Wanted Bonds

1. Aurora

1 Aurora

It happened at the start of my Supernatural Council Special Training Class. The SCST class was a class designed for Camdine Academy students getting special training to be members of the Supernatural Council, the most powerful organization of the eleven supernatural organizations existing in the human realm.

It was a weapon training class, which meant that we were all seated on sparring mats waiting for the professor to start lecturing us about Cath Cróga’s recently released weapon, the dagger that could be sheathed and curved to form a boomerang.

However, before Professor Grayson, the current head of Camdine Academy’s SCST Class, could start teaching, a girl burst into the training hall and threw down the gauntlet. “Professor, Aurora Byrne has wronged me and I’m here to challenge her to a duel.”

At the sound of my name, I looked up from the little rabbit attached to my bracelet, which I was fiddling with because of boredom, and stared at the silver-haired girl standing in front of our class.

She was a beautiful girl with delicate features that made people around her instinctively feel like caring for her and super long legs that looked great in the shorts she was wearing. However, she was definitely not a senior student who was going to graduate at the end of the academy year like me, which was why I didn’t know her, and she shouldn’t know me. But there she was, standing with her arms crossed over her ample chest, glaring at me with gritted teeth as if I killed her pet.

“Um . . . may I ask why you’re having this duel with Aurora?” Professor Grayson looked as bewildered as I, and every other person in our training hall felt.

“I know she is the daughter of powerful people. That prominent Fae Omega, Amelia Byrne, right? I also know that her father has a prominent position in the Supernatural Council, but my parents are powerful, too. I refuse to walk around her like everyone else at the Academy does. Since she doesn’t want to let go of my true mate the easy way, then we’ll duel it out and if I win, she has to stay away from my true mate.” She said, still glaring at me.

“But . . . Aurora doesn’t have battle-type instinctual magic like you, and you’re no match for her physical combat skills. Elle, are you sure you want to duel with her? Maybe you shouldn’t make a hasty decision?” Professor Grayson asked again.

“She threatened my true mate and refused to let him mate with me just because her father has a prominent position in the Supernatural Council department he hopes to be a part of. Professor, are you trying to defend her?”

Murmurs filled the room as Elle turned away from Professor Grayson and stared at me as I stood up from where I was sitting on a sparring mat.

She continued talking, staring at me with a defiant look. “I heard Fae Omegas have more than one mate? Is this what your mother does? Steal other people’s true mates by enticing or threatening them and then tell everyone that she’s their true mate?”

While she had a pretty face, Elle had a nasty mouth.

Apart from the fact that I didn’t steal anyone’s true mate, it was annoying that, just like everyone else, she was making the same assumptions about Fae Omegas just because they had multiple mates.

My mother hadn’t wanted multiple mates, but she didn’t have a choice. After all, she was a mutated mixed-blood supernatural whose body had created a special balance between all the supernatural factions she belonged to, making her a distinct supernatural who had multiple true mates from different supernatural factions.

The murmuring sounds around us increased as I moved in two quick strides to stand in front of Elle and slapped her.

I stared up at her face, which had turned to the side with her wavy bob covering it, and growled out a beastly warning from me and my werewolf half. “Didn’t your parents teach you not to talk about other people’s parents when you want to duel with them? There’s a limit to trash talk, you know?”

She turned back to glare down at me, even as thunder clapped in the sky and I glared right back at her, even though she was about two inches taller than me.

“Professor Grayson, please give us a good dueling station for a magical and physical battle. I think this little junior is a little disillusioned about her strength and I’m going to teach her a lesson before we talk about her so-called true mate that I supposedly stole.”

“Aurora, she can control lightning, are you sure?” Professor Grayson was a great instructor, but I had always felt that he was a little too much of a pacifist to be the one in charge of training the next Camdine Academy warriors that were going directly for recruitment ranking in the Supernatural Council.

Every member of the SCST class had Supernatural Council veteran parents and special training. We had all earned our right to be in the SCST class with hard-earned positive Supernatural Council points, even though many people felt that my father had stuffed me into the class. As such, unlike other Camdine Academy graduates, we weren’t going to recruit training when we graduated. When we graduated, we would join the rookies fighting their way up the Supernatural Council recruit ranking ladder to determine what our first rookie positions in the Supernatural Council would be. And in the Supernatural Council, strength and integrity were required to earn respect.

As a Supernatural Council warrior, how could I back down from a duel with a little junior just because she could play with lightning and I couldn’t?

“It doesn’t matter. She has to be able to channel lightning to use it, right?” I said, clenching my fists and glaring at Elle, who had a nasty sneer on her face and my handprint on her cheeks.

“Alright.” Professor Grayson nodded and walked away to arrange the dueling station.

“Let’s talk. Why do you think I’m threatening your true mate?” I asked, ignoring the eyes on us and turning to face Elle with my hands on my hips.

She was no longer as confrontational as when she walked into the hall, but she still glared at me. “You didn’t think Ezra would tell me about how you refused to let him go after he told you he couldn’t go on with your relationship because he found his true mate?”

Her words shocked me, but I didn’t show it on my face as I asked, “What would you say if I told you that Ezra didn’t tell me he had a true mate?”

“I don’t believe you! He definitely told you.” She said, raising her voice as she defaulted to insults. “You’re the clingy b***h who refused to let go of him.”

