Heather

The boys joined us for dinner after they cleaned the gym. As soon as they sat, Callista strutted into the cafeteria. She smirked at me and stopped behind Brent.

My temper flared to life. I wanted her away from him. Now.

She ran her fingers through his hair and leaned down between Brent and I. "I thought we were meeting outside?"

My trust in Brent was still extremely fragile and she was trying to break that. I knew she was trying to get me to react, but I couldn’t stop the growl that escaped from me. For some reason, I didn’t care when my hands started changing.

Brent pushed her away, and leaned into me until our noses were touching. He gently placed a hand on each of my cheeks as his eyes started to glow. "Shhhh," he said.

Waves of power ran through me. My muscles turned to mush and whatever was rising up inside of me laid down.

"Okay?" His face still close to mine, close enough to kiss.

A silly grin spread across my face. Like he was reading my mind, he leaned in and gave me a soft kiss on the lips. I waited to see what his mind would show me, craved to know what was going on beneath the surface, but got nothing.

My whole body tingled as he pulled away from me. He didn’t get very far, since I was clutching his shirt in my hand.

He laughed, and pulled me to sit across his lap. "Better?"

"I’m not going furry." My words slurred together. "It’s totally better."

Callista snarled. She grabbed the table and flipped it into the air. Brent stood quickly and blocked me from the flying debris. Chairs screeched across the floor as people dodged the table.

Luckily no one was sitting where it crashed. The force broke our table in two and chairs scattered across the linoleum.

When the din faded from my ears, Brent stood between me and Callista. "I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you, however unintentionally, but this is getting silly, Callista."

"I’m sorry. You’re my oldest friend. My best friend." She looked at the ground. "I apologize."

"It’s not me you need to apologize to."

Her gaze met his again, but she shook her head. She kicked chairs from her path as she stormed out of the cafeteria.

I slumped into Brent. He wrapped an arm around my waist and looked down at me. His smile made me giggle. It was the same one from the night of the party—the one I hadn’t seen since I woke at St. Francis’s. It made him deadly gorgeous. I reached up to touch his face.

Serena grabbed my arm and pulled me away from him. "Maybe a little less intense on the shushing next time. You’ve turned the poor girl to pudding."

I whined as she tugged me away from Brent.

"Come on, Heather," she said. "Everyone’s going to be coming in here soon for a pre-sundown dinner. We should get out of here before people see the mess and start hounding you. Plus, I think you could use a cold shower."

I stared back at Brent as she dragged me out the cafeteria doors. He bent over, picking up pieces of the table. The only thing I knew about him was that we had the same odd taste in music and that his butt looked really awesome in those jeans. There was so much I didn’t know about him. And I really wanted to know everything.

As if he could feel me staring, he looked at me and winked.

"Get me out of here before I do something really embarrassing," I said.

When we got back to the dorm, Serena did as she promised and shoved me fully dressed into an ice cold shower. I screeched as the water came down and jumped out of the way.

"What the hell was that for?"

"You actually let me put you in the shower. That should tell you something about how you were acting."

I turned the hot water on full blast and closed the shower curtain. "It was like my brain capacity went from smartish to total dimwit in five seconds flat."

"You can thank Brent for that. He over did it on calming your wolf. I hear it’s like being drunk."

"Remind me to never get drunk." I shed my soaked clothes and stepped into the now steaming spray. My mind and body were out of my control. That was enough to chill me to the core.

Friday I woke up completely groggy. The sirens had gone off nearly every hour. I desperately wanted to look out the window, but we were under strict orders not to look.

Plus, I wasn’t going for a repeat, but worry for Brent kept me up most of the night.

I probably should’ve known something was up when I saw Mr. Hoel at breakfast in the morning, but ignorance was bliss. He was the President of the Board and, as such, had decided that all us youngins needed a three-hour lecture about the situation on campus as it were.

There were more than a few nasty looks shot my way when news hit in my first period class. It seemed like he was using my example of getting snatched from the dorm for his talk

It was going to eat up everyone’s—except for the Freshmens’—martial arts class. With vampires close by, that was the last class that anyone wanted to skip. Even for a day.

I was with them on that, but I didn’t mind skipping Were history, which was kind of interesting-ish, or metaphysics, which seemed like a load of hogwash. This week’s metaphysics lessons comprised trying to make magic have a scientific edge. I wasn’t sure that any amount of rhetoric would convince me chemistry and spells were synonymous.

After lunch, we all piled into the gym. Folding chairs had been lined up and a podium sat in the front of them. I hadn’t been in a room—other than the cafeteria—with the whole school before. Spread out across the cafeteria I didn’t get much of a sense at how many people actually went to the school, but all in this room it felt both bigger and smaller.

Smaller because of the number of people—there couldn’t be much more than a couple hundred of us. And bigger because all the energy of the pack together made it feel like there were well over a thousand in the room.

Mr. Langdon, Sebastian, Donovan, and Brent stood in the back of the room. Brent and Donovan laughed at something Mr. Langdon said. There was really way too much hotness going on back there. The laughing only made them that much more attractive. Those two really didn’t need the bonus points.

