Werewolf Academy Year Three - Jayme Morse Page 0,1

skipping school. Now that it was almost time to leave, the urge to just stay home was even stronger than it had been before.

A pin-dropping silence filled the room as Colton stopped pouring his cereal, Aiden stopped chugging orange juice straight from the carton, and Rhys nearly spilled the cup of coffee he was carrying across the room.

Theo, who had just entered the kitchen behind me, froze in his tracks. “What do you mean you’re not going to school? You can’t play hooky today. It’s the first day.”

“Actually, what I meant is that I don’t think I should go to school at all this year.”

“You mean you want to drop out?” Rhys ruffled his auburn hair as he stared up at me from behind his dark blue eyes, which had gone really wide.

“Well, no, but I was thinking that maybe I can just defer a year,” I explained as I slid into a chair at the kitchen table.

Aiden’s honey brown eyes, which stood out against his deeply tanned skin, locked on mine. “Werewolf Academy doesn’t work that way, Raven. You can’t just defer a year. You get one chance—one chance only, and that’s it. Werewolf Academy has a long waiting list. If you don’t show up, they’ll just give your spot to someone who will.”

“Well, then I guess someone else can have my spot.” I shrugged.

“No. Absolutely not.” Theo shook his head. “You’re going to school. It’s settled.”

I glanced over at him sharply. “Well, aren’t you bossy? You seem to forget that you’re not the Alpha of this pack.”

As soon as the words slipped out of my mouth, I instantly wished I could take them back. I knew that Theo hated that he wasn’t Alpha anymore.

The worst part of it all was that I wasn’t even Alpha of the Darken pack, either. Not anymore.

This summer, everything had changed… for the worse.

Theo’s bright blue eyes met mine apologetically, and his tone softened as he said, “I’m sorry, Raven. I really wasn’t trying to be bossy or Alpha-like, but your education is more important than you realize. You still have two more years of learning left to do. As tempting as it may seem right now, you can’t just drop out.”

I knew he wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t change the fact that I really wasn’t looking forward to this. “I’m just not ready to go back yet.”

Theo shot a sad look in my direction. “I know. But one of us will be there with you most of the time.”

“But not all of the time,” I whispered.

And the truth was that I needed one of them to be around me always. After everything that had happened this past summer, I needed them more than anything else in the world.

My mind kept drifting back to the fact that Milos had a bracelet with four charms: one that was directly connected to each of my mates’ hearts.

At any moment, Milos could crush any or all of those charms, and ultimately, end their lives.

And living without them for three months had shown me that I didn’t want to have to live without any of them… ever again.

Chapter 2

When my mates and I arrived on campus, I fled from the car, trying to dodge the raindrops that pelted down against me like bullets. A shiver cascaded down my spine at the thought.

War was coming, and I would be at the forefront of it all. That much was certain. The only question was when. None of us knew the answer to that. It was one of the unknowns that was currently plaguing me. Plaguing all of us.

The only thing I did know was that I was ready. Ready to fight, ready to kill. Ready to get my revenge, once and for all.

Spending three months locked in your enemy’s dungeon will do that to you.

The absolute last thing I wanted was to spend my time sitting in a classroom after I had just spent three months locked in a dungeon.

A lump formed in my throat as I tried to push the memory of the dungeon to the depths of my mind. It had been one of the darkest points of my life, something I didn’t ever want to revisit again. And yet, as much as I didn’t want to think about it, it kept rising to the surface like a volcanic eruption. I could never get Milos Santorini off my brain, and I fucking hated it.

Normally, I saw a new school year as a new beginning. It had always