All Chapters of Shawls Academy: Claw Spirits Battle: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Giselle POV "Where the heck is she, Nerissa?" I paced the length of the corridor, my nails already curling into points against my palms. "You're the wolf," Nerissa said, hurrying to keep pace with me, unimpressed. "Aren't you supposed to have a freakishly strong sense of smell?" "I know where her dorm is," I snapped. "I don't need a nose for that." I stopped walking, forcing myself to breathe, to think instead of just burn. "Tell me again. What exactly did Leslie ask you, when she had you pinned to the floor?" Nerissa's mouth twisted, like the memory itself left a bad taste. "She wanted to know about my siren abilities. How they worked, what I could do with them. I didn't understand why she cared so much — but Giselle, it wasn't idle curiosity. She was hungry for it. Something about that girl isn't right." A slow smile crept across my face. "And when you mentioned Stacy's name? My useless ex-stepsister?" I let the name roll off my tongue like something rotten. "What did her f

Kael POV "So the word Theriomachy originates from the Greek," the teacher said, his voice rolling on somewhere far away, "meaning 'beast-battle'—a term the old scholars used long before the Academy—" I stopped hearing him. It started as a flicker behind my eyes, a heat that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun slanting through the tall windows. At first I told myself it was nothing—just the usual restlessness that came from sitting still too long, from a body built for sky trying to fold itself into a wooden desk built for something smaller. I'd had that feeling before. I knew how to sit through it. This wasn't that. The heat dropped lower, into my chest, and settled there like a stone pulled straight from a furnace. My pulse kicked up to match it, fast and uneven, like my own heartbeat had forgotten how to keep time. I gripped the edge of my desk. The wood groaned under my fingers, and somewhere in the part of my mind that was still capable of thinking clearly, I registe

Leslie POV"Black wolves don't deserve to live. We have to eliminate them all — don't you think, Leslie?""Uh — yes. They sure are evil." The words slipped out too fast, my attention caught on the perfect line of his jaw, the way muscle shifted on his bare chest as he swung the sickle knife through the overgrowth beside me. He was gorgeous. Infuriatingly, distractingly gorgeous.Then his words caught up with me, and the warmth in my chest turned to ice.Black wolves. Again.I swallowed hard, my claws itching beneath my skin as if they'd heard him too. "So — you mentioned a prophecy, back when we chased that wolf. What did you mean?"I needed to know. Needed to understand exactly how much danger I was standing in, right next to him, weeding a shrub with a knife in my hand and a secret buried under my skin."The Makasi Moon Pack history is... complicated," Sylvester said, voice low, focused on the sickle cutting through root and vine. "Laura — a four-hundred-year-old witch who helped my

Draken POVI felt her body convulse against me the instant the water closed over us — felt the song's magic tear loose from her like something being ripped out by the root. She gasped, whimpered, and went boneless in my arms.My heart didn't just beat. It slammed.I hauled her against my chest and kicked for the surface, her hands locking around my neck with a desperation that told me exactly how close that had been. Too close. A few more seconds and Nerissa would have had the name I have no idea of out of her, and I would have arrived to nothing but ripples and a silence I didn't think I could survive.Wolves ran hot. Always had. It was one of the first things I'd learned about her kind, back before I knew what she really was — that even in winter they radiated warmth like a hearth, enough that standing too close to them had once felt like standing too close to a flame I wasn't allowed to touch. So why was she shaking like this, teeth chattering, fingers gone bloodless where they gri

Leslie POV"So, Risel — Kael said something today about—""Wow. I care so much." Her voice cut across the room, sharp and glittering with sarcasm. "Tell me more."I sat up on my bed and crossed toward her, the floorboards cold under my bare feet. "Is everything alright?""Oh, let's see." She wasn't even looking at me now, her quill stabbing at the parchment on her lap hard enough that I heard the nib crack. "Risel, Kael did this. Risel, Draken did this. Risel, my black wolf did this." Each name landed like a slap, and I felt myself flinch at the last one even though she couldn't possibly know what it meant to me — not yet.I froze halfway across the room. "I don't — I still don't get it.""I bet you don't." The words came out clipped, and I felt the anger radiating off her before I saw it in her eyes. Her knuckles had gone white around the quill. "You know what? Forget it.""Risel, if something's bothering you, you can talk to me. You know that." I kept my voice gentle, low, the way y