The way she spoke made me clench my teeth to hold back the powerful urge to give her a good beating, but I restrained myself because I knew I was going to pummel her in the duel later for even daring to speak disrespectfully about my parents.

“Here,” I said, throwing my phone that I’d opened to my private messages with Ezra to her. “Those are my conversations with your true mate. Judging by the images he sends and the morning messages, does that look like someone who asked me to break up because he had a true mate?”

As for everything she was saying about Ezra, I believed them. The blaze of fury in her eyes convinced me that my boyfriend of the past six months had found his true mate, but instead of telling me about it, he’d kept it to himself while lying to his true mate that he had tried to break up with me.

I was not just infuriated with Ezra, I was also kind of hurt. After all, the only reason he was my boyfriend was because I liked and trusted him. We had been on and off Academy sparring partners for over a year and I’d thought I knew enough about him for us to try dating after rejecting him twice.

Of course, I also had ulterior motives for agreeing to date him as well. However, that wasn’t important because I’d decided to date him seriously when I realized that dating him to get my unrequited love to look at me as something other than his little princess was shitty behavior.

Elle looked devastated as she scrolled through my messages, but she refused to give up. “But . . . but when I spoke to your friend, that . . . Charlotte, she said you were the one who refused to let go of Ezra. She said you were threatening Ezra’s future in the Supernatural Council because he wanted to get into your father’s department.”

If I was lackadaisical before, all of that disappeared as I stared straight at Elle with a serious look and asked her in a shaky, disbelieving voice. “Are you sure about what you’re saying? If you’re lying against an innocent person, I won’t show you any mercy.”

She stepped back for a second at my scary glare before stepping forward to give me my phone. “I really spoke to her. She told me you were a tyrant that way and that you liked to stick to other people’s boyfriends. I just thought that If your friend could say that about you, doesn’t that mean that she was right?”

I had a sinking feeling as I shook my head repeatedly, denying that my best friend had said that about me.

It took me a few minutes to regain an objective state of mind as I snatched my phone from Elle. I was about to ask her a question when Professor Grayson walked in to inform us that the dueling station was ready.

Hearing this, I stood to my full height and walked toward the dueling station, ready to go all out in this duel, even though I had stopped going all out in sparring sessions since my second year at Camdine Academy. After all, as the only daughter of four warriors, I had been receiving special warrior training from the finest of Supernatural Council warriors since I could walk, and my combat abilities were beyond the abilities of many students at Camdine Academy.

Even though I could understand why Elle was angry, I had no plans to spare her. Getting pummeled in public was what she deserved for insulting my parents.

It took a lot of effort to put away my thoughts about the possibility that my best friend, whom I’d trusted so much, had betrayed me for unknown reasons. However, once I’d done that, I was able to focus on my duel with Elle.

I had underestimated Elle at first when I saw her delicate features, but as our duel progressed, I realized she was strong in her own right. Unfortunately, instead of fighting with her classmates, she’d come to challenge me, her senior and one of the top graduating students from Camdine Academy this year, to a duel.

Although I had received physical combat training from several instructors, my skills tended to lean toward Uncle Tariq and Levi’s style of combat with tricky angles and unexpected moves that took advantage of my agility and quick thinking while minimizing my middle-range force power. So when the duel started, our duel was a clash of physical combat at first, and I was winning one-sidedly by attacking Elle from sly angles.

When she realized she couldn’t beat me at hand-to-hand combat, Elle took to the other weapon at her disposal—her lightning instinctual magic.

Instinctual magic was special and distinctive magic that many supernaturals were born with. It was called instinctual because even without training, most supernaturals were born with the instinct to control it. And if trained well, our instinctual magic could make us nearly formidable, just like they made Elle as soon as she started using lightning.

A bolt of lightning broke open the training hall’s roof as thunder rumbled in the sky and bolts of lightning started coming after me. Although I was well-trained in physical combat, my parents had also trained my magical defense skills even though I had non-battle-type instinctual magic, so I successfully avoided Elle’s lightning bolts.

After understanding Elle’s fighting style and instinctual magic attack type, I got serious with our duel and my blows became harder and trickier, the protective spell on my body shielding me from damage from the electric charges she was using to shield her body.

When she tried a feinting trick and threw a bolt of lightning where I was standing, I dived and rolled away to dodge it. Without letting up for a single moment, I moved closer and closer to her, hitting her when I could while escaping from the bolts of lightning she kept throwing at me.

The duel didn’t end until I struck a blow to the back of her head, destabilizing her before going for the kill with a few strategic blows to several vital parts of her body.

Within a few minutes, I was panting hard, and she was lying at my feet, groaning and unable to stand up.

It took some extra effort to fight her, but I was a fighting prodigy who had been trained by my mother, my three fathers, and several uncles and aunts, including Uncle Tariq, who was the head of the Supernatural Council.

Even though one of my fathers, Daddy Keane, always warned me against getting arrogant about my combat skills because there was always a sky above the sky and thus other people stronger than me, I was still stronger than most of my peers. And when I could beat Levi, my vampire best friend and unrequited love, I could claim the title of the best hand-to-hand combatant in the Supernatural Council.

After mopping up the beads of perspiration on my face and neck, I picked up my small backpack by the side of the class and bade Professor Grayson goodbye before leaving the training hall.

I needed time to digest the things I’d heard about Charlotte Summers before I decided what I wanted to do to her.