Page 4 of Wings of Ashes
“Are you feeling okay?” Elle asked cautiously.
“Never been better,” Nix replied.
Fuck the alphas. This time, she would learn to protect herself.
2
CHAPTER
Nix fought to maintain calm breathing the next day as she tried to set her plan in motion.
Half an hour had already gone by, and the guidance counselor still did not understand why a cygnus shifter would want to drop out of classes like art, cooking, and marriage relations in order to sign up for Potions 101, History of Winged Creatures, and Introduction to Combat.
“Swans have no reason tofight,” the guidance counselor stated, stunned disbelief leaking from her voice.
“What about self-defense?” Nix shot back.
“Defense fromwho?”
Nix held back a shiver when she thought of her captor—the man who would become herfutureenemy. She needed to learn how to fight, so she could slay him when their paths crossed in less than two years.
“Mostly alpha males are in these classes,” the guidance counselor continued, listing concerns.
“So?”
“So…it’s not an appropriate subject for someone like you to…”
Nix’s eyebrows sprang up. “Learn?Around boys?”
Nix had always known the academy was old-fashioned; it was part of why her adoptive father, Kellan Oadess, sent so much financial support to the school. He wanted all of his cygni followers to have a “traditional education.”
In Nix’s past, she had believed that was a good thing. She was told it would bedistractingto the alphas if female cygnus shifters attended the same classes with them.
After all, why would the females need to learn the same subjects as their future mates? Better for them to learn about how to please alphas and provide domestic bliss. Better to try to stand out from the crowd by being the best student in cooking class or something as equally unimportant.
Ridiculous.
None of what Nix learned the first time around helped her in captivity—especially cooking and homemaking.
But in this second chance at life, she would take the classes she knew she needed, rather than what was suggested to her.
“There is no written academy rule prohibiting female prey shifters from enrolling in those classes,” Nix stated. She had reread the academy manual last night while deciding what classes to change.
“It may not bewritten, but…” The counselor shook her head. “I don’t understand how changing your class schedule in the second semester would help you, Miss Oadess. Your grades will suffer from missing the first semester of content.”
To convince the guidance counselor to finally approve the changes to her class schedule, Nix made up a new excuse.
“I…haven’t been having much luck making connections with male students in my current classes. If I enroll in some new ones, I could meet my future husband in one of my classes. Otherwise, I worry about my chances of finding a match before graduation…” Nix feigned a look of sadness.
And it worked. Apparently, that was a more acceptable reason to enroll in her new desired classes than her real reason of “I want to learn to be stronger.”
Nix did not care about finding a husband like Elle and the rest of the female avian shifters. Nix knew her future ball and chain. And she wanted to kill him.
Potions 101 might help her understandwhyhe kept her for experiments, or she might learn potions that could counteract the poisons he exposed her to during her years of captivity.
Introduction to Combat would strengthen her weak body to be able to fight back and bend the metal bars of her cage—maybe. Hopefully.
And in history class…maybe Nix would finally begin to understandwhatshe was. All she knew was that she was not human, but she was not a swan cygnus shifter like Elle and her adoptive family.
