“Goddammit!”Andre pinched his lips to contain his giggle as he watched Rafe squint angrily at the bark of a tree.“Who was that?” Caster’s voice piped up from the cellphone speaker.“Sorry. That was Rafe. He’s just doing some pre-dinner workout.”Which he had been doing for the last three hours. Andre had woken up from a dreamless nap to ireful growling. At first, he panicked that it was a Graybite wolf who had come to collect on behalf of Renkin, who had changed his mind. It was a relief and quite humorous to find his only friend having an intense staring contest with a camphor tree on the outside of a wooded area that sat in the corner of Outville Piers. He decided to stay and be the great cheerleader he promised to be.A few days after the visit to Ironward, Toby had hooked them both up with phones for leisure calls and emergencies that required attention outside of the academy. Andre was eternally grateful that Beau’s mate somehow got to connect with Jan and the others back home
Next week arrived all too soon, and the first day of Ironward came upon them.Luckily for the boys, Beau and Toby had already got to packing their stuff in suitcases, spending the rest of the time either getting cleaned and dressed or trying to stay awake. While the latter rang true for Andre, Rafe was wide awake, sitting at the edge of his bed and blankly watching Beau and Toby move around their room, examining it for any materials that might be useful to take, as Andre was perched next to him and rubbing repeatedly at his eyes.“Looks like we got all the basics,” Beau clapped his hands together. “Ironward should have some things if you’re missing any, or you could just steal it from someone else.”Toby shook his head, wiping sweat from his brow. “He’s kidding, by the way.”Andre released a tired laugh, his swaying head gently hitting Rafe’s stiff shoulder. The blond remained still and unfazed as if he hadn’t been listening.“Thank you, sirs!” the omé stumbled off the bed and headed
It was as if they stepped into a royal court or something.The auditorium, specifically known as the Palace of Thorns, was a couple of miles long and deep in pink and gold. There were rows and rows of tufted chairs on the ground floor and half as many on the three balconies that hovered above like clouds. The place was filling up, but not even the new students and their families could make today a full house.Beau hurried their group along into the upper levels, eager to get a place on the middle balcony. They were able to make it to the front row with the help of the lycan’s insistent shoving.“Best seats in the house,” he winked as he sat in between Toby and Andre, while Rafe settled between the omé and Joe.It wasn’t long before the auditorium when dark, the stage still pitched in light. Odd thing was that there wasn’t anybody on stage at the moment. All eyes were cast on a barren platform and a red, bedazzled curtain. The proscenium arch had what looked to be Egyptian hieroglyphs
It was another half-hour later when the commencement finally ended, and people were back out in the front parking lot as friends and family wished their children goodbye and good luck. There were tearful and bittersweet farewells all around.Luckily, Beau and Toby weren’t that dramatic.“I’m sure you guys don’t need me to say it, but you guys will do just fine here,” Beau said as they, along with Joe, reached the Alicorn.Rafe rolled his eyes, smirking at him. “Don’t jinx it, old man.”Beau reached over and ruffled his hair. “That’s more of your thing, imp. Keep an eye on this one for me, cherub.”Andre saluted with an amused grin as he watched the blond swat at the lycan. “That’s my job.”“How about a hug?” Toby came over and enveloped the two boys in his arms without giving them a second, crushing them both to him. “I feel like a mom dropping her babies off at preschool. You, too, Joe. Bring it in.”Joe blinked in surprise before shrugging and inserting himself into the group hug. B
The interior of the dorm rooms was a lot better than a lot of ones he’s seen in photos. For first-years, there was a lot of space for two people. It looked more like a wizard’s bedroom, mini-queen beds on each side of the room along with their own desks with a large window in between, a sliding closet door adjacent to the exit, and a small couch beside it.It was inhabitable, and that was all that Rafe had cared about. Andre, on the other hand, had been gushing about from the curtains to the floor plan. It made the superhuman a little miffed. Not at Andre, but Graybite and their agenda against omegas in general.Currently, Rafe’s eyes were shooting open, having been in the middle of a nap, to stare up into the faces of Andre and Joe, who appeared a lot farther above the omé. He was about to question this when the Ares super beat him to it.“Hey, bro! Wake up! It’s explorin’ time!”Rafe huffed as he sat up from his bed, but immediately stopped short when he noticed Joe standing a few i
They had walked into pandemonium.Like most parties, it was loud, the deafening beat of the music shaking the entire basement, which was as wide and long as a supermarket. The goers were already at it, dancing, drinking, and making a fool of themselves without a care in the world. It was madness under the colorful strobe lights.However, the most outrageous thing that entrapped the first-years wasn’t the sheer chaos, but the blatant debauchery happening right in front of them. On one side, a lizard girl lay on a table with only two legs, kept balanced by a shirtless, massively built gray-skinned guy as he leaned close and snorted some purple, grainy substance from her stomach. On another end, a couple of humanoid female twins knelt before a groaning tiger shifter, lapping and bobbing at his naked, striped crotch. Some ways past that were several chimeras sharing a gravity bong while watching hardcore porn on a dusty flat screen.“What the hell did we just walk into?” Joe gaped, his ja
If Rafe had the ability to use his eye lasers at will, he’d totally smite that scraggly, maroon wild-haired boy in front of him and vertically slice him in half. Chestnut eyes glared heatedly back at him as they circled each other. Rafe, despite his body feeling heavier than usual and his mind sort of muddled, was brimming with the need to punch something, and the uppity, second-rate barbarian was the perfect target.The partygoers gathered around them as the two first-years stared each other down like lions preparing to maul down their prey, howling and hollering for bloodshed like an audience in a colosseum.“You wanna throw down, stick fig?” Rafe’s voice slurred as he sneered. “I’ll shove that bat of yours up your ass! Make you as tall as your boys over there.”Whatever was in that blue drink did quite the number on him. Superhumans couldn’t get drunk by normal means, so whatever he had drunk might be lethal to regular johns. But right now, he felt like he could do anything, such a
There was something… cold hovering nearby. A pair of menacing, black orbs – he could not see, but he could just tell – stared down at him with all the hunger and malevolence that could only be mustered from such an otherworldly creature. The freezing, ghastly wisps of power whipped across his face, and its icepick fingers trailed down like a razor across his cheek.His skin crawled, and he struggled to move, but it was as if he was a block of ice himself. A trail of frost slowly traced a path down from his cheek to a vein in his neck. The tiniest prick made him squirm before-Rafe’s eyes shot open before he darted up in a cold sweat. “Huh? What the f-”His shaky breathing was the only thing he heard within his dorm room as he frantically searched through the darkness, looking for what he thought was an intruder. Another worrisome thought entered his head and made his face drain of color, then nearly gave himself whiplash when he snapped to the right to inspect the bed several feet awa