Dragon Marked_ Supernatural Prison #1(2)

The vampire knew when he was out-powered, and lowering his head, he backed to the front of the room. His features were expressionless, but his narrowed eyes flashed fury, fang was showing and his hands had formed claws that he couldn’t seem to straighten. The brothers stood for a few extra moments just to reiterate their point, before retaking their seats. The tension that had descended over the thirty students around us started to dissipate. Most of them looked disappointed. They’d been hoping for a throw-down. What can I say, many of us were predators, and we had a predisposition for the enjoyment of bloody warfare.

Glancing to the side, I noticed how motionless Braxton was in his chair. His face was perfectly calm but I knew him better than that. He was pissed.

Braxton was the most protective of the group. Maybe it was the fact we were both shifters, but he had my back even more than his brothers. Although all of them could be annoyingly over-protective. Luckily, my wolf thought of them as pack, although as an alpha it still annoyed her when they tried to control me. I was a dominant shifter through my father’s bloodline: Jonathon Lebron, alpha of the wolf shifters, high council leader of all shifting races, and all around badass. He was training me to take over the pack. I was powerful, one of the most powerful wolf shifters born in the United States.

This was probably the reason the Compass quads and I were so tight; they were powerful too, set to be the next American high council members. In three years’ time they would take over from the current council members.

Maximus was vampire, Braxton was shifter, Jacob was fey, and Tyson was a magic user, a wizard. So they would hold four of the positions on the council. The fifth race was the demi-fey: mermaid, gargoyles, trolls, boggarts, pixies, imps, centaurs and the like. Basically any group who would never be able to blend into the human world. The demi-fey were the only supernatural race that the Compasses didn’t have a representative in.

My attention was drawn back to the head of the class and a sudden subject change to a myriad of famous wolf shifter deaths through history, with particular and detailed attention spent on our weaknesses. I silently chuckled; the vampire could not be more obvious. He was probably plotting my murder while he lectured, but was too weak to ever do more than play it out in his head.

Next to me Jacob started mumbling under his breath, singing. The fey love to belt out a ballad. His voice was sweet as; I could listen to him sing for days. All four brothers stared off in different directions around the room. The lucky asses were geniuses and never paid attention in class. Truth be told, they were a mystery in the supernatural community. Being the children of two rare hybrids – a vampire-sorceress mother and shifter-fey father – was unusual enough. Hybrids producing offspring, it was pretty much unheard of. But no one had a freaking clue how the quadruplets had come to possess four different supernatural abilities. And in pureblood form, no less.

Vendir finished summing up the six strike-points for a kill on a wolf–dumbass–before waving his hand and turning his back on us. “Class is dismissed early today. Make your way to the town hall.”

I moved aside as a short, broad troll barged down the aisle. Don’t get in the way of trolls, they’re like steam trains. Our class was a mix of supernatural creatures. We attended college until twenty-five and after that we had to choose a career. There were a wide variety of jobs, including many that had reference to the prison. Vanguard was the United States’ supernatural prison, hidden, secret, and protected somewhere deep in the forest which bordered Stratford. No one knew the location unless they were initiated into the council. Or if your career was within the walls. The boys and I spent a lot of time searching for it, but so far, nada. That’s where we’d been last night; Tyson thought he had a lead. As future council leaders it pissed them right off that they were excluded from information on the prison. This was their way of taking things into their own hands.

But since I’d ended up with mud in unmentionable places and a tick on my ass, the wizard had clearly missed the mark. It wasn’t the first time the Compass brothers had led me astray and it wouldn’t be the last.



After class I wandered along with the hundreds who were heading toward the town hall. The boys would catch up with me soon, they all had things to do. Things I probably did not want to know about. The town meeting was due to start in about thirty minutes, so they’d have to haul ass to make it in time.

Stratford wasn’t huge, and it was set out in a circular pattern, everything revolving out from the large, towering-into-the-air fountain at the center. The town hall was a stone and brick building with old-style architecture that included a pair of large hand-carved stone statues out front, and heavy window frames. The building sat off to the right of the fountain, taking up a pretty decent section of land.