3

T he mortal studies class is giving me a complex. I’m obviously going to pass this module, but sitting around everyone belittling everything about humans is making me feel small and useless.

Not only have I had zero sleep from the harrowing screams keeping me awake all night, but someone also stole my books, so I needed to borrow paper and a pen, which earned me a scowl from the professor.

She’s green. With scales and eyes too big for her head, to go with the tail that keeps hitting stuff off her desk.

“I thought humans have no magic?” Orsen, Dane’s best friend, interrupts Mel mid-question, making her glare at him. She looks like she wants to stab him with her long nails.

Mel isn’t a fan of him, like I’m not a fan of his far-too-tall-to-be-normal leader.

The professor huffs out a cloud of steam from her large nostrils. “They do not.”

She raises the mobile phone above her head. I wonder if I should tell her that no one uses black-and-white phone bricks anymore? “This gadget is how mortals communicate. If and when you are granted permission to leave the island, students will be required to know how to use one.”

“What does it do?” someone asks. “What are its powers?”

“For the tenth time, it doesn’t have any powers.” Staring at the stapler she just knocked to the ground, she snaps the pencil in her hand. “I’ve already explained the satellites and messaging service. Does anyone need me to explain these again?”

Annoyingly, someone says yes. The professor dives into how the numbers on the keypad also have letters. Some of the students take notes, and others pay no attention, but Dane Dalton mutters under his breath how ridiculous and weak mortals are before leveling his gaze on me.

He’s goading me to react, but instead, I pretend he doesn’t exist.

He flicks his finger, and all my notes fall to the ground.

“Sera Winters!”

I roll my eyes at him as the professor throws her chalk at me. It bounces off my desk and rolls across the ground.

“Dickhead,” I snarl in his direction as I reach for my papers. “Grow up.”

A gust of wind whips at my hair, and she bellows, “Language, Miss Winters!”

After nearly twenty minutes of everyone in denial that there are satellites in the sky and the internet is a thing, the professor sits at her desk. “Any questions before we move on to the next subject?”

A hand raises, and the entire class groans. “To sum it all up,” a student says, “mobile phones are a form of magic.”

She rolls her lizard-like eyes. “You are all insufferable mutants.”

Never in my twenty years have I ever witnessed a teacher speaking to their students like this. They’d be kicked out and never allowed to teach again. But all the professors are like her. They throw around their powers for punishment and talk down to each and every student.

The professor walks to her desk and pulls out a second phone. “You will have one mobile, and the individual you are trying to contact will have the other. Each one has a unique number. You dial it into the keypad and…” She does this as she talks, and the other mobile begins to play a polyphonic ringtone.

“Can mortals be any more pathetic?” I hear Dane mutter to one of his friends. “Unnecessary technology, and for what? If you need to speak with someone, go see them.”

I contemplate slapping him. All these little comments are aimed at me. He knows he’s doing it, and he knows I know. It only pushes him to piss me off even more.

Yet, other than being a human with no powers, he has no reason to actually dislike me. But no matter what, every day, he’ll throw me a nasty comment, call me disgusting, and act like I have a disease. He’s lucky I haven’t kicked him in the balls by now.

Poppy asks an insane number of questions, which I end up having to answer because the teacher doesn’t know. I even inform the class that mobile phones are more advanced than the brick she’s holding, that they have color touchscreens now.

We haven’t even started on social media yet. Imagine trying to explain that to eighteen confused immortals? Let’s just say I’m glad next week will cover how human education works compared to what they were taught in their own realm as children. Because if they were catapulted into my world tomorrow, they’d stick out like sore thumbs and probably get arrested within the first hour.

If they graduate.

Failure means restarting from the beginning and resitting all exams. It’s the only way to escape their crumbling realms.

I haven’t learned much about the other students and their history yet, but I have some details. There are a vast number of realms, and apparently, mine is the safest and not currently being overtaken by a curse. I’ve learned about three so far. Water, air, and fire.

And then there’s my realm. The Mortal Realm.

