Page 13 of Alpha’s One-Night Stand (Shifters of Clarion #3)

“ I s this what you do all day? Lie around half-naked?”

Mother’s standing in my doorway, looking me over with a raised eyebrow. I’m not naked. I’m in sweatpants, and it’s early in the morning.

“Good morning to you, too,” I say as I step aside. She walks in and looks over my room, running a finger along the end table near the door.

“You really should get someone to dust in here. It’s filthy.”

I sigh as she looks around, her eyes roaming as if she were just casually looking for something—or someone.

“What can I do for you, Mother?”

She turns around and smiles at me. “How is your wolf this morning?”

“Ever since you gave me this”—I point to the totem necklace I’m still wearing—“I’ve been all right.”

“Hmph. I see.” She walks all the way in, still glancing around. “Do you have a teapot in your room? Shame. You really should have one for guests.”

Her tone’s flat and dismissive. She couldn’t care less about a teapot. “You gave me the totem to suppress my lycan,” I say, “and you’re not pleased. I would have thought you’d be jumping for joy that one of your remedies worked.”

She cuts me a look over her shoulder, then takes a seat at my desk. I stiffen. The memory of bending Yarra over it comes back to me in a flash. I hope Mother doesn’t pick up her scent.

“I would be jumping for joy if you were actually working on the other things I told you to do as well.”

I roll my eyes. Here it comes. The nagging. “Mother, I really am not in the mood for this today.”

“When are you ever in the mood? Especially lately? You’ve been walking around with a dark cloud over your head for an eternity. If I waited for you to be in the mood, I’d never be able to tell you anything.”

I cross my arms, her attack feeling like angry pinpricks. She goes on.

“You need to do your Labors, Chad. The totem alone won’t solve your problem. You need to commune with your lycan if you want to keep it under control. There’s no avoiding it.”

“Mother, I went through the Labors already when I was a student. I don’t want to do them again.”

“Too bad,” she says. “You need to be in sync with your wolf. You are a fully realized Alpha with a lycan who’s not tamed. Quick fixes aren’t going to solve your problem. Like it or not, you will have to do the work.”

I sigh and run a hand over my hair, still messy from sleep. “Mother . . . I did them before, and clearly that didn’t work. And now you’re telling me to do them again. I just don’t see how that will help me.”

She looks at me with soft eyes and shakes her head. “You were young when you were at Moonhelm,” she says, “eager to get through your classes and graduate and get out into the world. You never understood why you had to pay your dues. You only saw the finish line. I know you weren’t focused enough to get what you needed to get out of the process.”

I look down at my bare feet, a little shamefully. She’s not wrong. I wanted to get school done and over with so I could get on with life. “So,” I say, looking back up at her sheepishly, “maybe I took some shortcuts. But I wouldn’t have graduated if I couldn’t complete the tests. And I did. That has to count for something.”

She stands up and walks over to me, her warm hand cupping my face comfortingly. “There are no shortcuts for wolves,” she says. “You must realize that now. Connecting with your wolf is the only way to gain control of it. And you can do that through the Labors, if you take them seriously.”

“So I have to start all the way at the First Labor?”

“No,” she chuckles, “of course not. You and your wolf are well acquainted. Beginners courses aren’t going to help you much. I would say you’d do better to go through the Fifth Labor.”

I cringe. I have bad memories of the Fifth Labor.

“Luckily for you, I know a very good teacher who I’m sure would be glad to take you on.”

“I’m not going to attend classes like a blue—” I stop myself. Her smile falters, giving me a silent warning. “I’m not going to sit in class again for some meaningless bonding.”

“Meaningless,” she scoffs. “You almost changed in a hallway full of students, and you call this meaningless? I wish I had your stones.”

“Mother, please.”

“Her name is Professor Julia,” she says, stepping away from me. “Her class starts in about an hour, so you should probably get dressed and head over there.”

“You want me to go today?”

“Yes. I want you to go today,” she says, a slight stern tone in her voice. “That totem isn’t going to hold your lycan back forever, so the sooner you get started, the better.”

I touch the pendant around my neck gingerly. A bandage. That’s all it really is. I guess a part of me thought that I’d be able to just keep the totem forever. There really aren’t any easy fixes.

