Chapter Three

"They wanted to suspend you without any proof of who lit the fires." As I sat in the back seat of a whole other car, the rest of that surreal day ran circles in my brain.

"And that would have been wrong. I didn't do it."

"That's the thing, sweetheart, we think you might have."

I'd protested until our food arrived then let mine go cold while my parents explained some things to me. Their choice of locations struck me as odd until they introduced our server as a member of Mom's pack, a distant relation. She didn't have much contact with them, but she had Karen sit down and help answer questions.

I really needed to know the answers because until now, I was a girl and shifters lived in novels or young adult movies where the girl had to pick her supernatural lover. Sitting in a diner with the sign turned to closed, with my parents and a waitress, then the cook was at the table with me sharing the fact that my life would never be the same again.

Fantasy was reality, and my mother was a wolf shifter. And so was my father. When they left to go out on a date night once a month, there were no books involved. Marrying my dad, from a lesser pack, had put Mom on the outs with the pack leadership, but she still had some friends and relatives they would go out on runs with to let their wolves get out there.

"Okay, but I'm not a wolf, right? I think that is pretty well established." I was already eighteen, and in the movies, didn't teenagers shift all over the place?"

"You're a wolf, dear." Watching the landscape outside the window of the town car sent to drive me to school, I heard her words in my head clearly. "But you're what we call a latent."

"All right. I had the impression that ship had sailed, so I've been doing my normal human things. For a while I was pretty sure I'd been switched at birth.

"And that means that you should have been shifting for several years now. Puberty is a common time, although some are a little younger or older."

"As old as eighteen?" This wasn't sounding good. I mean, if I had to be different, which I kind of always had been, I should at least have the benefits.

She gave me a look that said it all without even needing to add words. But she did. "It's rare for a latent to manifest her wolf this late. Especially if she hasn't heard from her wolf until now. I don't suppose you have?"

"What? Been hearing voices?"

"Clearly you have not."

But then they came back to the fire. "Your dad and I think the fires are a sign that you may be awakening."

"But I didn't start any fires," I protested again. "I don't know how they began."

There was a lot of explanation after that, but what it came down to was that they'd decided by now I wasn't going to shift ever, and that's why they'd kept me in public school all this time. Dad's pack had actually pulled kids out of school after eighth grade or so, but Mom's sent them off to the academy we were even now approaching. I had expected the setting for a gothic novel or maybe even a convent school or something. No idea why… But we were no longer out in the country and had instead arrived in front of a very modern mid-rise building right in the city. I grew up in the suburbs, but we almost never came downtown. Why would we? We had all the stores we needed locally, so other than museum field trips or things like that, we had no reason to visit here.

"This is your stop, miss," the driver said. "Would you like help with your bags?"

Somehow I'd expected him to jump out and open my door, but apparently this wasn't that movie. "No, I'll get them if you'll pop the trunk for me."

"Sure." I heard the distinctive click. "Do I just go right in the front door?"

"That's it. Enjoy your first semester."

"Thank you."

I opened the door and went around to the rear to get out my dad's giant duffel he'd loaned me and my new backpack holding my laptop. The school had admitted they had no proof I did anything at all wrong and given my parents a check to buy replacements for everything that was destroyed by the fire in my locker. Considering I might well have caused all the fires, I felt a little guilt, but Mom and Dad were very annoyed with the behavior of the principal and the rest and actually upped the value of my things.

My new laptop rocked.

I waved to the driver, who pulled away, then dragged my things up the steps to the imposing glass and steel doors of my new school. Previously, I'd been to standard US institutions of learning, as in a regular elementary, middle school, and high school, and while I was aware that not all such institutions looked the same, this was more like an office building from the outside.

Just as I reached for the handle, the door opened and three girls a year or two older than me rushed through, laughing at some inside joke. I stepped back, suddenly aware that I was facing the first three real wolf shifters of my own age group ever. I never got to go on the runs, since obviously I'd have been left behind trying to keep up.

My parents thought that the fact things were bursting into flame around me meant maybe I was leaning toward more? I still didn't think the fires even had anything to do with me, and I didn't understand the connection, which they hadn't tried to explain. For just a moment, I wanted to turn and flee. I wasn't ready for this. I wasn't even sure I was a shifter at all. When those doors closed behind me, there would be no going back, or so I felt. But if I didn't enter, where would I go?