The Mating School

Chapter 6

The other girls were dressed in pale attire also. I understood then. I couldn't be the only servant working there. 

Opposite the girls in attendance, the males there all seemed to be in dark clothing. I thought about what Paul said last night, about this school being elite. It seems like it was. 

Well, for the males at least.

"Honestly it's just plain barbaric," said a girl with short black hair as Lily climbed into a black, oversized SUV.

"Masochistic," said a girl with a kind round face, who was sitting opposite the first girl.

"The school is?" I asked, buckling my seatbelt and getting situated for the trip that would take us to the train station that's on the border of Ahjuta's pack land. I could see the shadow of four other cars beginning to move forward before our car lurched into motion. 

"It's not all bad," said a new girl.

"Easy for you to say," said the first girl. "You want to have a mate."

"What does that have to do with anything," I asked.

A couple of the girls giggled. But it was an uncomfortable moment before the girl with the round face said, "Rochester Academy... haven't you heard the rumors?"

"Nicknamed the mating school," said the dark-haired girl. "It's where they send girls to find their mates. And we have no say in it. It's disgusting."

"We have a say in it! That's what it is to be female," said the round-faced girl, whose name I gathered was Anne. "Besides, you can only find your mate with skin-to-skin contact. So just don't touch anyone."

"Males looking for their mates will bump into us in corridors," said the first girl.

"Ok," Anne said, seeming determined. "Just go hide in a bathroom or something."

"Yeah and starve to death?"

"We don't even know if the rumor is true," said another girl who had been quiet up to that point.

"I've heard that females can't leave until they've found their mates. Even if you survived for a year in the bathroom, you'd just be stuck there for another year, and another year after that."

"I don't think that's true." 

"Didn't you wonder why all the females are low-ranking?" the dark-haired girl said to me.

"I-" I started to say, but the idea that I was going to cook and clean seemed somehow silly now. "I don't know," I said instead.

 'Speak for yourself Rachel," said a new girl with sharp features.

Anne, the round-faced girl sitting next to me leaned in to whisper. "Don't mind Kelly. She thinks she's too good and too high a rank to have been assigned to go to Rochester."

"But what does it matter that we're low rank?" I said to Rachel.

"Well, it's obvious isn't it?"

I felt a sickening chill of unease for a moment, but then another girl spoke up. "When males mate, they come back to their home packs with their new partner. It strengthens the pack. That's why the males sent are all high-ranking. It benefits the pack for those shifters to find their mates first."

"The females though... well really we've all just been kicked out of our pack. They wouldn't give high-ranking females this kind of an assignment."

I felt .. sad then. I wasn't even sure why. Was all this true?