“I’ve got a class to teach in a couple of hours,” she says, walking toward the door. “I need to go prepare for them. I expect you’ll be in Professor Julia’s class when it starts. I’m going to ask about you when I see her around lunchtime.”

“You make it seem like I have a choice.”

“Oh, darling,” she says with a laugh, “you always have a choice. Right now, your options are to let your wolf take over and potentially ruin your life or to get control of it. Seems fairly simple to me.”

She opens the door and gives a little wave as she leaves. “Ta-ta, dear.”

The door closes, and I feel my wolf pacing behind the wall of the totem’s power. I do feel it a little more than I did yesterday. I guess it is only a matter of time.

“Shit,” I swear as I turn to my closet to get my clothes.

I’m standing in front of Professor Julia’s classroom door, taking a few breaths before I walk in. I’m a couple of minutes late, so I know that the class is already full of students.

This is so beneath me. I can’t believe Mother is recommending that I sit in a classroom full of whelps who barely know who they are. This is humiliating, to say the least. What Alpha ever went back to school to relearn control? If any of my pack back home found out about this, the respect I would lose would be monumental.

I take one last deep breath, and then I turn the knob and walk into the room. Just as I imagined, every desk was full of students. They had been looking toward the front of the room a half second ago, and now they’re all looking at me.

“Hello, may I help you?” The professor in the front of the room was an older woman about Mother’s age with salt-and-pepper hair and kind eyes. She had her hair pulled back into a bun and round glasses sitting on the edge of her nose. I straightened up slightly.

“I’m Chadwick Robertson. Jean Robertson’s son. She asked me to come by your class.”

Her face warms with a welcoming smile. “Yes, of course!” she says. “Come in. Please.”

She turns to the class as I enter, and she introduces me, “Class, please welcome Mr. Robertson. He’ll be assisting me for the rest of the semester.”

I nod to the class shortly. Then I sit in the chair in the corner of the room. Thank goodness she introduced me as her assistant. This whole thing is embarrassing enough.

“There’s a desk behind the class, Chad. If you could sit there please?”

I pause and spot the desk in the back of the room. I smile and make my way toward it. As I sit down, I can’t shake the feeling of being back in class again. Sure, everyone believes I’m just an assistant, but sitting here makes me feel like I’m among the masses.

The door opens again just as Professor Julia is about to speak. I catch a whiff of Yarra before she even steps through the door. My wolf sits straight up, straining against the power of the totem. My heart instantly starts to race, and my hands get sweaty.

Stand down, I think, giving the wolf a push. It seems to work. My heart is starting to slow down.

“Sorry,” she says meekly. “I got lost.”

“It’s all right,” Professor Julia says. “We were just about to start. Sit anywhere.”

She looks around the room and immediately sees me. Her eyes widen slightly, and she looks away quickly. She moves down the row to the empty seat next to a girl with long red hair.

“Now,” the professor says, “you now know that you have a lycan inside you, and that’s just one aspect of your discovery. In this class, you will learn that your lycan is a totally independent entity with its own mind and desires. You and your lycan are one and the same, but you are also two separate beings. Here we will discuss what your lycan likes, what it dislikes, how it feels. Is it a stone-cold killer, or does it prefer to sleep in fields of daisies? Here is where you find out.”

I’m trying to focus on the professor, but Yarra’s scent is pulling all my focus toward her. I look at her out of the corner of my eye, her electric purple hair tied back as it had been yesterday. She is just as lovely as she was before. My wolf is pacing within me, still secure in its cage.

The redhead next to her suddenly turns to look at me, a blank expression on her round, doll-like face. I notice that her hair is a little too red, like she dyed it. A chill shoots down my spine as we lock eyes for half a second. Then, her upper lip lifts in a smirk, and she winks at me before turning away.

I frown . . . and notice my wolf has been silenced. Interesting. She reads as a Beta, yet there’s something off about her.

“All right. Let’s partner up.”

I’m brought out of my thoughts as the room erupts with the students all finding partners to pair up with. Professor Julia nods to me, urging me to pay attention. I give her a firm nod in response.

“I know that for many of you, this is your first class,” she says, “but I’d like to try something a little different. Quickly find your partners.”

