Chapter 29: I Shouldn’t Be Here

Blair blinked her eyes open, her vision swimming in the dim morning light.

For a moment, she just stared at the cracked, water-stained ceiling. She felt warm and comfortable. The thin duvet was pulled snugly up to her chin, and her head was resting on her pillow.

Blair frowned. She distinctly remembered falling asleep on the floor, because...

She shot up into a sitting position, her heart doing a panicked flip. She looked to the right, then to her left. Professor Feron was gone. There was no trace of him left in the room.

Did he put me in bed? Blair thought wildly, a fresh wave of heat rushing to her cheeks.

She quickly looked across the room. Heather’s bed was still buried under the same pile of discarded party clothes and make-up.

The heat in Blair’s cheeks vanished, replaced instantly by a freezing, sickening dread.

Blair rubbed her eyes, questioning her own sanity. Had she dreamed it all? The eyeless monsters in the woods? Daemus ripping the door off its hinges? The attack, the photos, the professor in her bed?

She looked at the doorway. The wooden door was still splintered and wedged precariously back into the frame, just as Daemus had left it. It wasn’t a dream. It was all real. And that meant Heather was truly, officially missing.

Determined not to waste another second, Blair quickly showered, threw on a fresh gray uniform, and ran across campus to the Department of Student Welfare.

The waiting room was a depressing beige box. Blair sat in a stiff plastic chair, her leg bouncing a mile a minute. The anxiety was so loud in her own head that it completely drowned out the voice of the older human guy sitting in the chair next to her.

He was a junior, wearing the same gray uniform, and he had been talking non-stop for the last ten minutes.

"...and I just think the agricultural building has the best air, you know?" the guy was saying, waving a hand casually. "Anyway, I know a good spot by the quad where we don’t have to deal with the furballs. Does noon work for you?"

Blair was staring blankly at the wall, her mind replaying the events of last night.

"Mhm. Sounds great," Blair mumbled on autopilot, giving a stiff nod.

"Awesome. It’s a date, then," the guy smiled brightly.

"Blair Willows?" a bored voice called out.

Blair jumped up from her chair, missing the fact that she had just agreed to a lunch date with a complete stranger. She hurried to the receptionist’s desk and was waved into the administrator’s office.

The woman sitting behind the desk was a badger beastwoman. She had coarse, striped hair pulled back into a severe bun, and she was currently using a silver letter opener to clean her fingernails.

"Name and grievance," the administrator droned, not looking up.

"Blair Willows," Blair said quickly, gripping the edge of the desk. "I’m here to report a missing student. My roommate, Heather Greene. She hasn’t been back to our dorm since the Senior Faction party two nights ago, and I—"

The badger beastwoman stopped picking at her nails. She looked up at Blair, her dark eyes blinking slowly.

And then, she burst into a loud, grating fit of cruel laughter.

Blair flinched, her hands tightening on the edge of the desk. "I’m serious! She’s missing!"

"Oh, you are serious," the administrator chuckled, tossing the letter opener onto the desk. She leaned back in her plush leather chair, looking at Blair with disdain. "Let me explain something to you, Willows. Your roommate went to a Senior Faction party. She threw herself into a den of predators. If she hasn’t come back by now, she is maggot food."

Blair felt the air leave her lungs. "Maggot food? You aren’t even going to look for her?!"

"Look for her?" the beastwoman scoffed, openly irritated now. "Do you have any idea how much paperwork that involves? Human lessers go missing every week. They get lost in the woods, they provoke the wrong noble, they fall off balconies. No one cares."

"But—"

"Listen to me, you annoying little pest," the administrator hissed, leaning over the desk and baring a set of sharp, yellowed teeth. "You are wasting my time. Drop it. Go to class, focus on your own survival, and try to be a little less irritating if you don’t want to be the next one we have to sweep under the rug. Dismissed."

Blair stumbled out of the welfare office, the door slamming shut behind her.

She was crushed. The realization hit her: she was truly on her own. The school administration wasn’t going to help her. The beastmen didn’t care. If she wanted to find Heather, she had to do it herself.

But how?

Blair wandered through the grand, sunlit corridors of the academic buildings in a daze. Her mind raced through a spiraling list of her own weaknesses. She was weak. She was alone. She was helpless. She didn’t have claws, she didn’t have fangs, and her supposed "genius" brain felt useless.

Lost in her own despair, Blair blindly walked through a set of open double doors. She entered a bustling classroom on autopilot, shuffling down the aisle and taking a seat at a desk near the window.

She dropped her bag onto the floor, resting her chin on her hand as she stared blankly out the glass at the campus below. What am I going to do? she thought miserably.

Suddenly, a cold, familiar voice cut through the background chatter of the room.

"Miss Willows."

Blair snapped to attention, sitting up bolt straight.

Professor Feron was standing at the professor’s podium at the front of the room. He was dressed in a charcoal suit.

Blair’s eyes darted from Jack to the large chalkboard behind him.

Written in neat, elegant cursive were the words: Beast Sexology Level 3.

Blair stopped breathing. She slowly, rigidly turned her head to look around the classroom.

She was the only human in the room. And she wasn’t surrounded by freshmen. The tiered seating was packed with older beastwomen—tall, intimidating, mature seniors who were all turning in their seats to glare fiercely at the tiny, gray-clad freshman sitting in the back row.

Blair swallowed a dry lump in her throat, her face instantly flushing the color of a tomato.

She was definitely in the wrong class.