Primal Awakening (Prime Shifter Academy #1)

by Melody Rose

“And I mean it, Mom. He’s kind of a big deal, here.” I was only half-lying, really. He was a big deal. The biggest, if Garoux’s tale was entirely true.

“He spoke about spirits, and changing into beasts…” Her voice trailed off before she reeled it right back in. “What was your father’s?” “A phoenix,” I said proudly. “Just like me.”

For now, all I can ask is that you take this opportunity and you fly with it, my girl. I have a feeling your father’s legacy is far from over and that you’re going to shine even brighter than he did.” She cleared her throat, forcing herself into a deeper, more serious voice. “And you know I’m rarely, if ever, wrong about my feelings. Keep that in mind.”

Many times, I reeled my own mind back to shore, trying to wrap my head around knowing that my father was dead and that I was destined to take his place like some sort of “chosen one” in a young adult book-to-movie adaptation.

“I’m just saying,” I continued, wanting to do my best to sincerely drive home that I didn’t need him to stick by me. As much as I enjoyed being near him and felt drawn to him like a magnet, I didn’t want to accept his company as some sort of elitist act of charity, if that happened to be the case. “I know all three of you have been friends for a long time, and I’m not really interested in being anyone’s pet project.”

“You don’t have to act invincible around me because I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you when I’m around.” He shrugged. “You simply don’t have to worry. If you want me around, I’ll be around. And if I’m around, you’re safe. It’s that simple.”

“So you’re telling me every female in the entire shifter world spends their entire life being constantly gawked at by half the population?” I asked, unable to hide the shock and discomfort in my tone. “That’s got to be difficult.”

“What’s a mating connection?” I asked quietly, having the foresight to assume that it was the sort of question that needed to be asked in a hushed tone. I didn’t need any more males eavesdropping and making fun of me. “Is it another sex thing?” “No,” Dexter said with a sharp insistence. “At least, not entirely.” He took a deep breath and chewed the inside of his cheek. His behavior reminded me of a parent who was being asked the all-important question of where babies came from. I had clearly thrown him off guard, but I couldn’t help but be amused by his loss for words.

But there was one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about, and I knew I would be too embarrassed to ever admit. That electric feeling from the night before… Could that have been the it Dexter was trying to explain? And if it was, what did that mean for me? For him? And for us?

“If you expressed anything other than uncertainty, I might take you for a braggart or an egomaniac. The truth is that you should be uncertain. This world is still an uncertain place in your eyes, and if my senses are correct—which I have no reason to believe they are not—you are also uncertain of me.” He rotated his body toward me in a jerky, snapping motion, his lupine eyes catching mine immediately. “Is that about right, Soleil?” I huffed through my nose and raised my eyebrows. I wanted to keep him at arm's length because he was right—I didn’t trust him.

My instincts were not as keen as his, and I certainly couldn’t sense his state of mind and emotions, but I still wasn’t a complete idiot, and I knew most educators didn’t look at their students the way he looked at me.

The other males at Prime Academy looked at me like I was dinner, like they couldn’t wait to sink their teeth or claws into me, and they spoke to me like I was just some annoying girl set out to ruin their day, but that wasn’t what I got from the headmaster. Not by a long shot. He didn’t look at me like I was dinner. He looked at me like I was the exotic diamond at the end of a carefully planned, high-stakes, high-reward heist. There was a greed in his eyes, and a thirst that went far deeper than the body’s physical desires.

Once again, the little voice inside my head reminded me that I should try to enroll in a class to learn how to shut up for once.

As I pulled the heavy wooden door shut behind me, it occurred to me all at once that through that entire final interaction with Garoux, where he was doing his best to make me feel like I was only two inches tall, the only thing I could see in my mind was fire. Raging, blistering hot, explosive fire.

“When you return to the front, you tell him if he thinks he can achieve results more efficiently than I can, then the mission will fail before it’s had an opportunity to really take flight.” The alpha’s pupils were so wide his eyes were nearly all black. “Because if she dies before she controls the phoenix, she won’t come back, and there will be no more phoenix. For anyone. Perhaps… ever.”

