Page 46 of Legacy Wolf: Semester One (Legacy Wolf #1)

RAWLING

I slapped at the nightstand, looking for my phone so I could stop the blasted alarm. It couldn’t be morning already—except that it was. I finally found it and managed to snooze it only seconds before I threw it across the room.

And maybe that was being overly dramatic or what have you, but it sure as shit felt that way.

The dreams always started with me in archery practice.

That in and of itself was pretty normal.

The team was a huge part of my life here on campus, especially as we got closer to a huge tournament.

If the dream ended there or even with me sneaking off with Phelan to have a boink—because as much as I hated to admit it to myself, he was still front and center in my mind far too often—it would’ve been fine. But it didn’t. They never did.

The dreams always took a twisted turn. I’d be at practice and then suddenly I’d be in the woods with my bow, only it wasn’t the one I used while on the team.

It was different, almost like it was a part of me.

I’d walk through the trees, looking for my prey.

I didn’t hunt. Ever. It wasn’t my thing, only in the dream, I was hunting.

This was where the dream would morph into one of two scenarios and both of them were what had me afraid to close my eyes while at the same time being too exhausted to keep them open.

The first had me killing Mika and the second murdering Sasha.

That was horrible enough—but the worst part—the part that had me questioning everything—was that I liked it.

They would lie there dead, and I would be proud of myself, like it was this huge amazing accomplishment and almost as if it were my job.

I hated it, hated that my imagination would conjure up something so horrible, especially the way I stood there all proud.

It had me questioning so much about who I was deep inside.

I rolled out of bed and straight into the bathroom, leaving the light off. My eyes just weren’t ready for that. After a shower that was a little bit too cool, I was finally awake enough to join the world.

Jack was long gone by the time I came out of the bathroom. She was a breakfast person and gave up on me when I had her missing the first meal of the day. I ate breakfast sometimes, but I could skip it for extra time in bed.

Jack told me that if I wasn’t ready, she’d leave without me. She probably thought that was going to keep me in line and get my ass out of bed. It didn’t. It just meant I no longer had someone pushing me to be ready on time and therefore was slower than slow.

I grabbed the last of my protein bars and my satchel and headed to class.

I was not in the mood for class… or anything else, really.

If only I could shake the nocturnal torture.

Maybe I needed to find some sleeping aids or lavender or some audio sleep guide or I didn’t know what…

something. I wasn’t strong enough to do this for long.

Walking into class just as the professor started was far from my best move.

The entire class stopped to stare at me as I wandered to the front of the room where the only remaining seats were.

Not only was I in a class I didn’t want to be in, but I was in the very first row and had already drawn attention to myself. The day was going from bad to worse.

I pulled out my laptop to take notes or at the very least look engaged, and the professor began his lecture.

Every attempt to stay focused failed. I found myself wondering what the first half of his sentence had been or literally catching my head as it started to fall.

If there had been a way for me to sneak out of the lecture hall unnoticed, I’d have taken it, but there wasn’t.

I was trapped, and by the few looks I caught from my professor, he was not impressed.

It was a relief when class finally ended.

“I’m sorry, Professor. I’m not feeling well.” Which was true. I felt like complete shit. But also… I wasn’t sick, which was the implication of my comment.

“Then you shouldn’t be here.”

Oww.

“It’s disrespectful and rude. Phoenix House, right?”

I nodded.

“Get back there before I inform your house mother that you’re endangering others with your… your… you know.” He pointed to the door.

I wanted to argue that this was college and that a dorm parent was not actually a parent, but I had a strong suspicion his “you know” had to do with my latency, especially when I caught the error of my plan to cover up my exhaustion with sickness—the entire time I’d been here, the only person I saw even close to sick was Jack, and she was a latent—a real one, unlike me.

Maybe shifters just didn’t get sick. I needed to look into that.

Once out the door, I nearly walked into my roommate. She’d noticed me dozing off and was worried. I appreciated it, but also if I was going to talk about it, the hallway outside of the class where my professor promised to tell on me wasn’t the ideal setting.

“I’m going back to the dorm,” I said firmly. “I’ll talk with you about this later.” Unless she forgot, which was honestly the best-case scenario. I didn’t need her knowing that my dreams weren’t of hot alphas, but instead of murdering people.

She didn’t say a word, and Iwalked out the building and straight to our room where I proceeded to climb into bed. While I didn’t want to go to sleep and face the dreams again, I had no real choice. I was dead on my feet, and sleep was going to happen regardless.

Sleep came quickly, as did the dreams, and when Jack woke me up with the opening of our door, I sat up like a shot, sweat dripping down my brow.

I’d had nightmares like the one she’d just woken me from more times than I could count, but this one was different.

It didn’t feel like I was there in the past… more like it was showing me my future.

“Shit.” Jack shut the door a little too loudly and rushed over to me. “You’re sick sick.” She pressed her hand to my brow.

“No. I don’t have a fever, but something isn’t right. I’ve been having these dreams.” And then I spilled all the gory details. Not once did judgment cross her face. If anything, it was filled with sympathy.

“I’m sorry learning of those deaths has hit you so hard, but you can’t think this has anything to do with you. It’s your brain trying to work its way through all that you learned recently. You’ve had a lot of loss in your life, and your brain just needs to process it.”

I wanted to take her words as truth, and had she given them to me yesterday I would have, but after the dream I just had, I couldn’t. This was more than your standard nightmare. So much more.

“This dream was different. It was… I think it was telling me this is my future. I can’t explain it, but it was a premonition.” My stomach lurched, and for a split second, I was unsure if the protein bar I’d eaten earlier would stay put.

“It can’t be a premonition. Mika and Sasha are already gone.”

“That’s just it. I don’t feel like I was hunting them.

This time I was tracking something in the air…

a bird shifter. I didn’t stay in the dream long enough to figure out what kind, but…

I think it was telling me I’m going to try and kill a shifter.

” Tears were forming in my eyes, and they’d be falling soon enough.

It wasn’t that my brain liked the idea of those poor dead students, as awful as that was.

But my subconscious wanted to be the one making future shifters suffer the same fate.

“Shit.” She pulled me into a hug. “There has to be an explanation for this. There has to. You aren’t a murderer. You are my Rawling, one of the best people I know.”

If she had said that earlier in the semester, I’d have thought her not-a-murderer theory correct, but now… now I wasn’t sure.