“Are you OK?” I asked under my breath.
He grunted and nodded. Kai was nowhere in sight, which surprised me. Those two were usually joined at the hip. I had a feeling Kai’s absence was down to me. The merman had avoided me ever since the pool incident.
I sighed.
“One more lap for everyone but the shifters,” our coach yelled when he finally dragged his attention away from the shifter girl. “Witches, I want to see more effort from you! Your performance was truly pathetic and will be written up as such on your report cards!”
“What a fucking asshole,” Glynda muttered behind me. My eyes widened in surprise. It wasn’t like her to swear up a storm.
“Shifters, hit the showers. Good job, you guys!” The wolves all whooped and cheered before running off as a pack. As irritating as itwas that they got preferential treatment, at least we could finish the exercise in peace now.
“Move!”
The coach glared at me when I rolled my eyes. “Make that two laps!” he yelled. Everyone groaned.
“I’m hexing that bastard later,” Glynda muttered.
I mentally added the coach to my hit list and followed Glynda to the start of the obstacle course. The end of class could not come soon enough.
By the time the dickhead wolf-shifter coach let us leave, none of us had time to shower off the mud before our next class. The wolf-shifter contingent howled and fist bumped each other when we arrived for the last class of the day:Magic & Politics.
“You stink!” one of them yelled while the rest fell about laughing.
Demelza looked like she wanted to kill the lot of them. Honestly, I could relate. Thankfully, our professor wasn’t putting up with any of their bullshit.
“Witches, take your seats. Wolves, shut up before I cast a mute spell.”
That did the trick. I guessed they didn’t want to risk being silenced indefinitely.
“Today, we’re going to look at why humans are the inferior race.” My jaw dropped as several mages and witches nearby muttered their agreement.
“Who can give me a reason why humans are weaker?”
Half the class raised their hands.
The professor pointed to one of the wolves. “Dagger.”
“They’re weak as fuck. I could take down ten of them without breaking a sweat.” His friends all cheered in solidarity.
“I don’t appreciate the swearing, Dagger, but you are correct. Anyone else?”
Demelza raised her hand. “Magic, sir. Humans don’t have it and we do.”
“Yes.”
“We heal faster, sir.”
“Good point. Anyone else?”
“We live far longer.”
The professor spent the next thirty minutes outlining all the reasons, in his expert opinion, why humans were little more than dumb bovines. The only humans I’d met had been unpleasant, but I knew the two who tried to hurt me at the market didn’t represent the entire human race. I was sure there were plenty of kind, generous humans out there.
“Why are humans a danger to us all?” Professor Lockheart asked once the discussion died down.
“There are more of them,” a mage said. “While we are more powerful individually, they have power in numbers.”
“Correct. Therefore, we are very careful not to provoke a conflict with the humans, even though we are more powerful than them. Can anyone give me an example from history when human fear and paranoia led to a negative outcome for magicals?”