“Okay, here it goes,” he said as he finally opened his eyes to look at me. The fingers that were pinching his nose now moved to pick at his cuticles. It was like he was struggling to be still. “I know you wish you had a better mirror in your quarters. I know you think about wearing one of your skirts every day but have yet to do so because you’re worried about what others might think. I know you have an ugly dog at home that you miss quite a lot, and I know you’re a phoenix.”

“Do you remember when I explained to you that part of the reason the other males at this school gave you a hard time is because they were, you know, struggling with that weird shifter biology I told you about?” he asked. “Right, how it’s all totally primal and can’t be entirely helped.” I nodded, hoping he would skip straight to the point. “I felt it, too,” he admitted as he leaned over the table. “Right away. Instantly. It was like everything in the entire universe suddenly made sense because you were finally here.”

“Mate?” I asked, my voice cracking with nervousness. “Is that what that feeling was? The electricity?” “That was you feeling my power,” he explained. “I had a bit of an outburst that night in the dorms, and I had a feeling you’d felt it. Something told me you had. Call it instinct. I don’t know.”

Of course the poor guy got stuck having to educate the clueless female from the human world on the incredibly complicated, in-depth concept of mates.

He’d said it again. Mate. The word rolled about in my head and circled my heart like a ring, and as frightening of a concept as it was—to be mates—it also felt oddly like home, like the world made a little more sense, like I could finally exhale, like I had a safety net in the thunderbird across from me.

Whatever force decided these sorts of things saw fit that he and I needed to be together, and as I looked across the table at him, I saw a quiet promise of the sort of love that only mates could share, and if he was ready to accept it, then I was as well.

Maybe there would have been a time when the idea of stripping naked on top of a study table in a school library was something that would send immediate shame and embarrassment through me, but now it was something else. Perhaps it was the primal spirit within me aching for the stage, but there was something about the voyeuristic nature of this event that was making this all so much hotter. I found myself wanting someone to walk in. Wanting someone to see Dexter removing my polo shirt like he was freeing me from a prison. The risk of someone dropping in didn’t feel like a risk so much as it felt like a declaration of him being mine.

He’d chosen his incredibly stupid desire not to look stupid in front of the student body rather than pursue the female his instincts couldn’t keep out of his mind. But he intended to mourn those instincts the same way he’d created them—by pretending they didn’t exist.

The remainder of breakfast consisted of me convincing Dexter with increasing amounts of frustration and certainty that I would be fine, that I didn’t need him to come with me, and that I could handle myself. Even a grumpy Talon was still just Talon. I was convinced I had already seen the worst that he had to offer—a few snotty comments and a shitty attitude. Neither of which I couldn’t handle.

“Two mates, Sunny,” he whispered in a voice only low enough that it was just for me. I was stunned to hear a shimmer of awe on his tongue, like he couldn’t believe his luck that this was all happening—a rapid shift in approach from when he’d first appeared in the hall. “You have no idea how miraculous this is, or how incredible this means you are, and will be. The Spirits Above have seen you worthy of so much love that you have two mates. Incredible.”

With Dexter, the solidifying of the mating connection felt symphonic and beautiful, but with Talon, it felt explosive and intense. Once again, it was the difference between the windstorm and the crashing avalanche or rockslide.

Not one of his so-called friends ever bothered to ask him how he felt about her, not that it even mattered anymore. So what if he’d gone out of his way to talk Talon off a cliff or stuck by Dexter even after he almost went full lightning storm on him? Such was life, he supposed. It was the ones you never expected to let you down that let you down the hardest, and he wasn’t going to let one of ‘em see him sweat. Who cared if he’d been entirely won over and smitten with her from the moment she sat down across from him on her first day of school? Who cared if thoughts of her had played on a loop in his mind since then? Who cared if he would have crawled on broken glass to have her to himself for an hour? Not even to touch her, necessarily, but to listen to her talk. There was something about her wit and banter that drove him wild, and now he would have to face every day knowing that his two very best friends were with the female of his dreams.

