A group of freshman wolves wander in. One of them runs out to help Tod. The others hover around waiting on a figure bundled in enough arctic gear to climb Mount McKinley. Er... Mount Denali.
I shuffle to the back of the group, not curious enough to fight over seeing the newcomer. I feel I should be helping Tod, but my boots are up in my room, and I am not running into the snow in my socks. Aliah, her feet likewise unshod, hovers beside me silently, her paleness reminding me of a ghost.
Tod stumbles back inside, his cheeks flushed from the cold and his breathing quick. He carries three bags, each one larger than his sister.
The wolves scurry away before anyone can ask them to help carry anything, suddenly more worried about that than eager to meet the newbie.
The girl pushes back her hood and gives Tod her largest, most becoming smile. Dazzled, he smiles back, not seeming to care anymore that she made him carry heavy things through the cold.
Oh, expletive. What are the odds of the new girl being someone I know? Odds that I not only know her but despise her boyfriend-stealing self?
Feeling my dinner threaten to rise, I turn and sprint up the stairs before Kim sees me.
Turning the corner at the landing, I run toward my room.
...And slam straight into a wall.
“Michaela?”
Why is the wall I ran into talking to me? And why is it using Warren's voice?
“Michaela?”
Oh. Because the wall is Warren. I should have known him from his scent, but I suppose the tears that have blurred my vision are blocking my sense of smell too.
Strong, warm hands grip my shoulders in a hold that is both firm and gentle. “What happened?”
He sounds really, really freaked out, so I make an effort to sniffle my sobs quiet and whisper, “New girl. Kim. From my old school.”
My archenemy. The one my friends prefer to me. The one my boyfriend left me for.
“Really?”
That question was way too enthusiastic. I start to sob again.
“No!” Grabbing me tightly against him, Warren strokes at my hair. “I just meant it was an odd coincidence, not that I was happy to hear she's here.”
Sniffling is the closest I can come to responding.
“Come on.” Shifting so only one arm holds me, he walks me to my room. “Can I come in?”
Managing a nod, I rush into the room. He closes the door behind us. Against the rules, but I don't care.
I sit on my bed, grabbing Leo and clinging to him as Warren sits beside me. “You still have the leopard, I see.”
I use Leo's ears to wipe at my face.
“I could get you some tissue,” Warren says softly, his voice lilting in mild amusement. Tenderly, he strokes my hair.
Someone bangs on the door a second before Aliah calls my name. “Come in!” I call back. My breathing will not settle down, but I seem to have stopped sobbing for now.
“What-” She stops over the threshold to blink in surprise. “Hi, Warren?”
He grunts at her, his attention still focused my way.
“I know her,” I whisper.
“The look of horror when you saw her face kind of made me suspicious?” Aliah creeps further in, leaving the door cracked. “I take it she isn't a friend of yours?”
“No,” Warren answers for me. Because I can't answer for myself due to the resumed sobbing and trembling and general blubbering.
A timid hand rubs the back of one of mine, Aliah's fingers tender and soft as they stroke me. “It'll be okay, Mike. Whatever she did to you, you're fine now.” Warren puts his arm around me, squashing Leo as he pulls me against him. “What did she do to her?” Aliah whispers to him.
He doesn't answer, not even to tell her that it isn't his business to tell her. Wolves are pretty good at not blabbing everything they know.
The door opens again, its creek accompanying Tod's voice, “You would not believe-” he cuts off sharply. “What's wrong?”
“She knows the new girl,” Aliah fills him in with a quiet voice.
“Yeah, that would make me cry.”
I sniffle, looking up at him. “It would?”
“You expect your friends to like her?” Warren asks me softly.
“They usually do.” Misery coats the statement.
Tod tips my chin up, his eyes narrowed with concern. “If it means so much to you that we dislike her, we'll all despise her.”
“I hate her already!” Aliah chimes.
Warren squeezes my shoulder.
“What's wrong?” asks yet another person as Sam makes her way through the door.
Aliah answers her. “She's worried we won't hate the new girl.”
“That's pretty stupid,” Sam jumps onto the bed on the vacant side of me. “Everyone hates her. Which is odd because she smells just like you, but everyone loves you.”
Everyone other than Simone. And Lyly. And all the other people who hate me but have never bothered mentioning it.
