Page 10 of Legacy Wolf: Semester One (Legacy Wolf #1)

PHELAN

It had been a week since I shifted and being in my fur felt fabulous.

Usually I tried to sneak away and let my wolf out, but things had been beyond busy.

Classes were harder this semester, and Coach was riding me hard.

I was not naturally skilled like the new guy—who also rode me hard, just in a different way.

Fine, he hadn’t ridden me yet, but I was looking forward to him doing it.

There was something about him that had all of my attention.

Things would be a ton easier if Atticus hadn’t decided Rawling was enemy number one.

His family had always been anti-latents, their assumption being that if you were latent, it was because someone in your family line must’ve boinked a human.

The science behind that was non-existent, they just were snotty as could be.

My family was snotty too, but in a different way.

They saw everything as money-related. My father thought you were better than someone else if your bank account had more zeros, despite your ability to shift.

Sure, all things equal and he’d pick shifters as the better of the two all day long.

But money came first. It was just as gross as the way Atticus’s family did things.

Shift night was designed to keep us from closeting our beast too long and in theory preventing fights.

Not sure it did much for fights, but we were still young, and our animals got antsy if we didn’t give them time to run—or fly or what have you.

And wolves? We needed to run together if we had any hope of keeping our beasts at bay.

They needed that in a way no other type of shifter did.

They were pack animals through and through, and while at college, this was as close as we came to a pack.

Nearly all of us were at the edge of the woods, but we wouldn’t begin our run until the highest-ranked senior wolf student in the school arrived.

This year it was Ryan, and he loved the power he had to keep our wolves at the ready.

We teased him that one day he was going to fail a test and lose his position.

He wouldn’t. The guy had perfect grades since preschool.

To my left stood Atticus. His beast was larger than mine, but not quite as fast. I held back most runs, letting him outpace me. It wasn’t worth bruising his pride to get to the end first. Some things with Atticus just were better left with him getting his way. It was easier all around.

Ryan finally showed and howled at the moon, indicating it was time to run. The moon thing cracked me up. It was so stereotypical of human stories and had nothing to do with wolf shifters.

Finally, after far too long a dramatic pause, Ryan took the first step, and we all bolted into the woods.

It felt amazing to be in my fur, the air rushing past me as I wove through the trees, just slightly behind Atticus.

He’d been shitty all week. When he threw his food down in front of Bardoul, I thought he was pissed at the kid.

He wasn’t. Or at least he told me he wasn’t, instead saying it was to show Rawling who was boss.

How treating someone like shit showed another person who was boss was beyond me, but it had me paranoid for most of the day, half worried Atticus had scented Rawling on me the day I fucked him.

I’d showered and showered again to avoid it.

And the sick part was, I wasn’t even embarrassed by my attraction to the guy.

It wasn’t anything like that. But Atticus had made it clear to me that the guy was our enemy, and if I did anything to undermine that, Rawling’s life was going to be hell.

It wasn’t worth being able to sit with him at lunch or walk with him to classes, if it meant those were his only safe times. It just wasn’t.

We ran for most of an hour, Ryan howling once again, this time to signal that it was time to come back and shift. We could go out again. There were no rules against that, but we all had to start and finish together for this bit. It was the way of things here at Sombertooth.

Atticus reached the clearing just before I did and instantly took his skin. “Hurry up. I want to get back to my paper.”

I shifted. “It’s not even due until next week.” I had the same one and only had the first draft done. “But I’m ready.”

When Ryan left the area, most everyone else shifted back to their beasts, wanting more time to run, but my roommate and I walked to the athletic building to get our clothing instead.

“Jack and Rawling shouldn’t be in Phoenix House.

” Atticus’s first words surprised me. I thought he’d brag about a good run or go into details about his paper, but no, he was obsessed with those two.

Maybe he liked Jack more than I thought he did and was overcompensating.

“Latents are useless.” Or he was an ass.

“They are quiet and don’t cause trouble.” I didn’t want to get into a fight with him. Not over this, but he was being ridiculous.

“It looks bad on us.”

We rounded the corner of the building and who of all people was coming out where we were about to go in?

Rawling. Because of course he was. His eyes went wide as he took both Atticus and me in from head to toe and back again before gazing at his feet.

He pushed open the door and walked past us as if we weren’t even there.

Weird. Didn’t he want to look at my dick?

Humans had a thing about nakedness, but we’d fucked and he was impressed with my size.

I’d always prided myself in having a bigger cock than Atticus.

Not that I’d ever pointed it out to my friend.

His wolf would bleed me if I did. But yeah, mine was thicker and longer.

Weirder still, I wanted to run after Rawling despite the craptastic idea I knew it was.

Jack

“Where have you been?” I looked up from my boring assignment to see Rawling all frazzled. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I just saw Atticus naked is all.” He shrugged it off, but I could tell there was more to it than that.

“That will do it.” I forced a chuckle. The guy was a jerk, but he wasn’t bad to look at. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed, that was for sure. And I never had. Not that we usually had the luxury of a bed unless Phelan agreed to stay in the library until he got the all-clear signal.

“Yeah.” He dropped his satchel with a thump and dug through the basket where he kept his food. “I really need to order more protein bars.”

“You know cookies taste less like chalk.” I understood the value of protein bars and had eaten my fair share over the years, but give me the choice between that and a delicious frosted sugar cookie and the cookie would win every time.

“I can order some of those too. And they don’t all taste like chalk.” He held up a caramel bar in victory, and I shook my head. “Fine, this one does, but that’s why it’s last. The coconut ones are great.”

They weren’t, but in comparison, they were not awful.

“If you say so.” I went back to the last question I was working on, ignoring the artificial caramel scent that was wafting to me. It didn’t take long, and I closed my book and set it to the side.

“Do you still have homework?” Because I was ready for some mindless fun in the form of either a movie or watching random videos online.

“Nope. I got it all done at the library and then managed to get those arm exercises done that Coach was on my butt for.” Which explained why he was later than normal. Not that I was his keeper or anything.

“It was a good day to hit it up.” Wolf shift night was the best night to swim too, a number of our swim team were wolves on a run, giving the opportunity for those of us not on the team to get in a lap or twenty.

“I suppose.” He gnawed off another piece of the bar. “It was weird how no one was in the weight room, don’t you think?”

“Umm, not really.”

“It’s like a good chunk of the school is in hiding tonight or something.” He popped the last bit into his mouth.

“Something shifty?” I chuckled and got off the bed.

“I suppose so.” He threw his paper in the trash can. “They must be going to visit a barn of feral cats.”

I didn’t get the joke.

“Feral cats—scratches on arms?” He tried to clarify, and I just faked a giggle. Maybe he had a thing against cat shifters? They did have a tendency to be mean to latents, so that wouldn’t surprise me.

“I’m glad you’re my roommate.” And I was. They could’ve put me in with anyone, but I got a latent, just like me. We at least had that in common. It meant that I wasn’t alone in this place and that coming back to my room wasn’t dreadful.

“Yeah. Me too. I wasn’t so sure the first day.”

That made two of us.

“Same.” I reached for my laptop. “Want to watch a movie?”

“Depends.” He was already moving his pillows over to how he had them when we would watch something together.

“On?”

“Is it going to be one of those sappy, the main character dies in the end flicks like last time?” he said with all seriousness, even though he had been the one to pick what we had watched.

“What about where everyone dies in the end?” I countered.

“Will there be explosions?”

“So many.” At least based on the previews there would be.

“Done.”