The Golden Lycans (Ella) novel Chapter 16

Free Period-Part 1 

*Austin***- 

Economics class always made my head hurt. It was only ten in the morning, but I was already 

looking forward to lunch. A snack and a coffee would have to do for the time being. One of my classes had been cancelled at the last minute due to teacher sickness, so I actually had a free 

period, something I hadn’t had for a very long time. 

I enter the main hall and go straight over to the hot drinks station, pouring myself some steaming 

hot filter coffee before grabbing some fruit and a chocolate muffin. I opt to go out onto the patio, and I pick up her familiar flowery scent before I see her; Ella is sat on her own at a table, drawing on a large pad of paper in the sunshine. I am suprised that I picked up her scent that easily, given there were many other people outside. 

It had been a few days now since the full moon and I wonder how she is adjusting to her new reality. It must’ve been a lot for her to get her head around. When I quite literally ran into her the other day, she did not seem like her normal self. In fact, she almost seemed on the verge of tears. I had been a little concerned about her since then, but figured I’d give her a bit of space for a while if she was having trouble adjusting to everything. 

Go join her, Atlas suddenly prods. 

I’m probably not on her list of people she’d like to see right now. I almost broke her nose the other day, 

I reply. 

Just do it, we both know you want to, Atlas says. 

I pause for a moment and then promptly go and sit down next to her at the table. Atlas was right. I liked talking to Ella. She was calm, chilled out, didn’t take herself too seriously and being around 

her felt easy, like I could forget I had an impending wave of responsibility, and I could just be… Austi 

“The Lymphatic System,” I read aloud, looking at the title and the complicated drawing she has done of a human body, “that looks a little heavy.” 

She looks up and gives me a smile, a smile that truly warms my chest a little, and it had nothing to do with the coffee. 

“Heavy? If you think this is heavy, wait until you hear about what this bloke told me the other day,” she quips, her eyes twinkling in the sunlight, “something about… werewolves, witches, magical enchantments…” 

“Wow…it almost sounds like the beginnings of good fiction, perhaps bordering on a fairytale,” I reply. I was relieved to hear her making jokes and smiling. She seemed a lot more relaxed than she 

had been the other day. Perhaps I had just caught her at a bad moment. 

“Well, if this is all a fairytale, then what character are you playing? The big bad wolf?” she asks, leaning back and looking at me with her eyebrows raised. I looked at her with mock disappointment. 

“No,” I reply indignantly, “I am the charming Prince, of course.” 

I jokingly puff my chest out and she laughs. 

“Touché, you could probably fit that role quite well,” she says, gesturing up and down at me. I laugh too, but then I look into her eyes. 

“Okay Ella, in all seriousness, how are you doing? You really didn’t seem at all like yourself the other day. I have been a little concerned about you.” 

“Concerned? About me?” she begins, looking surprised, “that’s…sweet…but I suppose you want to make sure Freya’s new roomie isn’t about to go off the deep end like her last one. Honestly…I am better than I was the other day. Freya and Annabelle had explained a few things to me and I didn’t like it. Now, I’ve just got to get on with it.” 

She shoots me a little smile and colours in another part of her drawing. 

“I’m really glad you’re feeling a bit better. Aside from being happy to compare your life to a fairytale now, how do you feel about it all?” I reply. 

“Knowing my new friends and many of my peers turn into howling wolves? That’s pretty surreal. I watched Freya the other night when she shifted. It is definitely not something I’m going to forget any time soon, that’s for sure,” she says pensively, tapping her colouring pen on her pad. I do a double take. 

“You watched her shift?” I ask, surprised to hear my sister had let her watch so soon, especially the same day she’d discovered a whole other world. 

“I asked her. I needed to see it. She showed me this cool little hidden area on the roof outside our room-” 

“-oh yeah the flat corner by the relay?” I ask, smiling briefly as I recall a vivid yet hazy memory of Freya and I, when we tried marijuana for the first time together on that very corner just before the summer. She nods. 

“Yep, that’s the one. Anyway, I sat there for about two hours just watching and listening. It was quite an experience. The sound of all the howling was pretty haunting. I got goosebumps. Like…I h eard it, but it was also like I felt it. I suddenly, strangely, felt more at home here when it happened. 

Like…I really am meant to be here, even though I had previously felt like I ought to be leaving after I spoke to your Grandfather. But something changed, and I felt quite grounded to the place all of a sudden,” she says, suddenly looking a little embarrassed by her words. I smile at her, realising that I am really starting to find her quite adorable, and I couldn’t reasonably put my finger on why that was. I suddenly remember the feeling I had after the howl, and the beautiful and familiar scent…had it been Ella that had caught my senses, out there on the roof? It was the right place…but….surely not? 

“You are not like any other human I’ve met at this school,” I tell her, leaning toward her a little more. She lets out a short laugh and then bites her lip, looking close to tears all of a sudden. I feel an inexplicable rush of affection for her. I really didn’t like seeing her look upset, not one bit. 

“Well…your great-grandfather basically told me that I am not human…” she says somewhat awkwardly, clearly trying not to choke up. She takes a few deep breaths and collects herself, staring down at a pen she is fiddling with excessively. I frown; this is clearly an upsetting topic for 

her and I wish I could comfort her. 

“… Something about the fact I was able to pick up a book about Lycans and how a pure-blooded human couldn’t have done that because of the enchantments…so in that respect, I cannot be human. I mean how can I have human parents and not be human? What else could I be? What is going on?” she asks me passionately while looking so very lost. I feel an inclination to hug her and comfort her, but I don’t think she’d appreciate that. We barely know each other, after all. I am a little mystified about how I am feeling right now, too. 

“I’m sorry you’re going through this. That must have been a really hard and unexpected thing to hear,” I reply sympathetically. 

She bites her lip again and replies with a nervous chuckle. 

“It was…at first. But…I do run stupidly fast. Apparently, I can run faster than an Olympic athlete, according to Freya, ever since I came here, actually. It never seemed odd to me back home, where I was quite a bit slower for some reason. I just thought I was good at it. But the longer I’m here, the more I can see that I am different, and I think I’m slowly becoming more willing to accept that I am perhaps a bit of a mystery.” 

She sniffs and looked up at me, her strangely beautiful blue eyes shining with emotion. 

“That you are,” I chuckle softly. I scoot in my seat closer to her, and she appears to relax a little. 

“Nobody out-runs an Alpha’, apparently,” she recounts in a deeper voice. I laugh at her attempt to mimic my grandfather. 

“Not usually, no. I told you that day that you were insanely fast. I couldn’t keep up. When you overtook me, I could actually feel this weird energy coming off of you. I’d never felt anything like it before. So yes, you’re definitely a mystery. But then, who doesn’t like a mystery from time to time?” say in an upbeat way. 

She blushes a little but stays silent. 

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