Chapter 31: I Saw A Girl?

Keali

"I saw a girl who was... oh, but a boy? Damn it, how high was I that day?"

Kaeli let out a frustrated sigh, dragging his hands down his face. A blurry image flashed in his mind: the silhouette of a bare body and the lingering scent of jasmine. He couldn’t quite place where it had come from or where he had first smelled it.

"Shit, I really overdid it," he groaned as his head pounded with a fresh, violent throb.

He took another agonizing sip of his medicinal tea, praying it would work fast and free him from the hangover. He would have taken proper medication, but mixing it with a heavy dose of Moon’s Crust felt like a fast track to disaster.

As the youngest of the siblings, Kaeli was by far the biggest fuck-up. Everyone knew that if he wasn’t with his brothers, he was either passed out somewhere or nursing a killer headache. There were plenty of reasons why he turned out this way. It could have been the trauma of ripping off his girlfriend’s head—the only woman he had ever loved—when he first arrived at the academy and went feral.

It could have been the fact that his wolf form was completely unhinged—an absolute beast.

It could have been that he hadn’t slept properly in eight years. Or perhaps it was because he was his mother’s least favorite child; it was no secret the Queen detested him. So many reasons, yet no one could pinpoint the exact moment he had drifted so far gone, or why he seemed past saving.

"I’m telling you, man, I saw him in the hallway. It’s that little rat, Travis," Theo’s voice echoed into the large dorm as he and his two other brothers stepped inside.

Kaeli looked up from his tea as they entered.

"Travis? How drunk were you, man?" Vance laughed, sitting on the small kitchen island and grabbing a piece of fruit from the basket.

"Barely. I know what I saw. He was so close to my face I almost k—" Theo cut himself off, clearing his throat. "I almost kicked his tiny little butt."

What are they talking about? Kaeli thought, squinting through the haze.

"Sure. Out of everyone at this academy, the person we hate most happens to be our roommate," Malric said, shaking his head as he grabbed a water bottle from the fridge. "You need to cut back on the drinks, man. You’re starting to see things that aren’t there."

"Malric, I know what I saw! I wasn’t sure at first, but after seeing him at dinner yesterday, I’m positive it’s him."

Him. The word echoed in Kaeli’s mind, triggering the memory of the delicate, hazy outline he had seen in that room. "Our roommate is a girl," Kaeli spoke up, his voice slow, dry, and dragging. He cleared his throat when he finished speaking.

All three brothers snapped their gazes toward him, sharing identical looks of pure confusion. "That’s even more ridiculous than what Theo’s saying," Vance snickered, taking a bite of his apple.

"I’m not joking. The other day, I was exhausted and passed out in one of the rooms. When I woke up, I smelled a faint scent of jasmine and heard the shower running. A second later, a girl stepped out of the bathroom... stark naked. I saw everything." Kaeli sounded entirely convinced, but his brothers found his claim even more absurd than Theo insisting the Whitelock boy was living with them.

"Kaeli, you weren’t even on this planet the day you claim you saw this ’girl,’" Vance wheezed.

Kaeli rolled his eyes, gripping his hot mug tightly as he weighed the pros and cons of throwing it directly at Vance’s face. Vance could be the most insufferable prince when he wanted to be, and his big mouth frequently earned him a beating, hence the perpetual bruises on his face.

"Little brother, men and women aren’t allowed in the same dorms. It’s against academy rules," Malric said calmly, turning to face him. "I doubt the headmaster would put us in a room with a girl." Kaeli looked into Malric’s eyes and slowly nodded. "Yeah, you’re right. I was seeing things."

"Why don’t you get some rest?" Malric offered a soft, rare smile that actually made him look like a human being with a heart. "The rest of us need to get to practice."

"I will, just as soon as I finish this tea," Kaeli muttered, nursing the mug.

"Good," Malric said.

"Let’s go kick some Lycan butt," Vance announced, sliding off the counter as the brothers headed for the door.

Malric

The crisp autumn air bit at the back of Malric’s neck, but the heat radiating off the churned-up dirt was suffocating. High above the pitch, the floating obsidian spectator stands hung like jagged gargoyles in the sky, suspended by ancient levitation charms. Below them lay the Grand Colosseum of Moonside Academy, a massive oval field wrapped in enchanted stone walls and slick with enchanted mud.

This was Valkyr-Rugby, the academy’s brutal, blood-soaked evolution of human sports. There were no pads, no light contact, and certainly no mercy. The rules were simple enough to appeal to a shifter’s basic instincts: carry the heavy, iron-weighted leather sphere into the opponent’s end zone by any physical means necessary. Shifting fully was forbidden, but utilizing raw, unbridled shifter strength, speed, and lethal momentum was actively encouraged.

To the left stood the Sun-Claws, the glory-bound Wolf Shifter team, clad in deep navy jerseys trimmed with shimmering gold thread that caught the pale daylight. They were the undisputed darlings of Moonside Academy, anchored by the royal bloodlines everyone adored. To the right stood the Shadow-Fangs, the Lycan team, armored in harsh crimson and iron-plated gray.

Pitting the two rival species against one another was an ancient academy tradition. Wolf shifters were never allowed on the Lycan roster, and no Lycan had ever worn navy and gold.

Malric stood at the frontline, his broad chest rising and falling in steady, controlled breaths. His mind was a chaotic storm of quiet rage, still hyper-fixated on the infuriating, scrawny face of Travis Whitelock, the boy who had dared to stand up to him, the boy who held his brother’s focus, the boy who made his blood boil for reasons he refused to analyze.

"Pass is up!" a voice roared across the field.

A Lycan runner tore through the mud, the heavy leather ball tucked tightly under his arm. He was built like a stone wall, his partial shifter claws digging deep furrows into the turf as he accelerated straight toward the Sun-Claws’ defensive line.

Malric didn’t hesitate. He dropped his shoulder, his blue eyes flashing with golden, predatory light.

Clang!