We’ve yet to learn of the other fallen realms. I think it might be a hard subject and unnecessary information. I still have no idea why they need to know their own history when they came from these places. Why sit exams on their own realms’ history to be granted entry into my realm?

I’ve been walking the earth for twenty years, and not once have I come across an immortal trying to blend in, though I guess being a bunch of creatures who can make themselves look human, it’d be easy to pretend to be like me.

“Are you going to partner us up now?” Poppy asks, tapping her pen on the table. “Or do we find our own partners?”

“No, I’ll put on the board outside who you’ll be partnered up with for the rest of the year. This means all of your assignments will be a joint effort.” And she vanishes with a puff of green smoke just as the grandfather clock sounds, indicating the class is over and the next is due to begin.

Some students disappear from the room, vanishing on the spot like magic.

Even though I’ve only been here a few weeks, I’ve already adjusted to how things work here. The first time I saw a professor disappear into thin air, I nearly had a panic attack. Then when I walked into the human relations class—a way for the immortals to learn about the human body and the emotional connections we form—I nearly sprinted back out when I saw the board and the multiple positions the stick people were in.

Poppy and Mel tap my shoulder and tell me they’ll catch up with me later since most of the students have left the classroom.

Dane’s voice shatters my peace and quiet. He hovers over my desk, and I spot a ring on his middle finger with a carving that represents a realm, but I don’t know which one. His black suit is fitted, and his eyes shift to a light silver as he talks.

“I thought mortals were pieces of shit, but now, being in this class, I realize I was wrong.”

I raise a brow, crossing my arms. “Great. And you’re telling me why?” I try not to gulp as the last student exits, leaving the two of us alone.

The door slams, and Dane, without moving an inch, locks it. “You are all worse than shit. I hope I never pass these classes, so I don’t need to be stuck with your kind.”

“You wouldn’t last a second in my world.” I stand, but he still towers over me. “Get fucked, Dalton.”

I swipe up my new mobile phone, turn my back to him, and make my way to the door. But although he’s a few steps behind me, something wraps around my arm and drags me to sit once more.

Then two shadow hands grab at my thighs, pressing me to the chair.

“Pathetic,” Dane spits. He takes slow, careful steps towards me as the shadow fingers tighten. “You can’t even push against me, can you? I’m using the most basic of my powers, yet here you are, trapped.”

I swallow as he gets closer. “You use your powers because you aren’t brave enough to do it yourself.”

He hums, stuffing a hand into his pocket, the other twirling a pen between his fingers. “Humans carry enough diseases that I know never to touch you directly. And I imagine you are riddled with more than enough.” He grimaces. “Disgusting, really.”

Funny. He’s touched my hair on multiple occasions mid-mockery, but instead of mentioning that, I hold in a smile.

“I’ve read about your kind,” he continues, to my dismay. “You’re dying from the moment you’re born.”

My eyes roll to the back of my head in annoyance. “What's your plan if you do end up graduating and need to live among us?”

His devilish smile makes him more annoyingly handsome. “I’ll burn you all to the ground.”

I giggle at the absurdness. “Right. Can you take your little ghost hands off me now? As much as I love being held down and degraded, I have a boyfriend, and I’d like to go to my next class.”

Dane doesn’t let me go. In fact, those ghostly hands are firmer now, his jaw tight, and if this wasn’t a horrible situation and he wasn’t dropping to a crouch in front of me, this would be a turn-on.

Grayson would be ecstatic if he heard me call him my boyfriend, but Dane doesn’t need to know that I just lied to his face.

“I bet you do like being held down. I couldn’t imagine anything more repulsive. Seeing you beneath me.” With his bright eyes, Dane studies me—from my long, brown curls, to my face and chest, all the way down to my black heels. “You are repulsive, mortal. If I ever get out of here, you’ll be my first target.” The shadowy hands part my thighs slowly. “I’ll rip these legs off, and when you beg for mercy with tears in your eyes, I’ll snap each bone in your body, if only to hear the way you scream.”

