She Entered the Academy with a Crush, Three Men Fought to Keep Her novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Arch Rings
Chloe falls at the ward arch and the director catches her in front of everyone; Chris growls, Matt grins, and a note summons her to the tower.
The ward arch rang when I walked through it, and four hundred students turned to watch me fall.
My knees just quit.
The stone was coming up at my face when a hand caught me around the waist.
It was a big hand, and it was hot, even through my thin shirt.
"I have you, Miss Winslow."
I knew that voice.
I had listened to his one video interview eleven times on the bus from Ohio.
Mr. Gideon Hunter, director of Greywater Academy, heir of the family that built it, a dragon hybrid and forty-two years old.
He was holding me up in front of the whole school.
I looked up, and up.
Dark hair going grey at the temples.
Dark eyes, a charcoal suit, a jaw that should have come with a warning label.
"The wards ring for every new student," he said.
"They rang louder for you."
"Is that bad?" I asked.
My voice came out strange and small.
His thumb moved against my ribs, once, and every nerve I owned followed it.
"No," he said.
His eyes flashed gold for half a second, too fast for anyone behind me to see.
"It isn't bad at all."
He didn't let go.
I didn't ask him to.
Then something hit the air behind me.
A growl.
It was low and flat and it came from a chest I knew better than my own.
"Hands," Chris said.
Mr. Hunter looked over my head.
"Mr. Maddox," he said, calm as a lake.
"Your file said you'd be difficult."
I felt it, the little jolt of surprise.
He knew Chris by sight, on the first day, in a crowd of four hundred.
Chris stepped around me and set my suitcase on the stones between us.
He is five foot eight and built like a front door.
His hair is brown with a streak of silver down the left side where his wolf shows through, and his eyes had gone the exact grey of a knife.
"I've got her," he said.
"I'm sure you do." Mr. Hunter took his hand away, and my waist felt cold where it had been.
"Welcome to Greywater."
He walked back up the steps to the stage, and four hundred heads turned with him like sunflowers.
I let out a breath that shook.
"Chris."
"What."
"You growled at the director."
"He had his hand on you."
"He was keeping me off the pavement!"
"I'd have kept you off the pavement."
"You were behind me carrying two bags!"
He opened his mouth, shut it, and rolled his shoulders.
Chris Maddox and I grew up four houses apart in Marlow, Ohio.
He has been my best friend since the second grade, and when the rest of the world looks at him he looks like trouble with a pulse.
When he looks at me he looks like a dog who has just heard the word walk.
"Sorry," he muttered.
"Don't say sorry to me, say it to the dragon."
"Not happening."
Someone laughed nearby, an easy laugh with a lot of room in it.
"I like him," said a tall man with copper hair and a green-eyed grin.
"Is he always like this, or is it a school thing?"
"Always," I said.
"Matt Calloway." He held out a hand.
His fingers were warm and his shake was friendly and slow.
"You're in my lab section, Winslow. I looked you up on the roster."
"Don't worry, the wards ring for everybody. Mine sounded like a kazoo."
"It did," said a girl nearby, and the crowd laughed, and the whole awful moment stopped being awful.
Chris looked at Matt's hand, then at me, then at Matt.
"Fox," he said.
"Wolf," said Matt cheerfully.
"Behave," I told them both.
They looked at each other for a long second.
I picked up my own suitcase.
"If either of you growls at anybody else today, you're carrying me to the dorm."
Matt's grin got wider.
Chris's ears, which are not technically pointed, went pink at the tips.
Lantern House was a stone dorm at the edge of the lawn with a green lantern over every door.
Humans lived there, behind extra wards, with a few hybrids and shifters on the same halls.
Mine was room 2B.
Chris was in 2A, right next to me, which was not an accident.
Matt was in 2C across the hall, and I had a feeling that wasn't one either.
I had only just dropped my bag when something slid under the door.
A cream envelope with a wax seal, my name written in heavy black ink.
Miss C. Winslow.
I broke the seal.
Miss Winslow,
My office, the clock tower, nine o'clock tonight.
Come alone.
G. Hunter
The dress I had packed for the first dinner was blue, soft, and a little shorter than my mother would have liked.
I took it out of the bag.
I did not have to decide.
I had wanted this man since the day I saw his face, and now he'd said my name and written it down.
So I put on the blue dress.
I was standing in front of the mirror when the door banged open without a knock.
Chris stood in the hall, breathing hard.
He had read the note over my shoulder, and his silver eyes were fixed on the dress.
"Chloe," he said quietly.
"At the gate, right before he let go of you, he said one word under his breath."
"Wolves hear everything."
He swallowed.
"He said mine."
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