Page 59 of Legacy Wolf: Semester One (Legacy Wolf #1)

RAWLING

“You look like hell, but I’m impressed with your precision.” Coach whacked me on the back, and I winced, hoping she didn’t see. To a shifter, her congratulatory backslap wouldn’t be painful, but I was a pretend shifter; a pretend latent to use the correct term.

I wondered how the team, Coach, and everyone in Sombertooth would react if I whipped off my ring and yelled, “Ta-da!”

But my stomach roiled, reminding me it couldn’t decide if it was starving and needed an overload of carbs or it wanted to reject all food and have me heaving my guts up over the toilet.

Jack was spending so much time with Knox, she hadn’t picked up on my vomiting.

If she had, she would have interrogated me.

As she didn’t like Holden, perhaps she’d be relieved I’d slept with Phelan. Then again, maybe not.

No!

As if my life wasn’t weird enough, a voice popped into my head, like how my shifter friends described their beasts.

No!

Okay, not a fan of shifters… shifters… Not A Fan. Oh please, gods, no. My thoughts trailed off as I imagined a cartoon hammer whacking my head over and over, because I’d forgotten something important. I gulped as I spelled out H-U-N-T-E-R in my head.

“Let’s call it a day,” Coach announced and interrupted my mind going in a direction that was so horrendous, I couldn’t contemplate it. “With so many of the team sick with that nasty stomach flu going around, we can cut practice time short. I’m feeling a little queasy myself.”

Blood had drained from her cheeks, and she dashed off.

My mind pivoted from one possible future to another.

Stomach flu. I’d never been so grateful for vomit.

I wasn’t pregnant. I’d been so unwell, I’d not paid attention to the empty seats in my classes.

Not pregnant. Not pregnant, I repeated over and over in my head.

In my joy and relief, I saw myself clearly for the first time in a while.

There was no “voice” inside me, just my subconscious scaring me shitless.

It was just me. My ancestors weren’t shifters and one of them hadn’t been killed by a hunter.

The voice was just my mind playing tricks, not some weird-ass long-ago voice that had been trapped for centuries.

Hunters were the boogieman. Long ago people in power had conjured up the hunter as a way to scare the population. “Yes!” I whooped. Not a hunter and not pregnant.

In my daze, I almost hugged Atticus. But I half lunged at him, and when I realized my mistake, I covered it up with a giggle and a leap in the air. He glared at me and reared away.

I should have freaking hugged him just to see his reaction.

No .

I’m ignoring you, la la la la. You’re not real.

Having a voice in my head would have been kinda fun. Not hunter fun but pretend-shifter fun. It was odd that having the stomach flu had me hallucinating that I was the creature who killed shifters. Me? Rawling, the human with the fake latent scent.

And then there was the revelation that I wasn’t carrying a part-human, part-shifter baby. Even the nausea had vanished. It didn’t completely allay the fears that someone had killed Mika and Sasha and probably others, but my own future was brighter than it had been.

For a moment I allowed myself to consider what it would have been like to have Phelan’s baby.

If I didn’t fess up and I birthed a human, that’d be the reveal to end all reveals.

Thank gods I’d avoided that dilemma, though I half suspected someone, other than Jack, would suss out my humanity before I graduated.

Phelan hadn’t been at archery practice as it turned out, he was one of the unlucky ones with flu. Should I take him a bowl of soup? As I had the flu, he wasn’t going to pass it on to me, but now that I was improving, I didn’t want a second whammy.

I knocked on his door, but there was no answer. Maybe he was asleep. Relief flooded over me. I didn’t have to minister to my sick… my sick what? Boyfriend? Nope, that was for high schoolers. Fuck buddy? No, we were more than that. I didn’t have a name for us.

But what if he was really ill and needed help? I raised my fist to knock again and almost smacked Atticus in the face. Second time today we’d been face to face.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

I stood my ground, refusing to be intimidated. “I was checking on Phelan. Wanted to make sure he was okay.”

His nostrils flared. “He’s sleeping in another room. All that throwing up was disturbing my sleep.” He made a face.

