Turned

Marcus's Companion

            For the first time in the months since he had been Turned, Dante no longer felt angry. Like shackles that grew looser the further away he got away from Mira and her pack, the less angry he felt. By the time that the house was no longer even within hearing distance Dante was in a positively wonderful mood. "So, what are we doing today?" he asked, resisting the urge to whistle.

"Well I'm taking you to a few of my classes, unless you have some weird desire to go to the ones you're actually supposed to attend?" Marcus asked skeptically.

"None at all," Dante answered immediately. He didn't get along with his teachers, although the way he felt now he felt as though he could get along with anyone. He paused, considering what Marcus had just said.

In the classes that Marcus and Dante were now on their way to pureblood werewolves, those who had been born as such, and those who were turned were separated into different classes. The reasoning was that, as they came from different paths in life, the classes they would need to better fit into their world would be different. For the purebloods the classes were pretty much standard: sciences, humanities, normal classes one would find in high school and college. For the turned wolves things ran away from the norm. Scent recognition, how to recognize hunters, and battle skills were just a few of the classes that Dante was subject to.

He had once, mistakenly, entered the side of the school that was reserved for purebloods and had immediately been accosted by a small group of them. Clearly expecting him to cower before them and beg for mercy, they were surprised to find him rising to their challenge at once. Thankfully a pureblood teacher had been wandering by and had broken things up before they could progress. But those wolves had clearly not forgotten, they glowered at Dante whenever he passed by them.

"Are you sure it's okay for me to join you?" Dante asked warily.

"What, you aren't afraid of a few purebloods are you?" Marcus asked, teasing.

"Never!" Dante snapped.

"Then don't worry about it, you're with me. For reasons I am not going to tell you Mira and I get away with a lot more than the average pureblood around this territory."

Though Dante narrowed his eyes at this he said nothing opting to instead make a note of it and pursue it later. The morning sun had been ascending in the sky for some time and, by the time they exited the trees that encircled the forest, it was already beginning to grow very warm. Dante wasn't certain as to where the school was actually located, but he assumed that it had to be somewhere southern as the temperatures were constantly sweltering.

If Dante were forced to describe the school in three simple words they would be massive, old, and grand. Evidently one of the wolves who had overseen the development and architecture of the school had not been informed that Victorian England was not the current time period. The building was so large that it not one but two Olympic Sized swimming pools, a gymnasium that Dante was reasonably confident could have fit a good chunk of his old town inside of it, and a fully outfitted auto shop.

"Never gets old," Dante muttered to himself, always taken aback by the sheer magnificence of the structure.

"It does after a few decades." Marcus answered back with a dry laugh. "It gets really old."

"That's sort of your fault for not joining a pack though." Dante answered. "Staring at something for years and year makes anything old."

Marcus snorted in derision and said, "You, of all people, are lecturing me about not joining a pack?"

"Is this where you make your speech about how pack life isn't all that bad and you would join one if you could?" Dante asked sarcastically.