“So where are they coming from?”
“They’re geas marks from her coven. There’s something bad going on there, and we’re trying to help her out of it. She’s trapped for now, and as long as she is, so are you.”
He tugged at his collar again. “Fuck this, we need to talk with the provost present, I’m already pushing the boundaries of what we’re allowed to say.”
Asher looked at them all. “Just what the fuck is going on here?”
“Dude, questions you should have asked before you walked up and challenged her. What kind of idiot does that without getting to know the witch first?” Ryan scowled at Asher.
There was a beat of silence, and then all of the Apex cracked up laughing, except for Asher, who turned crimson and frowned.
“Man, I can’t believe you just said that?” howled Oz.
Justin was laughing just as hard. “Projecting much, Ry?”
Even Trent had a smirk on his face. He’d been a witness to the antics of the Apex in the first months of the new year, where they went through and challenged every witch.
Nick chuckled ruefully. They had all been playing Russian Roulette with their lives, hadn’t they? He was the first to sober, and the others soon followed.
“Fuck, we could have …” said Oz quietly.
“Yeah,” said Nick. “But we didn’t. And now we have to help Mel, Dean, and Asher before it gets any more fucked up.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ryan.
“Come on then, let’s go and see the provost,” Nick suggested, and they all stood to go.
Asher looked at them incredulously. “You think she’s going to just drop everything and see you? It’ll take a week, a month before she has time for some shifters who have been here too long. Trust me, no witch takes us seriously.”
Nick put an arm across the wolf’s shoulders and dragged him along. “Well, now you know why we stay here and not one of the other academies. Provost Aer-Canticum takes us seriously. We’ve been here since before she was a student here. Justin even challenged her great-grandmother. Within reason, she always makes time for us, and we make sure that we don’t ask for it without good reason. Come on, you’ll see, it’s better here for shifters.”
“I’ll stay with Mel,” Dean offered, heading back into her room.
Together the six of them crossed the campus to the provost’s office, but she wasn’t there. Instead, the admin witch told them that she was in Provost House, the building next door. She phoned ahead to see if they could come over, and then smiled and told them to proceed.
Nick rapped on the door which was then opened with magic. With his augmented hearing, he could hear voices coming from deeper within the house.
“Come through, gentlemen,” a voice seemed to say in his ear, and he jumped. Oz laughed at him, and he bumped against the wolf as they walked through the door.
They followed the sound of voices through to the kitchen area at the back of the house. For all the years that she had been there, Nick had never been inside Provost House while it was inhabited by Provost Aer-Canticum. He took a moment to look around, noting all the changes that she had made. There weren’t many. The curtains had been replaced and the carpets had been stripped back, the timber floors polished until they gleamed. Overall, it was neat and tidy but not very personal at all. The thought made him sad for some reason.
In the kitchen they discovered the provost with the professor that Mel had studied with over the term break.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen, I trust that you remember Professor Ludwig?” she asked.
They all bowed slightly when greeting her, as was befitting a powerful witch like her. It rankled Nick, but as long as they were confined here, he needed to observe the etiquette.
“We were just talking about Melody. She has bonded another of you, yes?” asked Professor Ludwig.
Asher stepped forward before Nick could say anything. Impudent pup, he would learn that his place was far down the pecking order amongst the Apex.
“That would be me, Professor,” Asher said.
“Aah, and what kind of beast are you?”
Asher stiffened. There were polite ways of doing things, and that was not one of them. It could be due to her poor grasp of English, but Nick suspected that she was simply one of those witches who saw shifters as lesser beings. Even the provost had a sour look on her face.
“He’s an alpha wolf, Professor,” said the provost, intervening before Asher could return the insult.
“Two alphas? Then she is stronger than I had dared to hope. This is gut, yes?” She looked over the rest of them speculatively. “More of you will challenge her?”
“Possibly,” said Nick, before anyone else could intervene. “There are other factors involved.”
“She has refused you?” the professor’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline.
“No,” he started, looking helplessly at the provost. As far as he knew, the professor knew nothing of Melody’s home troubles.
“Professor, we don’t discuss these sort of things, that is between the witch and the shifter. It is up to them to decide together,” the provost said, giving him a slight shake of the head. So, the professor didn’t know then. Interesting.
The woman in question snorted. “Me, I am elemental. Beasts, I never understood. Is chalk and milk, yes?”
Mercifully, they all kept straight faces and nodded along at her mixed metaphors.
“She is strong witch, top of all her classes, and she works hard. I must tell my coven mistress. She would be gut for us. We must invite her.” The