The image in my head has sweat building on the back of my neck. I can see him doing something like that.

His eyes flash to a brighter silver. “I’ll make it slow of course. I want to feel how your body breaks. How your lungs burn when you’re desperate for oxygen. The last thing you see before I take your sight will be me. When you plead for me to end it all as you lose feeling in your entire body, I’ll heal you, only to start all over again. Do you know why?”

I just stare at him blankly, waiting for him to continue.

“Because you are a human. Useless, already-dying creatures who depend on ridiculous things like mobile phones to live.”

“Are you done?”

My toes curl as he tightens his invisible hold on my legs again. “You’ll know when I am. Right before the soul leaves your body for good—only then will I be done with you.”

My blood runs cold, and instead of giving him what he wants—to see me squirm from his threat—I tilt my head. “That was poetic. Did you rehearse that?” A breeze hits between my legs, and I battle against shifting. “What’s your deal anyway? The fuck did I ever do to you?”

“You merely exist.”

“Great,” I retort. “Can you release me now? You’re kind of creeping me out, not scaring me.”

Dane stares at me, his eyes darkening. “You mean nothing here.”

I scoff, trying to shift away from his hold when a faint pulsing begins, which only grants him more power to grip me. “Let me go.”

“You. Mean. Nothing. Here.”

“You should work on your tone. It’s getting scary, but not enough to make me beg you to stop. Maybe you should abracadabra back into your real form and fuck off?”

My legs part further, and I don’t fight it, even though I know he can see my panties. The feeling rushing through me has me gulping and heavily breathing through my nostrils.

The grandfather clock sounds again, and the hands stop pushing my thighs apart, but Dane doesn’t move, his second set of hands still keeping me pinned to the seat. His pupils have dilated, nearly taking over the shocking silver.

“Why are you here?” he demands.

I shrug, holding on to the sides of the chair. “Ask your mother. She’s the one who had me kidnapped from my life and thrown onto this island and won’t answer a single one of my questions.”

His jaw tenses, and the hands vanish from my skin. He stands tall, wiping invisible dust from his sleeve. “Leave the island. You have no place here.”

I get to my feet and quickly fix my skirt. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Einstein , but there’s a spell on the island. No one can leave without graduating. Have you not listened to a thing in mortal studies? No wonder you’re still stuck here.”

His eye twitches, but with one more glance down and up the length of me, stopping on my reddening cheeks, his irises shift back to his usual green, and he rapidly disappears from the room.

I finally breathe. My lungs were struggling for a beat there, but now he’s gone, I can let my thoughts run wild and my fear sink in. He’s an asshole, one who needs a good slap across the face, but he’s also undeniably hot, which makes him even more annoying.

He knows all the students in the academy want him, but I don’t. I’ll never fall to my knees and suck his cock like everyone else in this place wants to do. He can take his threats, his second set of hands, and his moodiness and go back to whatever realm he came from. Most likely the Fire Realm. He’s a hothead, angry all the time, and thinks he owns everyone. I bet if he shapeshifted back into his own form, he’d be a snake or a dragon.

Either way, I’ve failed at dodging him yet again. Daily, this happens. I wonder if he’ll ever grow bored of materializing in front of me or knocking me over? Or will I be forever cursed to listen to his fantasies of killing me?

My traitorous thighs tingle with the aftermath of him pinning me to the chair. I blame the fact I’ve been stuck here for weeks with no attention.

He’s just trying to scare me. He doesn’t really want me dead. Right?

I pack up my papers and walk out of the classroom, stopping when I see him staring at the board with a deep grimace. It looks like the professor has already placed students into pairs, and when he glares at me over his shoulder, I know who I’m partnered with.

“This is your fault,” he snaps before disappearing again.

It is compulsory for this module that students complete all assignments. The first one is due in two weeks, and you are both, as a TEAM, required to show that you understand the system on mobile phones by using the text messaging service at least once. No abuse will be acceptable.

On the board are names side by side. At the very bottom, I find my own with my new partner.

Seraphine Winters and Dane Dalton.