Moonstone Academy: Year One: A Mayhem of Magic World Story Read online

  Moonstone Academy Year One

  Nicole Zoltack

  Copyright 2020 by Nicole Zoltack

  Cover Artist: Ammonia Book Covers

  ISBN: 9798693611306

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  To those who dare to never give up no matter the cost

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Other Books By Nicole Zoltack

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

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  Chapter 1

  Bellanore

  The moon glistens far above me, casting a silver halo on the darkness surrounding it. The stars hold no luster compared to the moon and her magnificence. The moon holds a special place in the hearts of all werewolves, and I’m no exception.

  I feel a sense of peace wash over me, and I hold onto that feeling, treasuring it. My mom wants me to try to stop accepting my demonic side so much, but I have no choice. She has grown to hate her husband, my father, but I think that their love remains, even if she’s too afraid to admit it. Just because my father is a demon doesn’t mean that she should all of a sudden believe that he’s incapable of love.

  But just last month, they fought and fought hard. My dad doesn’t understand why my mom insisted that I attend Moonstone Academy, but I know why. She wants me to be around werewolves my own age.

  She also wishes to keep me from my dad.

  Mom doesn’t know that Dad and I made an agreement. Yes, we made the agreement behind her back, but I can’t help it that she’s a bit… inflexible. She would never agree to it, but the only way to get them to stop fighting was for me to agree to continue learning how to use my demonic powers on the weekends. I agreed willingly. I will not ignore a part of myself as my mom is. She’s refusing to admit that she loves my dad just because he’s a demon. How can she claim to love me, then, when I am half-werewolf, half-demon? I have not yet brought that point up to her, but I will if she fights with my dad again in front of me. For the most part, she tries to hide their fights from me as if I’m a child and not sixteen years old.

  When exactly she started to turn against Dad, I’m not quite sure, but I do know that she’s grown angrier with him whenever he teaches me something new. I don’t understand what’s wrong with learning and mastering every aspect of my identity, every aspect of my powers.

  For three weeks, I’ve been at Moonstone Academy, and I have to say that I do enjoy it here. There are so many different packs that attend here, and I miss that. My mom doesn’t bring me around to pack meetings. Not since I decided when I was ten to take on my dad’s name of Shade. My mom is in the Ember pack, and so, she is May Ember, but I am Bellanore Shade. I am almost not in a pack because of what my mom has done, so can she blame me for being with my dad? He accepts me for who I am completely and wholly, and all werewolves need a pack. There must be at least two. Lone wolves do not handle being without a pack for long. Rumors say that a lone wolf will eventually go mad, that he or she will turn into a wolf and never revert back to human. Some say that lone wolves will eventually die without any kind of explanation except that they have no pack to call their own.

  Wolves need a pack to survive. It’s within our blood, and who knows? A pack of a half-werewolf, half-demon and a demon might not be enough for me. Maybe I’ll go insane.

  Would my mom mourn me? Will she realize that she may have played a role? Or would she use that as a weapon against my dad to push him away even more?

  “Someone looks like she is thinking far too hard for this magnificent night,” a clear voice wrings out.

  I glance over my shoulder to see my best friend approaching. Ellamaria is a part of the Ember pack, like my mom, and she has embraced me wholly and completely, unlike my mom. We’ve been friends since we were born. Our birthdays are a day apart. I’m a day older, but if you go by minutes, I’m only twenty-six minutes older. She was born at the stroke of midnight, the perfect time for a werewolf to be born. I used to tease her that it would give her special powers, but she didn’t appreciate that, so I stopped.

  “I’m special just because I’m me,” she would retort, and honestly, I can’t argue with that. She’s strong and fierce, sharp as a wit. She’s also muscular, like most werewolves, slender but able to bench press her own weight.

  “Well?” Ellamaria demands. “What are you thinking about?”

  “How beautiful the moon is.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Ellamaria says with a pout. “You were thinking about your parents again, weren’t you?”

  I narrow my eyes. I’m the one who can sniff out if someone is lying. It’s a trait that not all demons have. No werewolves can as far as I know. She just knows me that well to be able to tell.

  With a shrug, I heave a sigh. “Maybe.”

  “No maybe. Did your mom call?”

  “No. She called my first week here to make sure I was all settled in, and she hasn’t called me since.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you think you should call her?”

  “No. Why should I? If she wanted to talk, we would talk.”