“You really are an asshat.” I turned on my heel.

“Why the sudden interest in Phelan?”

I slammed my door and cut off his annoying voice.

“Hi.” Jack was on her bed reading a comic.

“Hey.” I collapsed onto my own bed instead of taking a shower. I’d get up in one minute. No, make that two. Or five. At least my subconscious was quiet, allowing me to doze off.

“Please tell me you’re going to shower. You stink.”

“Do I have to?” I moaned.

“Yes. Otherwise, you’re not sleeping in this room.”

“Fine.” I heaved myself up and went into the bathroom. But as the warm water was pounding my skin, I noted how my ring was streaked with dirt. Ewww. It was the perfect time to wash it, so I took it off and got rid of the crud embedded in it.

Wrapping a towel around my hips, I did feel better now that I was clean. With the ring in my hand, I waltzed into our room, ready to tell Jack she was right.

“Fuck!” she yelled and toppled off the bed.

That was weird and reminded me of her reaction the first time I’d removed my ring, when she discovered I was human.

“What?” I inspected my chest and arms. Other than maybe losing a little weight due to the flu, I appeared as I usually did. “Are you worried about catching the bug that’s going around? I’m almost fully recovered.” I twirled the ring on my finger. “Or did you forget I’m H-U-M-A-N?”

“Put the ring on, please.” Her expression reminded me of someone being told they had an exam when they hadn’t studied for it.

“Is my scent so offensive?” She’d never reacted this way before, and I was kinda annoyed.

Jack always made me feel as though we were equals, besties who each had one another’s back, and that I deserved to be at Sombertooth just as any of the other students did.

I didn’t belong anywhere else, not really, and now she was acting as though she didn’t want anything to do with me.

I almost cried, which was as disconcerting as Jack’s reaction. I refused to crumble into a heap and was prepared to call her out on being an ass.

“Did you learn that asshat behavior from the Big A?” I sneered as I yanked open my closet door and grabbed a clean pair of PJs.

“It’s not that. Just do it, please, and I’ll explain.”

Glancing over my shoulder, I noted how pale she was, and her hands were trembling. Whatever it was, she was spooked, so I did as she asked.

“Now remove it again.”

I took off the ring, and she held out her hand. Putting it on her palm, my skin brushed over hers which was dotted with beads of sweat. She examined it, and I was conscious of the seconds ticking by.

“Your scent has changed. When you remove the ring, it’s different.”

I didn’t see that as a problem, considering I didn’t take it off around anyone but Jack, though I recalled my earlier thinking that someone other than my roommate might stumble on my secret.

But Jack had gotten me worked up about something that was no biggie. “I’ve been using a new shower gel. Coconut.”

Jack waved her hand dismissively. Grrr, I wanted to stamp my feet like a toddler and collapse on the floor, banging my heels until she said she was sorry. Or gave me a lollipop.

“It’s not that. You have or had two scents. One was latent when you were wearing the ring, the other was your own human aroma.”

“Okaaay.” Having no idea where she was going with this, I waited.

“The ring still provides the fake latent smell.”

That was good news, otherwise I’d be out of Sombertooth.

“But,” she gulped, “you no longer scent human without the ring.”

That wasn’t what I was expecting, and I sank onto the bed beside my best friend. My brain was whirring. Latent, check. But human, no check. What alternatives were there? Ogre? Wizard? Fae? If I could perform magic, I’d march over to Atticus’s room and turn him into a cockroach.

“Please tell me whatever it is, it’s good news.”

“I honestly can’t say one way or the other.” Jack was hugging a pillow to her chest.

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense?” I sniffed my pores, but other than the coconut aroma, I was still me.

My roommate got up on one elbow. “You scent like a shifter!”

“A shifter,” I repeated. “Which one?”

She shrugged. “Not sure.”

“How do you know if I’m a shifter or not?” Was it possible to absorb a beast from someone else after being in close proximity to them? That had to be it. It couldn’t be the other thing. The thing I read in that book about a hunter’s scent deceiving… That was a big nope.

Jack patiently explained I wasn’t a shifter and could never be one. I just smelled like one.