I found a chair between Serena and Adrian. Xander was still keeping his distance from me after Brent’s freakout. I didn’t blame him, but it chafed.

Once we were all settled, Mr. Langdon walked up and introduced Mr. Hoel. "Rupert Hoel is the head of the school board here at St. Francis’s. He wanted to speak to you all about the vampire attacks on the school and the repercussions they could have on student life. I hope you’ll all give him the attention he deserves."

I almost laughed. What if I didn’t think he deserved any attention? Did Mr. L just give me leave to ignore the lecture? Nice.

"Thank you so much, Presley, for that introduction. I hope that in the next three hours you will come to learn a bit about vampires and the vampire threat. We’ll also discuss relations with humans and the future of werewolves in this world. I do hope I have your undivided attention."

I snorted, and Mr. Langdon winked at me as he walked back to his spot against the wall.

The first hour of the lecture was spent talking about vampires and their abilities. Then the plans they had to keep us protected during the night when the vampires would be out.

But slowly what he was talking about changed. It was little comments here and there sprinkled in, but as I recalled each one, they added up to all the ways that werewolves were the best species on the planet. We had a merciful five-minute break and then it was back to the lecture.

The second hour turned my stomach. If there was any doubt that I disliked the man, it quickly disappeared. Mr. Hoel droned on about how humans were the weaker species and differences between the two. Throughout the course of that hour, I found myself grinding my teeth.

I’d heard this before—Caucasians versus African Americans, women versus men—same bullshit arguments. Anything but equality was just a load of crap. It made one half-white, half-Mexican, part-werewolf, part-bruja woman want to scream. I didn’t fit into any nice little box in Los Angeles, and I sure didn’t fit into any of Mr. Hoel’s boxes now that I added a hefty dose of werewolf into the mix.

I had a good feeling that I was a "lesser citizen" in his eyes. Mustering up the ability to give a shit about that was exceedingly hard. This was some Hilter youth bullshit that Mr. Hoel was trying to pull, and I sincerely hoped I wasn’t the only one seeing through his line of crap.

The third hour was brutal. Halfway though I was jonesing to hit something. Or maybe just a specific someone. Too many of my classmates were nodding or clapping to his conclusions. Didn’t they see how wrong this was?

When the time came for questions, I made sure mine was the first hand up.

I stood from my chair when he nodded at me. "I get that going to school here means that I have to listen to you wax poetically about how much better werewolves are than humans, but don’t you think that you’re being a little racist? Or maybe more appropriately species-ist? And what good would it do to really show up the humans? You want to start a species war in a world that is already ravaged by injustice. You talk about honor among wolves, but I don’t see any honor in what you’re implying."

I expected the open mouths and gasps from my classmates, but what I didn’t expect was the clapping and cheering from the back of the room. I pulled out the sides of my invisible skirt and curtseyed before sitting down.

"I wouldn’t expect you to understand," Mr. Hoel said. His words were clipped. "A former human would have little hope of grasping at the complexities of what we covered today and will cover in any future lectures."

I cleared my throat. "It’s a good thing that being new isn’t the same thing as being ignorant. I’m grasping your complexities quite well, I just happen to vehemently disagree with them. And I have to say your vitriol on the human condition really gets under my skin."

"I don’t understand—"

"What? Were my words too big for you? Which ones, and I’ll try to explain."

Serena elbowed me. "Oh my God! Stop," she mumbled.

Mr. Hoel strode down the aisle toward me, but Mr. Langdon stepped between us. "Class dismissed. Everyone clear out." Mr. Langdon’s order echoed in the silent gym. I wanted to stay and argue with the ignoramus but Adrian grabbed one arm and Serena the other. They dragged me out of the gym.

"Do you have a death wish?" Serena whispered.

"You already know the Hoels have it out for you. Why’d you do that?"

I shrugged out of their grasp and continued walking to our dorm. "No one was contradicting him. I couldn’t just sit there and let him think that we all agreed with that bullshit."

"Well, it was dumb," Adrian said. "He’s a powerful enemy for anyone to have, but especially so for a recently bitten girl."

"Standing up against prejudice is never ever dumb."

He sighed. "That’s not what I meant."

"Sure." I shrugged. "And look, it’s not like he wasn’t already my enemy. The only thing that changed is that everyone knows it. That could save my butt."

"I’m not sure if you’re suicidal or a genius," Serena said.

I grinned. "Go with genius. It’s way more accurate." I held my fist out to Adrian and he bumped it.

"You’re way more badass than me," he said. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"Thanks. I guess I’m gonna change and whatnot. Dinner in a bit?" They nodded.

I went up the stairs to my room. It wasn’t until I got to my room that I let out the breath I’d been holding. Maybe going off on Mr. Hoel wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had, but unless I figured out time travel, there was no changing it. And even if there was, I didn’t think I wanted to.

One girl against three ass-Hoels. Those odds weren’t so bad, were they?