Page 22 of A Dusk Of Stars

Then again, I’ve no idea how long the charade will go on. In the meantime, I’ll have to go to actual classes with actual Originals. I can’t see any possible scenario where they don’t simply end up killing me.

Because even if Iwerea shifter, I’m obviously a terrible one.

But if I don’t do as I’m told…

They could invoke the death penalty, and it’s all over for me.

I peel my tired ass off the chair, I take a deep breath and I start walking.

As if in a dream, I find myself in front of what’s supposed to be my new home, my eyes getting drawn up, up, up. Shooting high into the overcast sky above me, the Lycan Tower is imposing to say the least — the sheer size of each individual boulder, the width of the wooden door fitted into them, the unsettling darkness of the Lycan forest sprawling behind it.

I keep looking at it, and the more I do, the more this thrill consumes me. What if they’re right?

What if I reallyama shifter?

The very thought seems to be too much to handle. Everything else aside, in my mind, there’s something about being a shifter that equates with losing control to all your deepest, darkest urges. It’s particularly unsettling in the context of anger, an emotion I’ve always tried to suppress as much as possible.

If I could choose, I’d much sooner go for either fae or vampire.

Then again, whatever this is, it’s definitely not my choice.

Forcing myself to shrug it all off, I start moving for the door, feeling confused and exhilarated at the same time. I’ll do as I’m told, for now. I’ll go inside, I’ll get the welcome package from the Head Student, I’ll move into my new room in the Tower and I’ll go to my first class.

When it all comes crashing down, I’ll have my old job back, if it’s the last thing I do.

Chapter 8

Goddamn surreal, this is. Just yesterday, I arrived at the Academy thinking I’m in for another year of working at the Library, and now I’m sitting in the back of B7, waiting for my first ever Lycanology One class to start with a hundred or so shifter students chatting and buzzing around.

“Can I help you?” I enunciate, gently but loudly, to a short but buff guy I see staring at me. Quickly, he turns his eyes back onto the people in his group.

I shake my head, letting out a sigh and leaning back on the bench with my arms folded.

According to my schedule, at least it’s notBanewho will be teaching me Shapeshifting Studies. It’ll be the somewhat senile but much less grating Professor Ahearn.

The goal right now is to avoid rocking the boat at all costs, and Lorcan MacArthur, well… The Grimm Academy Lycanology professor, he does not like me very much, and he also happensto have the power to prevent me from getting my old Librarian position back.

Sadly, the class hasn’t even started yet and I already have the stares to deal with.

It’s all perfectly understandable, I think as my eyes sweep over the people I’ve found myself surrounded with. After all, they’re just twenty-one-year-old shifter students rightly wondering what their twenty-nine-year-old human Librarian is suddenly doing in the classroom with them.

Hell, I myself have to fight the urge to stare atthem. To gauge potential differences and similarities between us.

The interest is making me worried about how easy it’ll be for me to ‘blend in’.

Just relax, I tell myself. Instead of focusing on the people around me, I choose to take a closer look at the room.

It’s not like I’ve never been in a Grimm Academy classroom. But they’re all different and I’ve never seen this particular one. It’s more of an auditorium, square in shape and brightly lit by the magic from the large paneled windows to my left and right. Most of the space is taken up by the two rows of benches cascading down the stairs to the central pulpit and blackboard, but what draws the eye are the glass cases to the far left and right, displaying bones, magical items and even some works of art.

It startles me, when I hear a sound to my left, on the bench I had all to myself until only a second ago.

Now I see a scrawny girl with huge black eyes and impossibly long black hair taking her seat next to me, rummaging through her bag.

And the intention is to look away, but then I see her trying to get a book out from among a pile of… sticks. It’s a pile of sticks she has in her bag.

My eyebrows pull down and then shoot up.

Then it hits me. That’s the girl one of the researchers came to inquire about last year, showing me her picture. It was only a few years ago she managed to break a hundred-year-old curse that was trapping her in her animal form, the one that inspired the Seven Ravens fairy tale.

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