Chapter 1
Aurora
It happened at the start of my Supernatural Council Special Training Class, a class designed for Camdine Academy students who were training to be members of the Supernatural Council, which was the most powerful supernatural organization of the eleven supernatural organizations existing in the human realm.
The class was a weapon’s training class, which meant we were all seated on sparring mats waiting for the professor to start talking about Cath Croga’s latest 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 SC Special Training 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 duel with her.”
At the sound of my name, I looked up from the little rabbit attached to my bracelet, which I was fiddling with due to boredom, and stared at the silver-haired girl standing opposite Professor Grayson.
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? And her father works in a high position in the Supernatural Council, right? But my parents are powerful, too. I’m not going to walk around her like everyone else in 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’s magic is not battle-type magic and you’re no match for her physical combat skills. Elle, are you sure you want to battle 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 high 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 from Professor Grayson and finally faced me as I stood up from where I was seated on a sparring mat.
“I heard Fae Omegas have more than one mate? Is this what your mother does? Steal other people’s true mates, find a way to entice them or threaten them and then tell everyone that she’s their true mate?” She said.
The murmuring sounds around us increased as I moved in two quick strides to stand in front of her and slapped her.
I stared up at her face, that had turned to the side with her wavy bob covering it. “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, 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 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 recruit ranking in the Supernatural Council.
Unlike regular Camdine Academy students, every member of the SC special training class had Supernatural Council veteran parents and special training. We had all earned our right to be in the special training class with positive supernatural council points, even though many people felt that my father stuffed me into the class. Therefore, unlike other academy students, we weren’t going to recruit training when we graduated. We were entering the system immediately and fighting our way up the Supernatural Council recruit ranking system to determine what our first position 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 a heavy hand print 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 said, turning to look at Elle while placing 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 bitch who refused to let go of him.”
The way she spoke made me clench my teeth against the strong 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. “Those are my conversations with your true mate. Judging by the images he sends every day and the morning messages, does that look like someone who asked me to break up because he had a true mate?”
As for the words 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 rejected me.
I was not just infuriated with Ezra, I was also hurt. After all, the only reason he was my boyfriend was because I liked and trusted him. We had been on and off sparring partners for over a year and I’d thought I knew enough about him for us to try dating, which was why I agreed to date him when he asked me out.
Of course, I also had ulterior motives for agreeing to date with him as well but those weren’t important because when I eventually realized that dating him to get my unrequited love to look at me as something other than a friend wasn’t going to work and that my behavior was shitty, I’d decided to date him seriously even though Levi didn’t like him at all.
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 really 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. “Are you sure about what you’re saying? If you’re lying against an innocent person, I won’t show you any mercy.”
She shivered visibly as she moved forward to give me my phone. “I...I really spoke to her. She told me that you were a tyrant that way and that you like to stick to other people’s boyfriends. If your friend could say that about you, doesn’t that mean that she is right?”
I was very shocked and I couldn’t imagine my best friend actually saying that about me.
I snatched my phone from her and was about to say something when Professor Grayson walked in to tell us the dueling station was ready.
Hearing this, I stood to my full height and walked toward the station, ready to go all out in this duel, when I had stopped going all out in sparring sessions since my second year in Camdine Academy. After all, I was a specially trained warrior and as the only daughter of three strong warriors, I had been receiving concentrated training since I could walk.
Even though I could understand where Elle was coming from with her fury, I wasn’t going to spare her. Getting pummeled publicly 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 trusted with everything, had betrayed me for unknown reasons but once I’d done that, I was able to focus on the duel with Elle, my body moving out of range of her lightning attacks as soon as the duel started.
I had underestimated Elle at first when I saw her delicate features, but as our duel progressed, I realized that she was strong in her own right. Unfortunately, instead of fighting with her classmates, she’d come to duel with me, her senior, who was the top graduating student from Camdine Academy this year.
After understanding Elle’s fighting style, training, and methods, I finally got serious with our duel and started hitting her, the protective spell on my fists shielding me from damage from the electric charges she was using to shield her body.
When she tried a feinting trick and threw a corresponding lightning where I was standing, I somersaulted away to dodge it and then returned to fighting with her.
Soon enough, 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 was trained by all my fathers and several uncles and aunts, including Uncle Tariq, who was the head of the Supernatural Council. Even though my father, Daddy Keane, always warned me against getting arrogant because there was always a sky above the sky, I was still stronger than most of my peers.
The only close friend who wasn’t family that I couldn’t beat hands-down was Levi, my vampire best friend and unrequited love. But with more training, I could definitely do it.
After mopping up the sweat on my shoulder, 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 with her.
