating a path for us to walk through. In the crowd, I spy my best friends, Aria Moonclaw and Trinity Silverfang. They are grinning and winking at me. I smile back, making faces at them, but my expression turns sour the moment my gaze falls upon the biggest bastard that exists.

Rune Wilder, Lycan Prince and sole heir to the Lycan throne.

I hate him. He hates me. I wish he would just die. He wishes me the same fate. Every time I hold a sword, I think of beheading him. He. . .he once tried to cut off my head when we were kids—with a fucking dagger—but he’d ended up cutting my beautiful hair.

I had cried for days, and my father had tried to pacify me, buying me every single thing he thought I wanted, except the one thing I did ask for. Punish the Prince for what he did. Shave all of his hair off and make him kneel before me to apologize.

But even as Alpha King, my father had lines he couldn’t cross with the Lycans. We are all the Moon Goddess’s children, but I guess even she has her favourite. There will always be an unseen tension between our kinds. The Lycans will always think themselves superior—because they are darker, stronger, faster, colder, more calculating, and painstakingly beautiful. I guess that does make them. . .ugh. I will never admit to that—and we will always consider ourselves superior, even if we are basically a watered down and milder version of them. Maybe more feral and more inclined to tear off heads rather than think first before tearing off heads.

That too, and the fact that we look like pups beside the Lycans when we shift. They become grotesque and nightmarish. Maybe it is why they rarely shift to their truest forms. To keep giving us the illusion that we can be safe around them.

Even if we all know it’s a lie.

Essentially, Rune Wilder got away with cutting my hair, and in the next Solstice celebration, I had slipped wolfsbane into his food. Now, wolfsbane isn’t as lethal to Lycans as it is to us, but it makes them sick. Very sick. Sick enough to piss themselves and vomit all over the floors. Rune had fainted in his own vomit.

No one found out it was me, but Rune knew it had to be me. Oh, and he had retaliated.

A shiver licks my spine as I recall what it had felt like to wake up in the middle of the night the next day with hundreds of spiders crawling all over me. I still have a phobia for spiders till now. A Rune-Induced Phobia.

As if sensing my line of thoughts, his lips curl into a sneer, and I bare my teeth at him while our parents exchange pleasantries. His eyes are so dark, there isn’t a shade of green allotted to it yet. I hate them. I hate green. He turns away from me, and his moon-white hair slaps the side of my cheek as he stalks off, no doubt to find whatever female is horny enough to have his sock in her by the end of the night. I would know that. I have walked in on him pounding into women in my father’s armoire more than once.

You have to be either bat-shit crazy or extremely daft to get entangled with someone like him.

What’s worse? Every female is completely enamored by the Lycan Prince. They look at him like he’s a fucking god. Even Trinity and Aria are ogling him, undressing him with their eyes.

I seem to be the only one who feels nothing but disgust when I see him.

“How long has it been? You have matured beautifully, Astrid,” Rune’s mother, the Lycan Queen says, pulling my gaze away from the idiot prince and pinching my chin with a fond smile on her face.

I smile in return, blushing slightly. Queen Zephyr has to be the only lyc an I have met who seems to be remotely nice. She is fond of me, though I have no idea why. “You flatter me, Queen Zephyr,” I make a dramatic pause as I sight the necklace of diamonds hanging from her elegant neck. “My, is that a new piece? By the Goddess, it is lovely!”

She smiles and flips her pale hair off her shoulder so I can see more of it. Inclining her head towards her husband who is engaged in a deep conversation with my father and mother, she beams, “He spent a fortune getting it from the human lands. Those mortals have become stingy lately.”

“It is beautiful,” I say, eyes wide with pure fascination.

“Astrid dear?” my mother suddenly calls out, causing me to tear my gaze away from the glittering jewelry to meet her ever stark gaze. “Go fetch Rune. We must start the ceremony.”

I hold my comment on why it is necessary that we welcome our people into the new year with the lycans, but I force a smile to my face before turning to search for the idiot prince.