Yarra immediately teams up with the redhead. As I watch, they chat with one another and smile. They know each other. Hmm.

“Now,” the professor says once everyone has their partners, “you’re going to change, and I want you to attempt to communicate by mind-link. It doesn’t have to be a whole conversation, just a few words between the two of you. Then change back.”

This being day two, everyone should be familiar with the effects of the change, so the students start to take off their uniforms. At First Labor, Mother always asks everyone to bring a spare so that they don’t have to walk around naked all day. I was a little surprised that so many wolves didn’t think to do that in the first place.

But now, everyone’s on the same page. Everyone except Yarra, it seems. She’s averting her eyes as the redhead takes off her uniform.

“Now, for those of you that haven’t had the opportunity to meet your wolf yet,” Professor Julia says as she walks around the class, “don’t worry if you don’t change. If that happens, I want you to be friendly to your partner’s wolf. Touch them, pet them, connect with them in whatever way they allow.”

Yarra’s still looking out of place, that same terrified look in her eyes as before. The redhead takes her hand and says something that makes her smile. That’s good. Maybe this class will go better for her than First Labor did.

“All right. Whenever you’re ready. Please begin.”

Professor Julia moves to where I’m sitting and motions for me to stand with her. As the students all started to change, she leans in and whispers, “So, your mother briefed me on what you’ve been going through.”

“Mm-hmm,” I respond stiffly.

“I think you would benefit from a private lesson. The Fifth Labor is important to master as it gives you the first introduction to controlling your wolf properly. Mind-linking is difficult to do with a wild wolf, but if you can achieve it, you’ll be one step closer to gaining control over it.”

“So . . . this. Pairing up and shifting. You want to do that with me?”

“To begin with. If that’s all right with you?”

What can I say? Mother talks about me having a choice, but let’s be real. The alternative is hardly an option that anyone would want. “Sure,” I say. “That works.”

“Marvelous. Walk around and observe the students. We can talk about whatever you picked up in a later session.”

We separate to watch the students, and I head toward Yarra. She and her partner haven’t started yet. They’re still talking. It looks like the redhead is still trying to console her. I stay back, watching from a distance as they speak in rushed whispers. Finally, the redhead takes a step back and says softly, “Here we go.”

She throws her head back and starts to shift. Her body morphs and changes, bones twisting and cracking as they move into unnatural positions. Yarra looks on, wincing as streaks of crimson fur appear all over the redhead’s body.

She stands before Yarra, a large blood-red wolf with deep red eyes. My wolf is on its feet, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

She’s a Scarlet Wolf. Shit. My lycan snaps within me, bucking furiously to protect Yarra. I don’t know how this wolf got into Moonhelm or why they’re allowing her to be with other students. Don’t they know how dangerous Scarlet Wolves are?

Yarra takes a deep breath and steps toward her, her hand stretched out. I want to stop her. I want to warn her not to touch that wolf. I don’t move. I look around to see if anyone else has noticed. If the professor is going to stop this.

“If you have established communication with your partner, try giving it a command,” she says. “You can ask them to sit or talk about the weather if you like. The point is to communicate.”

I’m not paying attention to the professor now. I’m watching as Yarra edges closer to the beast, then, with shaky hands, touches the wolf’s head and runs her fingers through the blood-red fur. She smiles and laughs nervously as the Scarlet leans into her and nuzzles her hand.

The Scarlet suddenly turns and cocks her head, then leans back and sits on her haunches. Yarra’s smile widens. “Good dog,” she says with a laugh. “Or wolf. Good wolf.”

I blink, confused. What just happened? Did she mind-link with a Scarlet? How is that possible?

“Great job,” Professor Julia says as she passes Yarra. “Just imagine what it’ll be like when you change and mind-link. It’ll be so much easier, trust me.”

Yarra looks happy. Accomplished. I guess I can relate. To feel like you’ve completed a difficult task with your wolf. I’m not there yet. Suddenly, I’m looking forward to these private sessions. I long for that level of control.

“Ten more minutes,” the professor says, “Then we’ll move on.” She looks over at me and gives me a thumbs up. Yeah, maybe there was something to be gained here after all.