  Ellamaria falls into step beside me. I'm just strolling along the campus, heading toward the center but not really having a true destination in mind. I love to go on long walks, to connect with nature, to be able to see the world for what it is. The walks give me a chance to just be me without any expectations from others. Demons might be dark creatures of the underworld, but I’m also a werewolf, and werewolves are about nature almost as much as fairies are.

  “You’re mad at her,” Ellamaria murmurs. “Madder than a hornet trapped in a beehive.”

  I glance at her, and she grins. “Why would a hornet be mad about being in a beehive?”

  “Trapped, remember? Your mom makes you feel trapped.”

  I blow out a breath through my nose. “How is it that my dad is the one who makes me feel more free?”

  “I think your mom just needs to… I don’t know. Maybe she needs to shift into her wolf. When did she last?”

  After crossing my arms, I rub them and then shrug. “I don’t know. She hasn’t asked me to shift with her in years.”

  “And your house is in a city of humans. Why? Why doesn’t she live in Emberpeak with the rest of the Ember p
ack?”

  “She’s a lawyer for the humans. She enjoys it, finds it fulfilling.” I bite my lower lip. “You know that humans can find lawyers to be bloodsuckers, right?”

  Ellamaria snorts. “Maybe that’s why she fell for your dad in the first place.”

  I link our arms. “Will you do me a favor?” I ask.

  “I know better than to say anything without knowing the favor first,” she says slowly.

  I beam and stifle a laugh. When we were pups, I asked her for a favor once. She agreed, and the favor turned out for her to get a mouse and put it in with Troy’s toys. As it turns out, Ellamaria hates mice. She did do the favor, though, and she took it a step further. She put a dead mouse with the toys.

  When Troy found out, he actually loved it and thought it was great fun to throw it up and down and catch it in his mouth, as a wolf pup, of course, not as a human boy. As for why I wanted to have Ellamaria's help with the prank against Troy, well, I played more than a few pranks back then, and I was afraid I would get in trouble. As for why Troy? Well, he liked to prank me back.

  The pranks all came to an end after Troy set off a firecracker that almost set the entire mountain on fire. Whoops.

  “What’s the favor?” Ellamaria asks.

  “Can you keep an eye on Mom when she comes around to the pack? She does come around to the pack, right?”

  “Of course,” she says warmly, “and she does come around. I’m sorry she’s not being the best of moms to you.”

  “She never would win Mother of the Year, but who would’ve ever thought that my demon dad would be the better parent?”

  “You shouldn’t judge them,” Ellamaria says, her scowl dark. Her skin is tan all year round, but we’re passing under a tree, so her face looks darker than normal. “You shouldn’t have a favorite.”

  “You still feel like your mom favors Donovan?”

  “No, Roger.” Her scowl grows. “Christine has always been my dad’s favorite. He doesn’t even try to hide it. I’m on the outside with Darla. It’s not fun, not at all.”

  “I don’t have a favorite parent,” I protest.

  Ellamaria just stares at me and slowly lifts one eyebrow.

  “I don’t!”

  “You do realize that you sound like a child, don’t you?”

  “I do not.”

  She laughs, and I join in.

  “I can’t help it. The way my mom treats me…” I slump my shoulders.

  “Hey.” Ellamaria knocks her shoulder into mine and lifts her chin. “Look over there.”

  “Where?”

  “To the right but don’t—”

  I turn my head to the right and just make out a few werewolves.

  “—be obvious.” Ellamaria slaps her forehead.

  “What?” I ask, not sure why she’s pointing them out.

  “What do you think about the middle one?”

  To appease Ellamaria, I look more discreetly this time. The werewolf has shaggy brown hair falling across his forehead and into his eyes.

  “What about him?”

  “What do you think?”

  “As far as…”

  “You do know who that is, don’t you?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “I thought for sure… That’s Julian Moonblaze.”

  “Oh.”

  “He checks you out all the time. Why don’t you hang out with him? Get to know him? He seems nice from what I know, and maybe if you have a boyfriend, your mom will get off your back.”

  “You mean if I have a werewolf boyfriend,” I say bitterly.

  “You won’t even consider Julian?”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “So get to know him!”

  “Ellamaria, I don’t need a boyfriend.”

  “I never said that you need one,” she counters. “I’m just saying that there’s a nice guy who seems interested in you. Why not be friends with him at the very least? You don’t talk too much to anyone outside of me.”

  She has a point. Troy and the rest of the teens in the Ember pack and I don’t talk much. I think it might be because my mom might’ve said something, but I don’t know, and I don’t want to ask Ellamaria because she’s my friend and not a spy. Besides, if they can’t see me for who I am and let my actions speak for me versus my blood, then that’s on them. Their loss.

