Big Bad Academy

Seriously, could this day get any worse?

Gerald stands up.

“I will not allow my wolf to suffer simply because you’re too stubborn to do the right thing.”

“Fuck you,” I spit, and Flynn steps in front of me before Maxwell can dive at me.

“Never speak to the alpha like that!” He screams. Flynn is muttering something, and now they’re all shouting, and they’re all screaming at each other about wolves and responsibilities and duties.

Well, fuck that!

I’m not a wolf.

I didn’t agree to be mated to one of them.

I don’t even want that.

They can all just totally, completely forget about using me as wolf meat. Besides, if someone really has been capturing “their kind,” then I think they have bigger problems than whether or not I want to marry a shifter.

The three men are yelling so much that suddenly, I realize I’m not being actively watched. I’m not exactly a fighter. I’m not particularly brave and I’m definitely not smart or clever, but I’m scrappy, and right now, that’ll have to do. I don’t exactly think I can sneak out of the school. I mean, I wouldn’t do that without my cats, anyway, but I can go find my pets and get the hell out of here.

I don’t want to be trapped in animal land a minute longer than I have to.

So I back up.

Up.

Up.

My hands touch the door and silently, I turn the knob and step outside. I don’t bother closing the door behind me, I just take off quickly down the hallway, past all the closed doors, and back to the staircase we came up to get here. They haven’t seemed to notice that I’m gone yet, which is great because it’ll give me some time to get away.

Where am I going to go?

I have no idea.

It’s not like I can just go home.

The guys are still yelling and screaming. They’re still fighting with one another. Their yelling becomes more and more unmanageable, but then I finally reach the bottom of the staircase and step into the outside hallway. When I do, I close the door behind me and look around.

I’m free.

And I take off running.

I make my way back to the main hallway. I’ve never been particularly good with directions, but luckily for me, I’ve dreamt about this place enough times to know the exact layout of the school. It just figures that my psychotic dreams would come in handy one day. Great. I avoid the main hallway – the one with all of the classrooms – and instead take a side hallway that intersects with one more.

Gaston has my cats, and he likely took them to his quarters. If

he’s best friends with the alpha’s son, then they all probably have bedrooms close together. If I had to guess, they’re in a shared outbuilding on the campus. I try to think of the different places I’ve explored in my dreams. The students stay in dormitories, at least if my visions are true here, but where do the adults stay?

Suddenly, an alarm starts blaring.

Shit.

So they realized I’m gone.

Whatever.

They’re going to shut the exits down and lock up the building. This happened in one of my dreams, too, but when that happened, I took a secret passageway that only me and my lover knew about. I’m almost to the entrance to the passageway. It’s just up ahead. If I can get there without being seen by anyone, I’ll be able to make it out of the building and then into the woods. There should be apartments and other places out there.