Heather

The two of them together stung way more than it should’ve. We had kissed once. It wasn’t like it meant anything besides irrevocably destroying my life. Still, the urge to throw the contents of my tray in his face for turning me and then sitting there all chummy with that bitch of a girl was almost too great to ignore.

He got up without saying a word to me and walked out of the cafeteria.

Serena looked from me to La Bitch. She cleared her throat, and stared at the ground. "Come on, Heather. Table’s over here."

I didn’t want to look away from the girl, but Serena pulled on my arm, nearly upending my tray. It was either make a scene or follow Serena.

I stared at the doors Brent had disappeared through. I didn’t need any more problems. I took a deep breath and followed Serena.

We sat down where three people were already eating. "This is Xander." Serena pointed to a boy with wavy dirty blond hair, and brown eyes. "He’s our resident brooding artist."

I set my tray down with a thunk. It was the guy from earlier who tackled me. "I think we’ve met. Kind of," I said.

"I could never forget someone who made me fall so hard." He gave me a wink. "Recovering okay?" His voice had a deep rasp that I hadn’t noticed before.

"This is Adrian," she said, motioning toward the other guy.

He had brown skin and eyes so dark I couldn’t tell where the iris started. He smiled, his white teeth gleaming against the dark skin. "Hola," he said with a thick Texas accent.

"And this is Leslie." Leslie had golden blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Her cold glare made me shiver. This one didn’t think so highly of me. Maybe she should go join La Bitch’s table.

"Listen, the cliques here can be pretty rough. I mean some of them are from families with long lines of ruling alphas," Serena said. "You don’t want to piss anyone off until you know what’s what. Just try not to let anyone get to you. Like Callista—"

"The girl with Brent?"

She nodded.

"Right." I shrugged. "Well, I’ll be nice to her if and when she’s nice to me."

Serena made a face, but I wasn’t backing down on this. I’m not going to go out of my way to be nice to someone who insulted me.

A change of subject was in order.

"I guess everyone’s not just staring at me because I’m new?"

"Sorry, love." Leslie’s lilting Irish voice surprised me. "It’s been a long time since anyone’s been bitten. It’s simply not done."

Not done. Right. Because if that were really true, then how did I end up at St. Francis’s?

I poked around at my mountain of food, and they started talking about some chemistry test coming up. I nodded when appropriate to the conversation that flowed around me, but couldn’t stop wondering about the whole biting thing.

That was the second time that someone mentioned that werewolves didn’t bite humans. So why had Brent done it?

"You should really finish that," Serena said.

I’d eaten some of it, but hadn’t even made a dent in the mound. Thinking about Brent had killed my appetite. The thought of taking another bite made me want to gag. "You know, I think I’m good. I’m going to head back to my room."

"Are you sure you—" Serena said.

"I’m fine. Really." I’d reached my limit. I was never great at being around people, and couldn’t remember the last time I’d been alone. This was all too much, and trying to pretend that it was normal and have a nice little dinner chat wasn’t working for me. "It was nice to meet all of you."

As I stood up, the room went quiet again. I left my tray where it was, and strode across the room. Everyone stared, especially a group of girls from the table where Brent had been sitting. Their gazes could have started a fire, mostly around me. I held my chin high as I walked past them. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

When I got back to my room, I found my cell phone on the bed with a note tucked underneath it.

Call your parents. They want to hear from you.

—Presley Langdon.

I stared at my phone. What would I say? What did they have to tell me? Nothing and nothing.

I grabbed my laptop off the desk and started doing searches on werewolves and their bites. I found a lot of stuff that I didn’t think was right.

One site said werewolves were started by a gypsy’s curse. Another site said you could go back to being human if you killed the werewolf that bit you. That was a pretty thought, but I was reasonably sure I wouldn’t be trying it out. I wasn’t that desperate. Yet.

One blogger wrote that werewolves could only shift when there was a full moon, but I already knew that wasn’t true. Xander had gone back and forth between the two forms in a fraction of a second this afternoon. A quick search confirmed that we were a little more than three weeks away from the next full moon. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

I was about to close my computer in frustration when I found a local news story. A girl was found dead about 100 miles north of San Antonio with her throat ripped out. All her blood was drained.

Serena would probably tell me vampires or goblins did it. Hell, maybe a unicorn with rabies.

I rolled my eyes and closed my laptop, placing it on my desk to charge.

Mr. Langdon’s note was still on my bed. I read it again and dialed home. I snapped it closed before it started to ring.

I couldn’t call my parents, but there was one person I could call. I grinned as a plan formed in my mind.

Axel.