Chapter 34

Julian

I could find neither Bayla nor Emely, although one of the two should have the speed of a sloth and the other, which I had followed directly, smelled for miles like a wolf.

Two unpredictable girls who surprised me again and again, although I had known one of them for only two weeks and the other since I was a child.

And since I hadn't found either of them, I had returned to campus.

A strange fear blazed within me, the source of which I could not pinpoint.

I stood before the door of the man most likely to help me, as much as my inner self tried to deny it. I was about to knock, but an exhausted, "Come in, Julian, and save the pleasantries" reminded me of the once good relationship between us and the fact that, even if nothing was the same, certain things would never change.

I opened the heavy, dark wooden door, decorated with ornaments and snakes, which led me into a spacious room with several full-sized windows and one huge one. The view of the campus was breathtaking, and I was not surprised that Alarik had chosen this very room as his office.

The university director, quite young for his age, sat at his desk cluttered with paperwork and didn't even look up.

"Where's Emely?"

"I couldn't find her."

Now, he did raise his head. "And the girl?"

"She's gone. But don't worry, their tracks got lost in different directions."

He sighed. "At least it's good news..."

Then he ran his hand through his messy hair and put down the feather pen.

To be honest, Alarik looked pretty exhausted. I wasn't a bit envious of him, because being part of the pack and then also in his position as university director and professor, there were many responsibilities to carry. Another burden that probably pushed him to his limits on a daily basis.

After a while of silence and thinking, Alarik broke free from his stupor.

"You must find the girl. Because if you say you lost her trail, the Quatura won't find her either."

For whatever reason they wanted to find Bayla, it was too late. She had probably run home.

"She barely smells… if at all…"

"Don't be silly, she's human."

"No, she's not ..."

Alarik stared at me intently.

"Are you telling me that this is how a Quatura reacts when she witnesses the transformation of a Senseque?"

He went to his desk to pour himself some coffee, but then set the mug aside again.

Alarik and stress had never been a good mix, even if he reacted surprisingly well in all kinds of stressful situations. It was about the reactions afterward, about the nights when he had always wandered restlessly in the woods back then, when I had still spent time with the Copelands on the pack's estate.

I skillfully pushed the burgeoning memories aside.

Suddenly the feeling of confusion ran through me again, and instantly I had images in my mind. Images of Bayla in the woods, running and running, completely out of breath, looking around again and again. A road...

"Julian?" Alarik jerked me back into the present.

Out of breath, I propped myself up against the desk and threw my head back. The next thing I knew, Alarik was shaking me.

"Julian!" He pulled me in. "What's wrong, boy?"

Confused, I blinked, but the sun suddenly seemed far too bright. Once again, I saw the road, and a feeling of fear flooded my entire body.

I groaned.

"When was the last time you turned?"

Even if I could have responded to his question, I didn't want to because the answer was clear. They all knew the answer.

"Damn it, boy! Get a grip!"

I had snapped Alarik's thread of patience because he grabbed me and shook me even harder until I opened my eyes and sank into the hard padding of the leather couch, overwhelmed.

Alarik let go of me, leaving me alone, but eventually came back, only to lift my head and dump a disgusting liquid that smelled like compost down my throat.

Goddammit!

I coughed violently, and the burning pain finally jerked me into the present, Alarik's worried face in front of me. He had just given me liquid wolfsbane. Something he had shown me back then, shortly after the incident, and which I had been taking at least once a month ever since.

"Julian, we need to talk!" Alarik cursed.

But I shook my head. "What are the Quatura girls up to?"

I propped myself against the back of the chair to stand up again.

"They're going to take away the girl's memories."

Shocked, I looked at Alarik.

If that was true...

"But, she's..."

"Julian, I think you should calm down first and tell me..."

But I had no time to waste, so I jumped up and pushed past Alarik.

Whatever they would give Bayla wouldn't work... She was one of them, and who knew how disturbed she was right now.

"Julian! Come back here, boy!"

I ignored him and stormed through the door.

"Where's Bayla?"

Grace gave me a disparaging look before turning back to the bowl of plants. She was crouched in the middle of the girls' room floor, waving a twig in the air. Her eyes turned from brown to greenish, beginning to glow, but then it stopped abruptly, and she looked suspiciously at me, then at Julie, who was leaning nervously against the desk, bobbing up and down.

"If even the wolf can't find her, and apparently , your magic isn't as strong as Amara always claims it is..." it came disdainfully from the far corner of the room, where a person I hadn't expected at all was sitting.

"Vivienna."

"Julian."