“Princess,” a deep male voice says and I turn to find Thorne’s eyes taking in my form with a delicious spark of lust in his eyes. He takes my hand and presses a wet kiss to my knuckles. “Happy birthday.”

You see, Thorne is the wolf of my dreams. I’ve had a crush on him since I became aware of what it meant to be a woman. I have dreamt of finding him to be my mate and making babies with him. I have dreamt of ruling as Alpha Queen beside him as my King.

We went to werewolf high together, and though we haven’t dated yet—or had sex for that matter— and have had numerous flings with other people, everyone knows there’s something we share. Something that runs deeper than surface level.

But I am staring at him right now, on my twenty first birthday, and my wolf doesn’t seem to stir like they say. I do not smell anything awfully sweet either. I do not feel a tug, or a pull towards him other than the basic attraction that has existed between us for years.

His grey eyes shutter upon the realization too that nothing is sliding into place, and I squeeze his hand softly. “It is not the same for everyone. Perhaps, ours is late. My parents’ was.”

He smiles, but I can see it in his eyes. The possibility that we are not mates.

Thing is, Thorne Nightshade is the son of my father’s Beta, the next most powerful werewolf after my father, Beta Ryder Nightshade. Thorne is the only one fit to be my mate in the Realm of Wolvendom.

So, if Thorne isn’t my mate, who the fuck is my mate then?

After fetching Rune from the weapons cellar—and of course, his pants were half way down and he was only a few seconds away from spilling his seeds into a mated werewolf, Goddess save her soul—we performed the prayer to the Goddess, seeking her blessings and her light into the New Moon Year.

Soon, I am carted away by Trinity and Aria. We dance the entire night away, drunk and extremely high on happiness and lunar root.

I slip away from the crowd the moment I get the chance and I find Orion already awaiting my arrival in the storeroom. Our joining is hard, fast and nothing emotional.

You must think me reckless, and unusual. A spoiled princess who doesn’t understand the weight of her duties. That I am, and more. I have so much weighing down on me that I try my best to ignore it and live for me.

Perhaps, it is for this exact same reason that the Moon Goddess chose to punish me.

Bleary eyed, I squint at the twin huge boulders that hide the portal to the Realms beyond ours. This is it. I am finally going to the Academy. I would be excited if my head weren’t hurting like hell. I should not have gotten so drunk last night. I can’t even see colors properly.

Around me are my friends and peers who will be getting enrolled in the Academy today as well. I spy Thorne conversing with his father, Aria hugging her mother, Trinity kissing her girlfriend goodbye. . .all very touching moments they seem to be having.

I already had mine. It came with a book of rules and regulations on how the future Queen of Wolvendom is expected to behave. I was forced to memorize the first page and. . .My days of extravagance and partying are officially over. No males. No alcohol. No getting high. No smooches in between. No fun. One must be courteous and respectable. I must lead my people in the right direction with the Goddess as my guide. Her will must be my will.

Like hell will any of that happen.

The moment I get into the Academy, I’m burning the damn book.

“Gather around, children,” Grand Mistress Atlas says. She heads the Academy, and as such, only she can usher us in. Her green official robes billow around her as she places herself between each boulder, waiting for the last of us to inch closer for the address.

Aria is instantly by my side, eyes bright with glee and uncontained excitement. “Can you believe it? We’re finally going!”

“Ugh. Get your shit together, Ari,” Trinity scoffs, settling on the other side of me. “You do know we’re going to get drilled and pummeled in there.”

“The drilling’s just for the first year, Tri. I’ve heard it gets so much better in the second year. We even get to mingle with the older wolves! I heard they’re hot too. Mouth watering, yum yum—”

“Focus, Ari,” I growl, needing to hear the Grand Mistress’s address. I’ve been told to listen to the woman’s every word if I want to get through my first year. They say the first year is the hardest. It is where the strongest are chosen to move on, and the weak either die, quit, or get expelled.

Werewolf Academy isn’t your regular human university. There, we are taught the necessary skills to survive the incoming war. We study like the human do, but learning their science and technology is in no way fundamental to us. We have the Moon Goddess. We have portals. We have her blessed magic. We have pack telepathy. What better way to communicate than that?