What would he even say, he wondered. Hey, uh, had a dream my two horny, back-stabbing douchebag roommates were trying to save a bird and also there were wolves or something, and also I couldn’t talk. Sure, sounded super important. Sounded absolutely dire. He’d do what he always did: sit on it until he could figure out what it meant, if it really even meant anything at all. For all he knew, it could have just been some cryptic vision about how his friends suck and would sprint past him to get whatever it was they wanted, leaving him for dead. It could have absolutely been that simple, especially given the current storm of events in his mind and in his heart.

Slade had spent his entire life perfecting the act of not caring. The mask of indifference or loud-mouthed rebellion had fused against his own face, but he felt it slipping away. Quickly, he turned around to avoid the risk of them seeing him hovering stupidly in the door, though he knew there was a slim chance that any of them would pull their focus away from one another. This was it. The end. Everyone got their happy ending. Except him, of course.

As far as Garoux was concerned, the less his packmates knew, the better. At the very least, he gave them the freedom to feign ignorance and spare themselves of his traitorous actions. They need not align themselves to him as forces he didn’t understand were making him change course in the final hours. Everything was hard. Everything was heavy. Everything was coming to an end, and he had no intention of trying to save his own skin. But he did, however, have every intention of trying to save hers. The next moon. They are coming.

“I have tried very hard to be understanding when it comes to this tough-guy alpha-male possessive shifter bullshit,” I said, glaring back at them. “But this is now the second time I’ve had to convince one of you not to try to kill someone on my behalf, and I’m done dealing with it.” My insides began to burn their familiar burn, letting me know the phoenix approved of my actions. “I am not some object for you little boys to fight over. Figure out how to deal with the overflow of testosterone without me having to come save your asses every time. Got it?”

With Dexter, things had progressed naturally. He was a gentleman, and I’d been a smitten schoolgirl floating behind him with hearts in my eyes.

With Talon, things had been immediate, intense, and obvious all at once. Our connection had hit hard and fast, like a car crash, and was just as impossible to ignore.

With Slade… I had no idea what was happening. There was such an even push and pull between us, like a metronome swaying between a casual reluctance and a content acceptance of the connection neither one of us even dared to hint at. He challenged me, asked me questions, and I did the same for him. Learning each other felt like a game I never wanted to end, e...

The pure evil I felt from the voice was palpable, and I could sense the unstoppable power of it, as if I were a sailboat and it was the threat of a storm. There was no hiding from it. All of this—the fight, the army, the breaking into the great hall… it was pure child’s play compared to the potential horror that could be on the horizon. My choices were to face it or let it take me. The decision was easy, spurred on by the strands of my connections with the males who throbbed with rage and worry. I couldn’t let them be the only ones fighting for me. I had to fight for myself.

“You’re all the best parts of me and your mom, and it’s been such a joy to watch you grow from the eyes of the phoenix living within you,” He pulled me in and gave me a hug, and I hugged him back so hard I thought he might burst, but he only chuckled and patted me on the back of my head. “You can do this. Don’t ever doubt yourself, kid. This power is in your blood—you just gotta claim it. Now go and kick some ass. I love you.”

I cried out, and my voice erupted in birdsong as the music of the phoenix flowed out of my beak like a fountain. The act was effortless, like I had been singing this song my whole life, like the melody was written in my veins. Gold mist enveloped my allies as I sang, and I watched as the primal forms before me, who were once struck motionless with unspeakable pain, were now filled with a rush of pure magic as my spirit gave them new life. They were more than they were. They were inspired, both mentally and physically. I watched as shifters changed and warped into forms even more impressive than they were before.

The shifters of Prime Academy were more than ready to fight—they were the fight, and they took immediate control of the conflict. Bursts of motion made the castle itself feel alive as more shifters in their readied primal forms poured into the great hall from the courtyard, one after another, heeding the song from my chest. It was just as Garoux had described. When the phoenix cried, shifters came.

This was the grand finale, and how poetic that it would end this way. I took a deep breath, the deepest I had perhaps ever taken, and screamed as loud as I could in protest. I was not a weapon. I was not a pawn. I was not meant to be held by Shade Clan or the Council. I was a phoenix. I was the physical incarnation of hope and new beginnings, and I poured every ounce of myself into that final cry, as well as the shreds of my father before me. My beautiful, kind father, who had been forced to live a life he did not want for a people who did not deserve him. If I was going down, I was going to make damned sure Deimos was going down with me.