That coarse exchange revealed everything there was to know about us. We didn't like each other, but we left each other alone, even though she once knew how to provoke me as well as Emely and Nash.

Vivienna had always been one of the very strict Quatura who seemed to hate all Senseque, especially the Copelands. It was clear that Nash's position as future Alpha made him a potential enemy. In fact, as far as I knew, she was also entitled to a fairly high position in the ranks of the Councils, the controlling opposition of the Circle.

However, I was not really interested in that.

And suddenly anger rose in me.

"You shouldn't be here," I snapped at her.

"Excuse me?" She sounded surprised.

"If you hadn't made such a drama out of the whole thing, it wouldn't have come to this in the first place."

I wondered why I was just getting involved in such a matter and immediately regretted it. What was I doing here anyway? Not only was I on Copeland's territory, but I was also in a girl's room full of witches.

"I'll have to agree with him on that one, for once," Grace laughed, her eyes focused on the stone bowl she was now crushing the other herbs in.

"Wow, I don't believe it!" Vivienna looked at Grace in indignation.

" Relax , Vivienna," she replied, completely absorbed.

"No, I'm certainly not relaxing! And I'm certainly not going to let these mutts get away with blaming me for something that wasn't my fault!"

She jumped up and came toward me. Her look was that of an angry wildcat.

"Just get a grip on your little wolf friend, and this won't happen."

"Guys..."

All three of us looked at Julie in surprise. It wasn't that she said anything strange, more that she could speak at all . She was so calm, probably the calmest girl I had ever met.

"There's a human girl wandering around out there who is the biggest threat to us right now," she pressed out quietly.

"She's right. We need to put our rivalries aside right now because there's something far greater at stake right now," I snorted in frustration at the situation.

Vivienna looked at me with concentration for two seconds but then muttered, "Whatever!" and dropped back onto the bed where Bayla had been lying not too long ago, rolling her eyes.

"Then let's hunt a human like wolves do, shall we, Julian?"

I ignored Vivienna, mustered all my control, and was about to say something, but Grace started muttering something in a language completely foreign to me.

" Invenire animam in carne et ossibus ."

Questioningly, I looked at Julie, who seemed to be eyeing me, but then looked back to Grace, both hands clutching her cell phone.

Grace, meanwhile, repeated the words, this time a little more tensely.

" Invenire animam in carne et ossibus ."

She opened her eyes, from which the bright green slowly disappeared.

"No matter what I do, I just don't see them!"

Grace put down her stuff, took off the necklace with the emerald crystal, and threw it on her bed, annoyed.

"This can't be happening..." Julie muttered.

Vivienna just rolled her eyes.

"So much for the prophecy ."

There it was again, the prophecy . Even if I didn't believe in this mumbo jumbo of the gods, everyone else did . The Senseque, even the Ruisangors, and above them all the Quatura. Even if only the latter believed in the gods themselves. Gods whose existence they had probably made up.

"Don't question the prophecy," Grace reminded Vivienna.

"Who says I do?" Vivienna twirled one of her golden blond strands between her thumb and forefinger and looked out into the forest. "I'm just firmly convinced that the Circle has made some misinterpretations."

"Grace may just be having a bad day, Vivi." Julie tried to relieve the tension somehow, but only earned a disapproving look from Vivienna.

"So did the Earth Quatura, who misinterpreted the prophecy."

Grace looked at Vivienna angrily, but then stood up and began marching up and down nervously, which began to make me nervous.

I still hadn't had a chance to let them know, and actually, we were just running out of time. Bayla was still out there somewhere, and she was in danger, even if Emely knew how to control herself at all times. At the end of the day, she was as much of a monster as I was.

"Maybe the hair was too old?" Julie interjected questioningly.

"Naturalis don't even lose their effect over centuries ...and the magic was the same as always, too..." Grace sounded frantic, and I had no idea what this was about at all.

"Now you know why you shouldn't always be so reckless, Vivienna!"

Grace had lost her temper and the clay vase on her desk shattered into a thousand shards.

I took a step back and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, veins showing on my arms.

Fucking magic.

Vivienna had jumped up, ready to fight like she had this morning, completely ignoring Grace's accusation.

"Don't do that, Julian!" she hissed in my direction.

"I can't control that if you use your powers!"

Julie jumped up and retrieved the necklace Grace had so carelessly thrown away first and handed it back to her. Grace accepted it and hung it around her neck again.

"You should always have it on," Julie said.

"I know…"

The two exchanged very serious glances, then Grace looked at Vivienna.

"He's not a threat right now, let him be, he can help us track her down."

