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I looked at him and decided I wanted to believe him. So I smiled and left for my first class as though I were looking forward to it.
That day at school went about the same as the first. Boring classes, rude girls, arrogant boys. Although, some of the tension from before was gone. It was only then that I realised how tightly-wound I’d felt the day before. Probably nerves.
I didn’t even bother with the lunchroom and went outside to read a book instead. A shiver kept running down my spine—as though somebody was behind me—but whenever I looked around, nobody was there.
Chapter 6
Dorian
I peekedaround the wall and stared at the new girl. She was just reading a book. A little unusual, but not dangerous. The atmosphere around her wasn’t anywhere as intense as before either. Maybe I had been imagining things. Maybe Nathan was right. Shewaspretty, after all.
I let out a gush of breath as a small force of nature tackled me into the alcove. Mara pinned me against the wall.
“What the hell are you doing, Dor?” She let me go and took a good look at the new girl. “I mean,her? Really?”
“I was just…” Words failed me. I was just acting on a hunch because I was desperate to find a way to prove myself to the pack that didn’t involve things like standing up to more dominant wolves.
She thumped my arm. “You can’t just stalk girls, you weirdo. Haven’t I taught you anything?”
There was a tremble in her words that distracted me from everything else.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course,” she snapped. Then she wrapped her arms around me and held on tight.
I knew the drill. She needed comfort from somebody safe. I let her embrace me, but when I wrapped my arms around her, she left me without a word.
I was used to that.
I wanted to talk to her about the chances of there being other creatures out there, not werewolves, but not humans either, but perhaps I should have been figuring out what was wrong with Mara instead.
She was right about one thing though. Iwasacting like a stalker. I had to come up with a better way to find out more about the new girl.
* * *
The alpha had returned,and we were all called to a meeting that evening. He liked to catch up with us, make us feel a part of his decision-making process. That was cool for people like me, but some of the more dominant wolves were starting to act a bit entitled.
Byron Evans was already sitting on a bench behind the houses when I arrived. Nathan sat by his side, quickly catching him up on all that had happened in his absence. Two wolfhounds lay quietly at his feet—the family had been breeding them for as long as they could remember. For some reason, the animals fit in with the pack even better than I did, but I enjoyed helping Nathan train them.
Nathan might have been the alpha’s nephew, but he looked more like Byron than the man’s own son did. I’d only met Jeremy Evans a handful of times. He didn’t like to stay with the family for long. Too dominant to be told what to do by his own father, he told me once. I suspected that wasn’t quite the truth.
I made my way across the grass and leaned against a wall so nobody could sneak up behind me. One of the wolfhounds got to his feet and strolled over to sit next to me. I relaxed. Nobody would bother me. Not that anyone would dare hurt me in front of Nathan.
When the rest of the pack had finally finished gathering around, Byron took a good look at us, gifting only a few with smiles. I tried to look smaller so he wouldn’t notice me. He had told me numerous times I was permitted to look him in the eye, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, and I knew that frustrated him.
“Things are going well overseas,” Byron said. He didn’t need to speak loudly for the rest of us to hear him. “My son’s been searching, but there have been no instances of new werewolves in over a year. It seems the wolf-rush is over.”
Laughter rippled through the crowd. Before the Evans pack had taken over, werewolves had been on a steep decline. Under the Mad Alpha’s rule, “weak” shifters had been purposely wiped out or gone into hiding. Most children of werewolves weren’t wolf enough to shift during their teens. Female werewolves were especially rare. Kids like me were dumped together, partly to allow the stronger wolves to wipe out the weaklings. I’d never been meant to survive. Natural selection at its finest.
The Evans family had been cursed for generations, but once that ended, we were all affected, and suddenly, those dumped children started shifting in their dozens. Girls, in particular. Nobody had been prepared for the sudden increase in population, and Byron had been working to find us all and help us ever since. No new shifters in a year probably meant everything was finally levelling out.
“I’m not happy with what I’ve been hearing at home though,” Byron said. “In my absence, the disparity between our pack and the locals has grown wider. The school is threatening action against a number of our teens. We need to bridge this gap before it’s too late. I’ve worked too hard to make a home here to leave now.”
Whispers passed around on the wind. A number of werewolves no longer sat relaxed. Some looked angry. They didn’t want to fit in.
“The alpha’s right,” Dom called out, keeping his voice neutral. He smiled, revealing the gap between his upper teeth, but his blue eyes remained hard. “We don’t need to draw any more attention to ourselves. We have to find a way to assimilate.”
That drew new murmurs. Nathan had tensed, but I completely missed why.
