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Keeping my distance from him and his siblings was proving to be hard. But it was necessary. Not just because the three of them needed time by themselves, but also because of the pack. Shane knew I was right. We had to keep up appearances for now.
Roman and I entered the school and went to the front office on the right. The sound of hammering, sawing, and footsteps came from upstairs, where a group of wolves worked on fixing the classrooms and building new desks.
“Where do I put these?” Roman asked.
“Here.” I set the bag I was carrying on the large desk behind the counter.
He placed the bag and the books on the desk too. “What now?” he peeked inside the bags. It was notebooks, pencils, markers, and everything else we would need to start actual school again. Dom had retrieved them yesterday from the nearest town, where we had an address for mail and orders we placed.
“Well, there are two more bags in the library.”
He chuckled. “I’ll go get them.”
Roman sauntered out of the school and I looked around at the office. While we were enslaved in our town, the demons had occupied several rooms in the school and made a mess of them. We had tossed the broken furniture and stained rugs, and now the rooms looked bare. This one had the built-in counter, a desk, and a file drawer, which had been bent somehow, but Shane had hammered it back into place. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do until the new furniture arrived.
We had also ordered new computers, laptops, tablets and more—not just for the school, but for the entire pack—since the demons had broken or disposed of those. Those would be arriving tomorrow.
My phone dinged and I almost jumped out of my skin. I had been without a phone for over a year, and now that I had one back, it was hard getting used to it. Though most would receive new phones tomorrow with the laptops and whatnot, Shane had made sure a few of us had phones right away. Killian and Lavinia had gone out on the first day after the battle and bought phones for Tyren, Dom, Vallin, Lucille, Rue, Vianna, and me.
When Serge saw me with a phone in my hands when he didn’t get one, he almost lost it. He had called me scum in front of half of the pack. Not wanting to cause more trouble, I remained quiet, ignored him, and kept cleaning up the main square. Since Shane was locked in the prison, he had asked Dom and Vallin to intervene, threatening to shut Serge up with the alpha command.
That had worked.
For about six hours.
I fished my phone from my jacket’s pocket and glanced at the screen. Rue had texted me a picture of the kids around the library rug, doing crafts. And right in the back, lying on the pillows, Minsi, with her nose stuck in a book.
I couldn’t blame her. She was at the library surrounded by pure treasure, and Rue wanted her to color? Nuts!
Grinning, I texted back laughing and a heart-eyes emoji.
I put my phone back into my pocket and started unpacking the school supplies. The idea was to separate them and put them in backpacks, all ready for the kids. When they came for the first day of school, they would receive their backpacks.
I wanted to do something special for them, but I didn’t know what yet. Personalized notes that they found when they opened their bags? Little keychains for them to clasp on the bag’s zipper? I was still thinking of ideas.
The sounds from upstairs stopped and I frowned. It was the middle of the afternoon. Perhaps whoever was upstairs would take a break. Or do something else. The moon knew there was enough work in town to last us an eternity.
I separated the school supplies in piles around the desk. One of the bags Roman was bringing next had the backpacks, then I would be able to just put everything inside and—
“Look, the omega,” Serge said as he rounded the corner and stopped a few feet from the front office’s counter.
My blood chilled.
The damn wolf had always been mean, but now he blamed me for the death of his buddy, Lonan. He was meaner than ever. I glanced at the two other wolves flanking him, Ian and Buck. They had always been around Lonan and Serge, and though they hadn’t done anything to me, they had encouraged the others.
They were all sick bastards.
With slow steps, Serge approached the counter and I did my best not to step back. Serge was in his eighties, but because of wolf genes, he didn’t look a day over forty. He wore a full black beard, probably to compensate for the lack of hair on the top of his head, and he had a bit of a beer gut. Though I had no idea how he managed to keep that up when eating one meal a day for the last year.
He had probably drank barrel after barrel to compensate for not having any for a year.
“You should be scrubbing the floors, scum.” He leaned over the counter, his eyes leaving a nasty trail over my body. I fought the urge to cover myself. “On your fours.” He licked his lips.
I pointed to the front of the school. “The door is that way.”
“You should go,” he said. “Wasn’t that what we said? That you and your family should leave the pack? Well, your family is dead, nothing we can do about them now.” He glanced at the men behind him and the three of them chuckled. “But there’s no barrier now, and we lost so many. Losing one more won’t make a difference.”
I buried my heels on the floor and held a notebook tightly in my hands.
