Hekate’s Bride

The following days were a blur for me. Classes, training, more training and the likes. To think I had referred to regular training as grueling. Training for the Games is much, much worse. The first few hours felt like death and I have been going at it for days now. To represent Lycan School, I’d have to be at least on the level of an average lycan.

Which of course, I am not.

By the end of the week, with little to no progress, Chancellor Vesper strikes my name off the register. That’d make me the first royal who is unfit to participate in the Games. The first royal who cannot represent her people.

Frankly, I don’t care. If it means I’ll get more sleep at night.

We have not lost any more students in the last week but signs of rot have been noticed around the schools and in the realms. Suffice to say, the rot has begun.

The Hekate has not visited my dreams since that night, but I find myself thinking about his words and what his motives could be. His name is all over my journals. My latest obsession, Maya calls it. I find myself drawing his name prettily with exaggerated curves and shading-Maybe Maya’s right and I need to stop thinking about Hekate.

You already have.

Those words won’t leave my head. I don’t know what they mean. Do I know him? Of course not. He’s as old as dirt. I mean, I’d know if I had met him, wouldn’t I?

I sigh, tossing the pen in the middle of my notebook and I shut it. It’ll be lunchtime soon and my belly feels funny. Darian and Maya are supposed to meet up with me here in a couple of minutes. I could use the rest room before then.

Darian, Maya and I have been hanging out every day. Cafeteria, complex, pool, gardens, etc. We have yet to cover even half of the school’s premise but it feels like I discover new places with every new day. Darian has his classes in the other building where the fourth years have their classes and he still hangs with his Star friends but even I am starting to see what Maya’s talking about.

He’s always available. Always, and while I would normally complain, being Darian’s friend comes with benefits. Free food, entry into places with restricted access, less cat calls and lunch plates being hurled at my head.

Like I said before, I do enjoy the privilege.

I turn on the faucet, washing my hands and when I raise my gaze to the mirror, I scream.© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

Black veins are bleeding out from my eyes. The blue in my eyes are disappearing and turning into pools of darkness. My fingers rise to my cheeks, and rather than my newly manicured nails, I see black claws touching the dark veins. It is nothing like the elegant white claws Sloan has when I shift into her. This is black, feral and murderous.

I look at myself and I do not see Astrid. I see a stranger wearing my skin.

A lycan.

Fear rising, my lips part and I see fangs instead of canines. Wolves do not have fangs. Lycans do.

What the fuck. . .

All it takes is one blink to dispel the illusion, because when I blink, I am Astrid again. Blue eyes. Perfect skin. Red hair. Full rosy lips. Manicured nails. Canines.

Because that is what it was. An illusion.

I drop my hands on either side of the counter, breathing hard. The ceramic bowl gives under my palm, cracking first and I gasp when it shatters, shuffling far away from the mess I have made. I stare at my hands and the red angry marks on them, and my gaze slides to the mirror. What was that?

The sound of cold feminine laughter drifts and I stand there, unsure of what to do next. Pack the broken pieces or abandon them. My hands tremble as my whole being is still shaken up by what just occurred, no matter that I was just seeing things.

“If it isn’t the little wolf cunt. Destroying school property, I see?”

My eyes shifts to the door and I see Ginevra with her friends who are also in their fourth year. “It was a mistake,” I whisper, voice cracking. “I’ll clean it up.”

I crouch and start to pick it up but I am stopped when Ginevra’s foot suddenly slams down on my hand, forcing my palm to grind against the sharp fragments. A jolt of pain shoots through me as blood trickles down my fingers and I struggle to hold back a cry of agony.

“Move,” I say and a growl escapes me when she instead moves her foot, pressing down even harder.

“Guard the doors,” she tells them.

She grips my hair when they are gone, pulling my head back to see her face twisted with fierce hate. Her eyes bear into mine like daggers as her sharp features contort into something of pure malice. “What did I tell you about staying away from Rune?”

I start to move but her foot on my hand only presses harder and I whimper, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let go!”

Her lips are curled in a snarl, revealing perfectly white teeth that seem to glint menacingly in the light. “I saw you by the stairwell last night!”

I freeze. The stairwell? Oh no.

Memories assault me. Pulling Rune back from the school’s exit door and taking him towards the stairwell, away from the sentinels’ watch. Handing him a bottle of water. His unfocused gaze and his thumb caressing my lips.

I’d been trying not to think about it-and it had been easy to, seeing as I occupied myself with thoughts of Hekate instead. She saw all of that? “Nothing happened. I was trying to help him!”

“I bet helping him was the reason you had your tongue in his throat. Don’t play with me, bitch. I will kill you.”

“I was trying to help him,” I repeat again, panting and groaning when I feel the roots of my hair being ripped out.

It wasn’t a lie. I was trying to help him last night, and even if I absolutely hate myself for it, I wasn’t about to watch him die.

So, about last night. . .