"They're all the same!" Vivienna eyed me suspiciously again. "We can't trust them. Who knows what they did to that girl..."

My gaze began to fix on her, my veins standing out more.

"I didn't do anything with Bayla. And I'm not one of the Copelands either."

It made me mad as hell that everyone saw me as someone I wasn't anymore. Like I was being robbed of any right to self-determination.

"It doesn't matter if you want to be part of them or not, you're all the same!" Vivienna turned to the Blair cousins. "Sooner or later, they will kill us all if we don't do something about them now."

Vivienna's family was one of those who hated the Senseque the most and attributed the dark part of that ancient prophecy to them.

I knew they actually hated all of us, but this was going too far.

I took a step toward them.

"Let me tell you this. I don't want to hurt you, even though you're pretty much a pain in the ass. So, leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone, just like our families agreed."

"Vivienna, leave him alone. He's right." Grace sounded serious.

"Vivi..." Julie sighed.

You could feel the Quatura's tension so strongly that I wouldn't have been surprised if Alarik had shown up straight away to defuse the next confrontation.

"You'll see what you get out of trusting him."

Vivienna had enough. She took a step back, gave each of us a withering look, and finally stormed through the open door of the room.

"I warned you!" she screeched loudly, then slammed a door.

"She's always like this."

"I know," I indicated to Julie.

"You really couldn't track her down, not even your friend?" Grace asked sharply.

I suppressed the urge to deny something again and moved closer to the girls.

"Their scents got lost in two different directions. I think Emely has returned to the Copeland estate."

"Are you sure?" She looked at me searchingly.

"Yes. With Emely, I am."

"Good, then at least Bayla wasn't eaten." Grace sat back down in front of her herb bowl and looked at Julie. "I never thought a human would cause us so much worry."

"Bayla is not human."

The Blair cousins wheeled around to me and looked at me startled, almost as if I had just told them I had joined the pack.

"What do you mean?" Grace asked with hesitation.

"Her mother moved back here with her a few weeks ago. They're our neighbors..."

It almost slipped out that Ms. Adams had invited my family to dinner, and the last thing I wanted was for Ms. Adams to be cast in the wrong light. "Anyway, her mother is one of you."

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" Grace jumped up and gathered her herbal stuff, but Julie didn't give me time to answer. The reason, by the way, why I hadn't told them yet.

"Of course...Bayla Adams ...why didn't I notice this earlier?" Julie said with a thoughtful look on her face. "She's the daughter of Ms. Adams, the new Air Quatura."

"She's not in the Circle, Julie." Grace paused and dropped all the herbal stuff back to the floor. "We have to report her."

Julie rose and they both sped toward the door, but I interposed myself.

"Wait a minute...no one leaves here until you tell me what you're up to."

"Let us pass, Julian." Grace looked up at me, annoyed.

When I still hadn't moved, Julie said, "When you move into a new territory as a Quatura, you are obligated to join the predominant Circle there."

Of course , the witches were just like the Senseque. How could it have been otherwise?

"Let us pass now!" Grace sounded extremely impatient. However, I couldn't let them go and just mess up the lives of others.

"I'm sure her mother has a reason for not telling her."

"Ms. Adams is irresponsible if she keeps her daughter from us. She could be stripped of her memories as well as her powers for conspiracy or concealing a potential danger!"

I bit my tongue.

"Bayla is no danger, believe me. In fact, she sleeps in the same room with you."

"It's a matter of principle, Julian. Let us through now, or we'll move you out of the way."

That certainly wasn't going to happen, Grace.

"I won't let you erase her memories."

I hope I had made my point.

"That won't happen if we tell my mother in time before Gloria finds out."

Grace was stubborn. Maybe she was right. Thanks to Amara Blair, my family and I were allowed to live in her district. Gloria , on the other hand, was one of the Quatura who wanted us all dead.

"But I didn't feel her magic..." Julie remarked quietly.

Grace turned to her thoughtfully. "Neither did I..."

"Are you really sure, Julian?"

Damn it . Me and Emely not being able to smell her was one thing. But if the two of them couldn't even sense Bayla's magic....

"Do you think she's an ungifted?" Julie asked, grabbing the almost translucent stone hanging from a silver chain around her neck.

"Julie, this could be why her mother didn't bring her to us."

A twinge in my stomach distracted me.

The fear had returned, and I had images in my head, just like before. This time, it was a room I remembered well, even though I had only been there once before: Bayla's room.

The cousins took advantage of my moment of weakness to sneak past me, down the stairs.

"Whatever about Bayla. We need to get to Moenia."

Those were the last words I heard before the images took me and I sank to the floor.