Page 1 of The Fall Before the Heat

Chapter One

Sometime during London’s war with Mundanes Before Magic

Delius

“See. It’s not much different than Moonscale Academy,”my wolf said hopefully for the millionth time that day.

Except he was wrong. Everything was different than back home. Hemlock Academy was no Moonscale Academy.

The buildings covering most of Mage Street were short and squat little boggers compared to draconic architecture that oncestood proud on the Moonscale Academy Campus. The only difference was this campus wasn’t currently under threat of attack from a crazy dragoness and her even more batshit hate group.

“It’s one more semester. One more. Then you’re done with school. Then you will be school,”my wolf said, wagging his tail as I walked into the dorm building dragging two over-sized suitcases behind me.

“I will not be school. I’ll be licensed to work at schools and teach,”I said, shaking my head.“I’ll be a teacher at a school. Not school itself. I’m not magically going to turn into a building, you know.”

“Yeah! We’ll be school!”My wolf nodded as if it were the same thing.

I squeezed the handles on my wheelie suitcases harder to hide how bad my fingers trembled. I completed almost four years of classes surrounded by dragon shifters who towered over me. I could do this. I could manage this. Sure, I hadn’t lived on the Moonscale Academy campus. Sure, this was the first time I left my family’s den – I mean home. I was almost twenty-five. I could handle being away from home for a few months.

My wolf fell silent because he knew the thought that came next. He’d known it since the day I packed to leave. My family home might not stand on the corner of Perch and Birch Street when everything was said and done. London was on fire. London was a crumbling city. London was at war. That was the only reason I was here.

I was supposed to meet a tour guide on the academy’s main front lawn, but I arrived to a grassy field covered in people and I wasn’t about to stand around waiting to be found. The wheels on my old suitcases stuck in clumps of grass and dirt. So, dragging them around wasn’t much of an option anyway.

It didn’t matter. While waiting for the shuttle from the airport to campus, I took a virtual tour on my phone. It wasn’t the first time I watched the tour, but I paid closer attention than ever before. Hemlock Academy was real now. It wasn’t just some far away university anymore. It was real, solid, and my reality for my final semester.

My apartment was on the first floor, halfway down the hall. I knew from my information pack my roommate was an Alpha wolf named Rex. Strange that he was named after a lion, but whatever. I’d grown up around dragons named after rocks, clouds, and star systems. Why couldn’t a wolf name their kid after a lion?

Just like Moonscale Academy, Hemlock Academy didn’t ordinarily room Alphas and omegas together, but these weren’t ordinary times. I was accepted last minute, after my guidance counselor, working out of her kitchen, begged Hemlock Academy’s educational program to let me finish my last semester here. It was so last minute, because I struggled to rake together the money. Eventually, with the help of my parents, I managed, but it cost so much more than going to the local Moonscale campus. They’d given in, but warned I’d be shoved into whatever dorm apartment had room for me. I almost backed out, but my parents were desperate to shove me onto the first plane out of London and as far away from the war as they could manage.

“And no heat yet,”my wolf whispered.

He didn’t wag his tail about that as we walked down the corridor that seemed one-hundred times longer than it did in the virtual video tour. For a long time, I assumed I was a beta. A lot of people assumed I was a beta. It wasn’t until my pre-university health exam that I found out otherwise. The squinty-eyed doctor accused me of lying to be housed with betas and Alphas insteadof omegas when the test results came back. Only, I hadn’t lied, and I turned that accusation right back around on him.

The old doctor who squinted instead of wearing his glasses was right. I was an omega. I had all the parts that made me an omega. Only I and everyone around me had no clue, because I’d never had my first heat or showed any signs of it. There wasn’t an explicit medical reason I hadn’t gone into heat yet. I just hadn’t. The stubborn old doctor called me a late bloomer. I spent my first semester faking sympathy and knowing whenever someone brought up how good, bad, or embarrassing their first heat had been. I took Omega Studies like everyone else. I knew the symptoms. I heard enough firsthand accounts to cobble together a fake, but believable story of my own.

Salty sweat dripped from my forehead to my nose as I stopped in front of apartment six. Gone were the old-style dorms where it was merely a room. While London fought hate groups, Hemlock Academy had updated their student housing to feel like housing. It wasn’t only folks with kids in the tiny college apartments now. Everyone who lived on campus got one now.

“Hang on!” A deep voice called from inside.

“I have my key card!” I called back.

The voice that greeted me through the red door framed in mahogany didn’t carry the stateside accent that was everywhere since the plane landed.

“Do you?” The door opened while I still fumbled in my pocket.

“I do. It’s just buried,” I grunted, not bothering to look up at the giant wolf who stepped out of the way so I could get inside.

He reached for my suitcases, and I snarled at him. I lugged everything inside the suitcases across the Atlantic Ocean. They were the only belongings I had safe and sound in the universe. I wasn’t entrusting them to anyone else. I hadn’t even liked letting them be stored under the plane. Thankfully, the airports hadn’tlost my baggage. My wolf grumbled to himself, but I swallowed down the sounds he made.

“Okay, then. I’ll leave you to it,” he said, holding his hands up like I was about to arrest him.

It was an asshat move, but bloody hell, I wasn’t setting up any expectation of Alpha/omega roles. Not because I thought the lion-named wolf would try to get into my pants. No one ever tried that. It was as if they all knew I hadn’t had my first heat and couldn’t make pups. You’d think that would be a pro, but apparently not to shifter chemistry.

I didn’t let him carry my suitcases the rest of the way in, because I didn’t want him to expect me to wash dishes for the rest of my life. If I let him play cave-Alpha, he’d expect me to play cave-omega and that wasn’t happening. I was here to keep my head down, get my degree, and go home and teach in London. That was if there was a London left to teach in when everything was said and done.

I paused at the little archway between the living room and kitchen. Was I headed in the right direction?

“Your room is the first one off the kitchen,” Rex called from behind me. “The one with the green door. The bathroom has the yellow door. It’s like whoever designed the place had kiddies in mind.”

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