Mated to four heirs

Chapter 1

SAMANTHA'S POV

Today was the day I never saw coming. I didn't know how to react right now because I knew what I was getting into even though I didn't want to.

Getting a scholarship into Nightshade Academy has always been my parents' dream, even though I was just a mere human without scent.

When I got the letter, I didn't want to come here knowing that I might be the only human in the academy, but my parents were so happy, so I just couldn't just tell them I didn't want to go and ruin their happiness.

I thought as I pressed my forehead against the cold window of the driving bus and watched the trees close in like teeth.

The ancient oaks had trunks wider than my entire apartment back home and branches twisted into shapes that looked less like nature and more like warning signs.

The kind of dark that didn't just hide things it breathed.

"You're blocking the view," I heard someone mutter behind me, making me sigh softly, realizing what she was trying to do.

I didn't bother to move, nor turn to her; I just spoke. "There's no view, just more trees trying to eat the sky, so I don't have to move; besides, this isn't your first time seeing trees," I said, softly, hoping she won't speak any further.

A sharp laugh came from behind me, not friendly but filled with mockery. "First-year student and a human, I guess?" I heard someone say.

I turned slowly, and my eyes met with that of a guy in the seat across. A sharp jaw, sharper eyes, and something underneath his skin. He had a smirk on that made me frown and feel like hitting him, but I had to control myself.

"Both," I said softly, trying not to sound rude, just like him; besides, I couldn't think of fighting with a werewolf when I was just a mere human without a scratch.

He chuckled. "You really can't smell anything, can you?" He asked me, while I just stared at him in disgust.

I could tell he wasn't willing to back out just yet.

"I smell pine, dirt, and whatever cheap cologne you doused yourself in to cover up the fact that you probably don't bathe enough." I spat at him, with my face twisted into a frown now.

The bus went quiet for a while, and six other students, all wolves and all heirs to something important if the scholarship packet was telling the truth, stared at me like I'd just slapped the Moon Goddess herself.

The guy's jaw tightened, and immediately I could see anger pulsing through his veins. For half a second, something gold flickered across his eyes, and then he laughed, this time meaner.

"I would have reacted, but I don't have to, because I know you're going to get eaten alive at Nightshade Academy." He said coldly, with his deep voice echoing.

"So I've been told," I said coldly, turning back to the window.

I watched his reflection in the glass as he leaned back in his seat, still staring at me. Still testing me with his eyes, trying to figure out what I was.

That was the problem. I'd learned it the first week after the acceptance letter arrived, when I'd made the mistake of googling "Nightshade Academy werewolf" at 2 AM in my parents' kitchen.

G****e told me that humans can't attend Nightshade, and Nightshade is for pack heirs only.

No human has ever been admitted to the elite training grounds of the four great packs.

And yet, here I was, on the bus with the scholarship certificate burning a hole in my backpack and absolutely no explanation for how any of it happened.

My parents had cried when I got the letter, happy tears, they said, but I'd seen the way my mother's hands shook and the way my father checked the locks that night, twice.

They knew something they weren't telling me. I'd spent the last three weeks trying to figure out what that was but couldn't, so I had to give up.

Just then the bus came to a stop, snapping me out of my thoughts.

Nightshade Academy rose out of the fog like something that had been there before the forest, before the road, and before the idea of humans ever crossed this continent.

Towers that speared into a bruised sky. Windows lit with silver fire, not electric, not gas, something that pulsed like a heartbeat.

The kind of architecture that didn't ask for permission to exist. It just was impossible; just then, the gate opened.

The bus pulled through the iron gate that had no hinges.

"Holy shit," I whispered, with my eyes widened in disbelief, seeing the building before my eyes.

"Language," the driver said.

This was the first time he had spoken the whole trip, and he didn't look back at me. "You need to keep your words to yourself; the wards don't like humans." He added, making me frown inwardly.

The other students filed off in a practiced flow; they knew where they were going. They had grown up hearing stories about this place, probably.

Their parents had gone here, their grandparents, and other generations of wolves sharpening themselves on Nightshade's grindstone, so it wasn't new to them, unlike me.

I grabbed my one bag, all I owned that mattered, and slowly stepped off the bus.

The cold hit first, not normal mountain cold; this was alive, and it curled around my ankles like it was taking my measure and deciding if I belonged.

Then the smell hit. I could smell things, but just not whatever they were smelling.

All my life, I'd had this weird thing with scents that came and went and flavors that didn't match what anyone else tasted. My mom called it my "wolf nose" as a joke.

Here, the world exploded, and strangely, I smelled them, the wolves each one carrying something different. Pine and smoke and cold metal and something sweet I couldn't name.

I'd never noticed before, but now, surrounded by creatures who navigated the world by smell, I understood what they meant.

"Samantha Carter?" I heard someone called to me, snapping me out of my thoughts.

A woman stood at the bottom of the academy steps. She was tall, with silver-streaked hair pulled back so tight it looked painful.

Her eyes are the color of old pennies; she wore black from throat to ankle, with no jewelry and no expression.

"That's me," I finally responded after a while with a low and calm voice.

"I am Headmistress Morwenna Vex." She introduced herself; her voice holds so much authority that I have ever seen in my entire life.

I have been acting tough all this while, but standing before such an authority made a chill run down my spine.

"You are the scholarship student, I guess?" She asked me while I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. My hands had suddenly become numb, so I managed to nod my head in response.

"Follow me; the Blood Moon Initiation begins at sundown. You will not be late." She said with a low voice and an expressionless face.

She turned and walked up the stairs; she didn't look back to check to see if I was following.

She didn't give any explanation of what a blood moon initiation was or why a human scholarship student needed to be there. But I was new here, so I couldn't be disobedient on my first day.

I hitched my backpack higher on my shoulder, tightening my hands against it as I followed silently behind her.

The doors of Nightshade Academy closed behind me with a sound like a cage locking. Now I was here, the only human in the midst of wolves. How was I really going to survive here? As Palm suddenly became sweaty.