  I shrug.

  Ellamaria sighs. “You aren’t going to talk to him, are you?”

  “Probably not. Besides…” I glance their way again. “How do you know he’s not with her?”

  “Mercy Lance? No way. The three of them are all good friends, Mercy, Julian, and Bermon.”

  “Bermon…”

  “Bermon Von Hagen. I think he and Julian are cousins. They’re all close, but you’re the one who has caught Julian’s eye.”

  “Not interested.”

  “But, why?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe because we don’t know each other? So if he’s interested like you said, then it’s because of my looks. Sorry. I just don’t want to be with someone who judges people based on something so superficial.”

  Ellamaria heaves a dramatic sigh. "I guess you aren't as immature as I thought, considering you want someone who actually knows you. Here's a thought. Maybe the ones who do know you don't want to be with you because of who you are."

  “Geez, thanks.”

  “Don’t worry. Maybe we’ll both become spinsters.”

  “Spinsters? You do know that you’re only considered a spinster from the ages of eighteen to twenty-five?” I ask.

  Ellamaria blinks a few times. “You and the random bits of knowledge you acquire from your demonic father.”

  I shrug. “Do you want to know the term for twenty-six to thirty-five?”

  “Why not? You’re just going to tell me anyhow.”

  “Thornback.”

  “Thornback?” she all but shrieks, barely containing her mirth.

  "But wait! Thirty-six to forty-five is a doomwitch!"

  “No!” She giggles.

  “But the next one is even better.”

  “Not possible.”

  “Yeah, huh.” I laugh. “Hengequeen!”

  We both laugh before Ellamaria pulls me close for a one-armed hug. “The point is that we can grow old together, best friends for life.”

  “Fighting all the time,” I tease.

  “Only if you try to pass off chocolate chip cookies as oatmeal raisins again.”

  “You’re the only person in the world to not like chocolate,” I protest.

  “That doesn’t mean you have to torment me with it.”

  “You’re the torment,” I tease.

  “You really do want to fight all the time, don’t you?” Ellamaria brushes back her dark brown hair and sighs. “Well, don’t say I didn’t try to make you happy.”

  “A guy won’t—”

  “That’s all I want,” she continues. “For you to be happy. I know that you’re at a bit of a crossroads. I, for one, think you should take the road least traveled.”

  “So I can get lost?”

  “So you can continue to find yourself.”

  I grin. “With you by my side, I don’t think I have a choice. You won’t let me be someone I’m not.”

  “Good. And if your mom won’t be a real mom to you, maybe we can see about my mom acting as yours. I mean, she has enough pups to tend to as it is. Why not one more?”

  “Somehow, I think that might cause a lot more issues for me.”

  “You need a mom.”

  “Plenty of kids grow up without a mom. Some even are orphans. I can manage with an absent mom.”

  “You shouldn’t have to,” she grumbles.

  “Life isn’t always fair.”

  “No, but you can and should be able to be happy.”

  “I am happy,” I murmur.

  She narrows her eyes at me, critically appraising me, and then she nods. “Fine. I believe you. Now, let’s head back to our room and watch a scary
movie and eat caramel popcorn.”

  “It’s not October yet,” I protest.

  “So? We’re werewolves. We’re like the embodiment of Halloween. Halloween all year round, baby!”

  “But you don’t even like chocolate!”

  “So? Halloween isn’t just about candy. It’s a lifestyle.”

  “You’re a freak, you know that?”

  “That’s why you love me.”

  We both giggle, and any lingering melancholy over my mom disappears. Things will get better, or they won’t, but for now, I really am happy.

  Chapter 2

  Bellanore

  Too bad that happiness doesn’t last long.

  Ellamaria and I don’t have any morning classes the same, and they aren’t even in the same general vicinity on campus, so we can’t even walk together. I’m heading northward when someone falls into step beside me.

  I glance over to see Wyatt there. Jett comes up on Wyatt’s other side, and then Gayle and Mindy come up on my right side. All four of them are in Spark pack. It’s an offshoot of the Ember pack. I think an alpha had twins at one point, and instead of one submitting himself to the other, they split into two. One stayed as Ember’s new alpha once their father passed away, and the other started Spark.

  Since none of the quartet say anything, I don’t either, but it’s only a matter of time.

  Only seconds as it turns out.

  Wyatt moves ahead and turns around, forcing me to stop because he’s blocking my path. “What’s with your hair?” he asks, touching some of my long strands.