The Lycans do not share our sentiment. They incorporated science and the Goddess’s magic into their realm, growing even more advanced than the humans. Stuck-up and arrogant pieces of shit. Good thing I wasn’t born there. I have no doubt that I wouldn’t fit in with the lot of them.

"Young ones, I must anchor you on the journey to the next phase of your lives. You will be addressed properly once you are upon the academy grounds," she pauses, smiling softly at us, but it doesn't reach her eyes.

Her eyes cool, sharp blades, observing and noting everything. Her gaze suddenly meets mine, and I lower it in a show of subservience. She gives me the creeps.

Luna knows how long she has been alive for. The sole survivor of Hekate's ruination of the Goddess's temple. She doesn't look a day older than forty. Though, we age slowly, hers is a mystery.

Some say it is because she is closer to Luna than any of us. Some say she carries the souls of her dead sisters around with her.

My surest bet is the first option. After all, it was she who brought the Goddess's will to my ancestor and founded the schools with his help, gaining a seat of power that nearly transcends even the king's throne.

Grand Mistress Atlas turns to the boulders and places a hand atop it, chanting something that makes the air on my skin rise.

The boulders begin to glow with soft green light, right before the earth beneath my legs shake.

"Woah," I say, arm flailing as I try to gain balance. Aria is grasping onto my leather sleeve tight enough to shred it. "Let go Aria!"

"I'll fall!" She squeals before careening into me and Trinity.

I swerve out of the way quickly, gripping her arm as I do, lest she falls into the puddle of muddy water beside us.

"You're a life saver," she pants, righting herself as the shaking stops.

"You are not merely walking through a portal," the Grand Mistress continues, and my gaze darts over the parted space between each boulder that is brightly lit up. "You are moving between realms, and as such, you will need the Goddess's approval. Should she find you unfit to attend the academy, the portal will reject you immediately."

Trinity sudden nudges my shoulder and when I arch a brow at her, she merely inclines her head towards Thorne, who is now standing beside her.

"Hey there, knuckle head," he teases and my toes curl at the deep baritone of his voice.

"Hey," I smile shyly, praying to the Goddess that I have not turned red yet. "Ready for this?" I say, gesturing towards the talking Grand Mistress.

He shrugs. "You'll be there. Nothing else matters."

I blush. It is words like that make me want to curl up by his side and kiss him until we're both breathless.

As if he can read my thoughts, his lips drop to mine and my core heats up. Hell.

"Oh, for the love of the Goddess, get a fucking room already!" Trinity chides in a hushed tone, and Thorne chuckles before returning his attention ahead.

I stare for a moment longer, watching his beautiful side profile, etching the lines and panes to my memory. I have no idea why I feel solemn all of a sudden. A sense of foreboding settles over me, and I can't seem to shake it off.

Rolling my shoulders, I force myself to listen to the last of the Mistress's address. "You must be at ease and trust her to lead you to the right place. Now," she says, inclining her head toward the portal. "The Academy awaits."

At the Grand Mistress's behest, we get in line. I am given a wide berth, as are my circle of friends. No one wishes to get on the princess's bad side by stepping her boots. Or her friend's boots.

Yeah, I can be edgy sometimes.

All the time.

The blonde werewolf at the front of the line seems to be having an anxiety feat and keeps going around the portal like it is some sort of evil she must avoid. People snicker behind me, and some growl with impatience.

I merely shift from foot to foot, heart thrumming in anticipation.

"What if it rejects me?" The female asks with a high pitched timid voice that is grating to my ears.

"Well, try again next year! Ba!" Someone laughs from the back.

"Get the fuck off the line, loser!" Another yells and barks a laugh.

The Grand Mistress pats the blonde's hair lovingly. "Then you can always try again with the next set dear. There is nothing to fear. It is the Goddess's will. She means no harm at all. Place your hands on the surface and let it guide you where you belong."

The girl swallows loud enough for the crowd to hear, but holds her hands out before her and places it on the luminous surface between each boulder.

