He shook his head as if he knew what I was thinking. “You’ll see if you have a spare second after tonight. You’re about to become a slave to the alpha king.”
With that, he stormed off, leaving me with a tornado of confusion. Slave to the alpha king? What the mage did that even mean?
“Nai? You lost, luv?” a familiar voice called, and I spun to find Noble, hand extended through the bushes. He looked as handsome as sin in a three-piece suit. Behind him stood Honor, Justice, and …Rage.
When my gaze fell on the meanest of the four Princes, my mind blanked. Warmth spread through my chest like liquid honey. As if that man could get any hotter, Mr. Lickable-incarnate launched into the stratosphere of hotness in a charcoal gray suit.
Yum. No, wait … bastard.
Rage said nothing as his gaze traveled over my body, slowly, the heat in his eyes making his attention a tangible caress. My heart flipped.
“Noble, let’s go,” Rage snapped.
Why were the hot ones always such assholes?
Noble extended his arm to me, and I grinned, taking his outstretched hand. “Thank you, friend.”
He tucked my arm into the crook of his, and I let him lead me down the path.
“You clean up good, cub,” Honor called out behind me, making my grin spread. “And that dress—”
Rage blasted past and quickly outpaced us. “Focus on the ceremony, you idiots.”
“Do they teach anger management here?” I pondered aloud. “Someone might suggest that … as an elective. Just a thought.”
Noble waved my comment off. “He’s grouchy because Uncle Declan was pissed we went to fetch you, and he ripped us a new one.”
“Again?” I cocked my head. “Wasn’t that what he was doing when we first got here?”
It was not lost on me how crazy it was that they casually referred to the alpha king asUncle Declan.I wanted to know more, like why the king appeared to have no children, but I didn’t dare ask.
Honor snorted.
“That was just the warmup,” Justice muttered.
Yikes. “Do I want to know?”
Noble shook his head. “If you ever get called to have a meeting with him, make sure you let me know before so I can be there with you.”
“Why?”
Noble lowered his voice just as Honor stepped up next to his brother. “To help you.”
Honor leaned forward to look me in the eye and offered a sad smile. “The alpha king doesn’t like mistakes, so do your best to stay under the radar.”
Whoa.
I nodded as his words sank in. The king was worse than I’d believed. My attention drifted ahead, to a well-lit atrium, and curiosity seized me.
“So what’s this ceremony we’re going to, and why is the High Mage Council there?”
The path ended at the entrance of the glass dome. A bunch of older teachers stood at the doorway, welcoming students inside.
“Well,” Noble said, smirking, “this is a test to see what your elemental affinity is.”
I nodded. Because we were descended from the high mages, albeit watered down and mixed with wolf, we had cool mage powers linked to the elements. This was one of the main reasons we came to the Academy: to learn our elemental affinity and how to harness it. All wolf shifters had greater speed, hearing, sight, smell, and even healing, compared to humans, but alpha heirs also each had an affinity: air, fire, water, or earth power. Our control of the elements, which was only seen in those of royal blood, was extremely limited, compared to the power of the high mages. My dad told me he once saw a high mage drag someone across the room using only his mind. The mages had a whole host of powers.
Elemental magic set us alpha wolves apart from the other shifter breeds and even the rest of the wolves in our pack. My father was a fire elemental. His magic trickled through the pack so that they could also pull on it and use it to a lesser degree at times, including me. If you wanted to see a campfire lit from two feet away, I was your girl. But the power stopped there with the other wolves from our pack.
