Excerpt – The Culling Trials: Book 2

Chapter 1

Standing in a shower, buck naked, in a crappy little portable sometime after midnight, being caught out as a girl by one of my teammates was the last place I wanted to be. Check that, the last place I wanted to be was here in the Culling Trials at all.

I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my middle, realizing belatedly that guys didn’t cover their chests, but what else was I supposed to do? Let the girls hang out? Yeah, that was not happening. Besides, maybe the towel thing didn’t matter—that ship had sailed.

“Crap,” I muttered, grabbing another towel and draping it over my shoulders in an even more awkward arrangement.

“I just saw boobs,” Pete whispered, his face bright red and his eyes wide. “Why do you have boobs?”

A disembodied voice cut through the air. “You’ll want to watch who you tell—”

I startled at the unexpected, if familiar, voice and Pete shrieked.

Orin stood in the far corner, his face blank and eyes piercing as he stared at Pete.

“How long have you been there?” I gasped, pulling the towels tighter around me and scooting into one of the toilet stalls.

“I was keeping watch,” Orin said as I locked the stall door.

“On what, the door or my ass? Because you didn’t do a bang-up job on the former.”

“I was distracted by your neck. You have a strong heart. Your blood pulses in a very nice rhythm—”

“Did I just see boobs?” Pete mumbled, clearly to himself. “I couldn’t have. I’m dreaming. Sleepwalking. But dang what a dream!”

“Close the damn door, Orin,” I ground out between clenched teeth. “We don’t need the whole place hearing this conversation.”

The door clicked as I hurried to dress, donning a sports bra before pulling on my T-shirt and boxers. The cloth stuck to my damp skin as I wrestled it into place, all the while listening to Pete’s mumbling.

“They were perfect,” he said, whispering. “Round and perky with pink nipples. That isn’t right. Right? He’s a…he. Guys don’t have…”

I unlocked the door and pushed out of the stall, grabbed Pete by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. I leaned into his face, schooling my expression into a hard mask.

 “You didn’t see boobs, got it?”

His widened eyes stared at me, but it wasn’t because of my thinly veiled threat. He was still lost in the vortex of female anatomy that had interrupted his midnight pee.

“Shake it off, man.” I slapped him across the face, just hard enough. “They are for feeding kids, for cripes’ sakes. Every second adult has them.”

He blinked slowly before his eyebrows pinched above his nose. “You have boobs?”

“He’s not the brightest crayon in the box,” Orin said with an eye roll.

I curled my fingers around Pete’s neck. “As far as you are concerned, no, I do not. I am a guy. I have a dick and a flat chest. Got it?”

Understanding lit Pete’s face, and a grin twisted his lips. “I saw your boo—”

I increased the pressure on his neck, willing him to understand. I didn’t want to hurt Pete. I liked him.

“It is really surprising human males are tolerated with this type of behavior,” Orin drawled.

“They aren’t all like this,” I said, remembering when Rory, that lying bastard, saw me naked by accident once. He’d walked into the bathroom while I was showering, thinking it was Tommy. When I’d unknowingly flashed him, he’d simply apologized, turned his back, and asked if we needed anything from the store. He hadn’t said a word about it ever again, not even to tease me in front of my brother.

Pete needed to grow up.

I was about to help him.

“If you mention this to anyone, I will kill you,” I said, low and rough. “I will slit your throat in your sleep and let you bleed out in that cozy little bed out there. You saw me in the final trial—you know I’m not bluffing. I could do it.”

I was totally bluffing. But he didn’t know that.

His face paled as he wheezed around my fingers. He nodded his head adamantly, fear finally cutting through his confusion and humor.

“I am pretending to be a boy to save my brother,” I went on. “I’m here in his stead. He’s not even sixteen—he never would’ve made it this far. If you mess with me, you are messing with my family, do I make myself clear? I will kill for my family.”

A strange sensation pulled at my stomach. An assurance. A confidence in what I’d said. That primal part of me wasn’tbluffing. I would do what it took to save my family, and this place would give me the tools to protect them. I felt that as surely as I felt the ground under my feet. And to keep Billy and maybe eventually Sam out of this, I would use those tools violently if need be.

“They don’t bring people in that young,” Pete struggled to say through his squeezed windpipe. “It’s against the rules.”

“He is incapable of focusing on the threat to his life,” Orin said. “Fascinating. That or he trusts you implicitly.”

I released my hand and stepped back before pointing at myself. “Boy. I am a boy.”

Pete rubbed his throat. “Yes, fine, I won’t tell. But…” His brow furrowed. “They don’t even take geniuses below the age of seventeen. The academy isn’t just about academics—people have to be a certain age to properly control their magic before they can be tested.”

I ran my fingers through my hair. “Mr. Sunshine said he got it cleared.”

“Who?” they asked in unison.

“The Sandman. Sideburns. My own personal Grim Reaper. When he checked me in, he said he’d gotten Billy cleared. It was pretty clear then that he knew I wasn’t Billy. I assumed he didn’t say anything because it would look bad on him if he showed up with the wrong kid.”

“Why not just bring in you?” Orin asked. “You’re the right age, aren’t you?”

 “He said something about my electing not to come. But I never saw a letter or anything.”

“Oh. One of your parents must’ve filled out the form,” Pete said. “Though why would they opt out for you and not your brother?”

I wondered the same thing, though a larger issue nagged at me. “It wouldn’t have been my parents to fill out that form.” I couldn’t bear to elaborate. I didn’t want to talk about my mother dying early, or the role my father might’ve inadvertently played in my other brother’s death.

Thinking of Tommy—

“Could a sibling have filled out the form?” I asked.

Pete shook his head. “It has to be a legal guardian.”

“Then who would’ve—”

 “Hey!”

We all jumped. Ethan stood in the doorway with a glower. “Can you guys shut up? It’s late and I’m tired.”

“Sorry,” Pete nudged me with his elbow, “I was just talking with my bro here.”

I rolled my eyes and made my way out of the bathroom, thinking on what Sideburns had said. Wondering why the school had gone after Billy so aggressively, well before it was prudent, even if I was mysteriously excused. Something wasn’t adding up. Or, I should say, another something wasn’t adding up. I needed to know why my family was a target—why my mother had tried to keep us out of this life.

There was someone I could ask who might know. Rory. And tomorrow, a rest day, I’d find that miserable, two-faced, cowardly sonuvabitch and force information out of him.

One way or another.

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