In the blink of an eye, she disappears. There are gasps and hoots around me, but I have watched this numerous times. It is nothing surprising.

Grand Mistress looks up from the portal, glancing through the line in search of something. Someone. I lean back into Thorne's warmth, hoping to hide from her. Instinctively, his arm bands around my waist, pulling me further into him and his nose ruffles my hair.

My eyes shutter at the feel of Thorne's fingers against my bare midriff, and my heart begins to pound, even if it is just a casual touch.

But the spell is suddenly broken when Grand Mistress Atlas calls out, "Princess Astrid?"

My eyes snap open to find the Mistress's disapproving glance on me. I mirror her expression and inch out of Thorne's arms as she beckons me forward.

As Princess, I should have been the first to go through the portal, but I'm in no hurry to leave my friends yet.

Trinity slaps my arm. "Good luck girl! See you on the other side!" she squeals, grinning from ear to ear. Aria looks teary eyed. Drama queens. I'll see them in a couple of minutes. Why so emotional?

I give them funny looks and walk ahead of the lines, ignoring the envious looks I get from my peers.

"You must follow protocol at all times, Princess. I do not take kindly to being disobeyed," The Grand Mistress says when I stop before her, clicking her tongue in displeasure.

"Take it up with my father then," I purr, walking past her.

"Hold out your hands," she says sternly, annoyance stark in ber voice, but I don't care. I despise being told what to do. I despise people who try to control me. I despise being ordered around.

I hold out my hands and take a step forward, stopping in front of the portal. My breath leaves me as the air around me suddenly cackles with otherworldly energy. The hairs on my skin rises and my heart picks up quickly, racing with excitement and trepidation.

The iridescent colors swirling through the portal are mesmerizing and I find myself taking another step forward.

The Grand Mistress is speaking but I can't h hear her anymore. My world, my thoughts ha have been reduced to the low thrumming sound that seems to vibrate through my very being.

"Astrid..." a voice that is both young and ancient, beautiful and astounding, masculine and feminine calls out to me from beyond, and lost in a trance, I take another step forward.

"Astrid..."

Following the ethereal sound, I place my hand on the surface of the portal.

I jerk suddenly as unseeing hands grab me and hurl me into the portal.

Then, I fall.

The world around me dissolves into a blur and the ground under my feet has been removed. I scream as the wind whips my hair and clothes around me. My heart plummets as I drop into the void like a human rocket dropping from the sky.

I shut my eyes as they begin to hurt and I brace myself for impact as soon as the sceneries start to shift—

I crash head first into a hard rock. I groan, shifting lightly. Maybe not a rock. It is surprisingly smooth.

The sound of female laughter has my eyes snapping open. I squint up at the bright light over head and the people peering down to look at me.

"Is she alright?"

"Where'd she come from?"

"Appeared out of nowhere."

The voices attack me all at once and I clutch my ears, whimpering. Too loud. Everything is too loud.

A cackling sound suddenly fills the air and a loud voice booms across the space. "Attention students! You are to assemble in the Lycan King's Hall for the official address in ten minutes. Remember, you will be penalized for tardiness!"

The crowd around me disperses and I drop my hands from my ears, confused as hell. Lycan King? In Werewolf Academy? What in the three realms is happening?

I push up to my feet, groaning at the ache in my back. People push past me quickly, rushing to wherever this hall is and I squint, trying to make out the faces I see, but I don't recognize these people.

Moreso, they look and smell wrong.

Like...Lycans.

That can't be right.

"Excuse me," I say, trying to stop the nearest person I see, but I am pushed aside.

I stare at the male's retreating back, surprised. Does he not know who I am? How dare he push me?

Scowling, I try again. And again.

I successfully stop a female who looks at me like I am filth. "Where am I Where is this?"

She gives me a once over, nostrils flaring with disgust as she yanks her hand from my grip. "Don't touch me, wolf. Who let the rat in? This is Lycan School. What's a wolf doing here?" she mutters, walking away, seemingly annoyed.

I turn around, feeling and looking lost. What the hell am I doing in Lycan School?