They Sold Me as a Brood Bride, So I Enrolled in the Boys' Alpha College novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Cold Water

The cold swim was the Warden's test, and it was held on the fourth day of term.

All three hundred of us stood in rows on the shingle at the edge of the Tarn, a black pool high above the quarry, with ice at its rim and a grey sky leaning down on it.

The Warden stood on a flat rock in a long wool coat, a thin old man with a voice like a bell.

"Cadarn's wolves keep their heads in cold water," he said. "That is the whole of the lesson. Strip."

I had one hand on the strap of my binding under my shirt, and I felt the blood go out of my face.

Nobody had said anything about stripping.

"Boy," the Warden said. "Treharne. Is there a difficulty?"

"No, sir."

"Then take off your shirt."

I did the only thing I could.

I took off my jacket, my boots and my trousers, and kept my shirt on.

"The shirt, Treharne."

"I'm cold-blooded, sir," I said. "I'll swim in it."

There was a pause.

Somebody in the back row laughed, and then the Warden did too, dryly, once.

"Swim in it, then," he said. "It's your funeral."

The water closed over me like a fist.

It was so cold it was not a temperature, it was a sound.

I went down and came up gasping.

My shirt stuck to my chest, and the binding under it was already pulling loose.

I swam.

I was a strong swimmer, and I struck for the far shore through a mass of kicking boys with my teeth hammering.

The blocker was in my blood.

I had dosed at dusk the night before.

It should have held.

The cold ripped it out of me.

I felt it go, a thin hot unthreading under my skin, as if somebody were hauling the whole bitter dose out of my veins hand over hand.

Near me, a boy turned his head.

Another did.

A nose lifted from the water in the next lane, and then three more.

My scent was loose on the surface of the Tarn.

Heather in the rain.

I knew the smell, because Cadoc had told me.

Every wolf near me would have it in half a breath.

I kept swimming.

I had no other plan.

"Treharne!"

It was Cadoc's voice.

He cut across the pool from the left in a smooth, savage crawl, and he did not come to me.

He swam between me and the masters' boat, and he started a fight in the water.

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