Time stood still as the thunderbird, the unicorn, and the gryphon all watched helplessly as their mate rose into the air within the confines of a ball of fire that resembled the sun. The fiery orb rotated faster and faster, rolling the demonic, serpentine body attached to her into the ball like a length of yarn. Each of their bodies stung and ached, feeling the sickening blight of the dragon’s bite course through their own veins in sympathy with her. The sight was one cubs heard about only in legend. It was one that had been told time and time again as a bedtime story. It was a tale, a fable, about the power of the phoenix and its incredible power to blot out any darkness. It was enough to make each shifter in the hall drop their natural weapons and watch with awe in a truce nobody called, but everybody held to.

“Sunny?” Talon’s voice cried again, his once frantic roar quickly devolving into despair. “Can you hear me? I can’t find you…” Slade and Dexter saw him then, pacing like a tiger in a cage. He was still in his primal form, but there was no purpose to his movements. It was like his brain had short-circuited, and all he was capable of was pacing and calling, pacing and calling, on a loop forever.

you,” Dexter cooed as he reached down with one gentle hand and ran his fingers through her hair. She was silent for a moment, though not one of them could blame her. Nobody except her would ever understand the magic of what happened, nor would anybody ever know what it was like to die and come back as if it had never happened. Dexter could sense the bond between the four shifters tie itself off in a double knot, and the entire universe felt like it was back on track. Despite the conflict, despite the horror, and despite the destruction, everything would be fine. Everything would always be fine, so long as she was there with them.

Dying was something I had never particularly feared but had also never particularly thought about. My entire life, the concept of death was this quiet inevitability that I figured I would just deal with when the day came, but I rarely considered what was truly waiting for me at the end of my life.

“As long as you live this life with respect for yourself, others, and our good, green earth, you’ll be all right in the end,” she’d said more than once.

I had questions I couldn’t answer myself, like what exactly had happened at the end? Had my plan against Deimos worked? Did anyone even know? And what of his army? What of Garoux? The vision of the black warg betraying his own leader just to give me a chance was one I wouldn’t soon forget. I hoped that, wherever he was, alive or dead, he had done well in making amends. I hoped he’d found his redemption.

Something about coming back to life makes people crazy horny, it turns out.

guess we both worried about upsetting the two of you if we weren’t actually mates. Something about, you know, doing all of that with a girl who wasn’t mine felt… wrong.” “How kind and respectful of you.” Talon chuckled. “Two words I never thought I’d say about you, Slade. Way to prove me wrong.”

“Isn’t your mother a human?” Talon asked. I nodded, still trying to get my body to move. Even if I didn’t want to, I had to go down and meet her before she got herself locked up in some sort of anti-human shifter prison. “That’s impossible. Humans can’t make it through passages,” Dexter said with his usual absolute certainty. “The magic has been in place since forever and has never once been compromised.” “Clearly the woman is on a mission.” Slade laughed. “Maybe she’s the first human in history to figure it out. She definitely seems like someone who isn’t going to give up. Look at her. She’s crazy.”

she’s not a human,” Dexter suggested. “Or, at least not entirely human.” Nope. I was not going to entertain the thought that there were any more mysteries in my life. Not a chance. I was barely getting used to the idea that I was the legendary phoenix reborn and had no intention of digging up any more information about my past. If my mother was hiding something, by all means, she could keep hiding it. At least for now. Give me at least a week to wallow in the current mystery, for crying out loud.

“How did you get here? How did you know how to find me?” “I had a feeling something bad happened,” she whispered between happy tears. “And I just, I don’t know… followed that feeling, and it brought me here. I just knew this is where I needed to be. My car is parked at some resort? I don’t know. It was a long drive, and I didn’t really spend time thinking about it. Just trusted that feeling, like I said.” “And your feelings are always right.” I chuckled with tears on my face. It was beyond wonderful to be in her arms and to smell the scent of home on her sweater.