Free Kiss of Frost by Jennifer Estep Page B

better you’ll be able to protect yourself and your loved ones from them,” Metis finished the opening part of her lecture.
    I shook off my troubling thoughts and focused on Metis’s words. For the next half hour, the professor talked about monsters—lots and lots of freaking monsters. Wyverns, basilisks, dragons, yetis, even gigantic birds named Black rocs. She called them all “creatures,” like she was being politically correct or something, but really, they were monsters. Anything that had fangs longer than my fingers and that could breathe fire was definitely a monster.
    “And on the next page we have one of the more interesting creatures—the Fenrir wolf,” Metis said.
    Books rustled as everyone flipped over to the next page, which featured a pen-and-ink drawing of the largest wolf I’d ever seen. Everything about it was just big —big eyes; big paws; big tail; and, of course, big, big teeth and claws. All the better to eat me with. Because what kind of monster would it be if it couldn’t rip you to pieces and chew on your bones?
    “These wolves are the descendants of Fenrir, the very first and most powerful wolf who fought alongside the members of the Pantheon during the Chaos War,” Metis said. “Over the years, the Reapers have managed to trap most of the wolves, but a few of them can still be found in the wild today, including right here in the North Carolina mountains.”
    For a moment the drawing flickered on the page, and the pen-and-ink wolf turned its head until it was staring straight at me. The black ink oozed down, then back up, and I realized the monster was smiling—and showing me each and every one of its needle-sharp teeth.
    I shivered and looked away. Sometimes my Gypsy magic went a little haywire and made me see and feel things that weren’t really there, even when I wasn’t touching an object. Or maybe it was just my own warped imagination working overtime today. Either way, it was all I could do to keep from closing the book and throwing it across the room.
    “What you need to understand is that these creatures didn’t start out evil,” Metis said, her soft green gaze going from one student’s face to another. “The Reapers twisted them over the centuries, caged and tortured them until they turned into something else completely.”
    “Even the Nemean prowlers?” Carson asked from in front of me.
    “Even the prowlers,” Metis answered. “Although, keep in mind that while the Reapers have trained the creatures to kill, they still have free will in the end, just like we all do. There have been rare instances where prowlers, wolves, and other creatures have turned against the Reapers. Ultimately, it’s up to the creatures as to whom they serve and what they do. Even the gods themselves can’t force a person or creature to do something. We all have free will—we all make our own choices about the kinds of people we are and how we choose to live our lives.”
    Free will? Whatever. The Fenrir wolf grinning in my book looked plenty evil to me, just like all the other monsters did. I didn’t care if it had free will or not.
    Metis asked us to turn the page and started talking about the next mythological nightmare. Monsters might not be my favorite topic, but I listened to every word the professor said, and took pages of notes. When I’d first come to the academy, I’d hated myth-history, but now it was my favorite class. At the beginning of the semester I didn’t think that I had any connection to the warrior kids here. But now I knew that I did—and I wanted to be like them.
    Maybe it was because my mom had been a police detective and had spent her life helping people before she’d died. Maybe it was because she and my Grandma Frost had both been Nike’s Champions before me. Or maybe it was just everything I’d seen and heard since coming to Mythos. But I wanted to be a real warrior like the other students were. I wanted to be as fierce, strong, and brave as they were,