“She smells like Michaela?” This is from Warren.
“Definitely the same animal.”
He curses. “They knew each other in Washington, and they've been turned into the same beast, something no one has ever encountered before.” His grip on me tightens.
“Yeah,” I sniffle. “She hates it when I have something she doesn't. I caught lycanthropy, so she had to go catch it, too. It's like when I had bird flu.”
“Well, she's going to have to find her own friends,” Sam says. “She can't have yours.”
The blind loyalty is enough to make me start crying again.
“Now look what you did.” Tod bumps his foot against Sam's.
Smiling through the tears, I shake my head. “It's okay. This is good crying.”
Warren's hand rubs against my arm. “We strongly prefer you not crying at all, you know.”
“It's a girl thing,” Tod tells him, sounding very much like a guy with sisters.
“You want to go back to the games?” Sam asks.
My head shakes some more. “No... I think I want a bath. And sleep.” I look around at my friends, feeling very lucky to have them. “If that's okay.”
“Of course, it's okay,” Tod tells me.
Warren gives me another squeeze before he lets go of me and stands up.
The world's much less warm and secure than it was a second ago.
Chapter Sixteen
I wake up feeling amazingly foolish. For the first time since I've been here, I ignored a call from my dad last night. I hope it doesn't freak him out too much. It's just that I've never been good at lying to him, and I don't know how to explain how Kim's family even knows where this place is, let alone why she'd suddenly show up here. In theory, I could have told him everything except the bit about me being a were-something, but then he'd have questions the were community might not appreciate him asking. I should have just said I had a virus. He'd have believed me on the phone. Probably.
My walk to breakfast is slower than normal. I'm not sure if I'm afraid of my friends being mad at me for causing drama or being disappointed in me for my weakness, but I think the main problem is I'm worried they're going to treat me like I'm fragile now. Emotional and fragile are different things.
“It was accumulated stress,” Tod brushes the breakdown off when I try to apologize for it. “You've been through a lot in a really short period of time.”
“You were bound to crack eventually,” Sam agrees cheerfully, gathering a huge spoonful of Fruit Loops.
Bryce gives me a kind smile. “And the week before the full moon is always rough.”
I suppose if Kim were going to show up and wreck my new life, she might as well do it while I'm insane anyway. Maybe that way it won't hurt as much as when she destroyed the old one.
Kim isn't at breakfast, and if she's in my first class, she doesn't come in. I assume she's getting the tour I was given my first day. Part of me is surprised there wasn't a note under my door asking me to see Mr. Atherton about being the n
ew girl's guide. If it was anyone else, I would have been volunteering. Either someone tipped the principal off, or he's just smart enough to know a personality clash when he sees one.
Kim is present at lunch. She sits at a table with Lyly and a pair of werelions. The leopards are usually there too, but Simone's still suspended, Seth's still MIA, and both Amber and Rina have taken to eating in their rooms all of a sudden.
“Lyly's not going to try to bring her over here when she comes back, is she?” Sam's taking her duty as my friend to loathe Kim very seriously. “Tod?”
Her brother looks up, as if surprised the question was addressed at him. His response waits until after Sam asks the question again, and then it's a bewildered, “How should I know? That's like two weeks from now anyway.”
“That's Monday,” comes the instant correction.
“Monday?” After a few taps on his ever-present tablet, Tod shakes his head. “A week from Monday. Okay, it's a week and a half then.”
Sam raises her eyebrows at me and tilts her head to the side. “Dude...” says Bryce. “She broke up with you a week early, remember? That thing's off.”
“Really?” Tod squints at the display. “Oh, yeah. Weird.”
Aliah bites her lip, Sam and Bryce exchange a look, and I stuff my face with food to hide the smile that's trying to form. If her sometimes beloved hasn't missed her at all, does that mean there's a chance she won't be coming back?
A girl can hope, can't she?
A few hours later, I'm not sure if it feeds my hopes or dashes them to see Tod smile politely at Kim as she jumps from her seat on the bus to slide next to him before one of us can claim the spot.
Yeah, he's not sitting with, or appearing to think about, Lyly. But he doesn't look too upset over the way Kim's blatantly flirting with him, either.
I start to say something about it to Aliah, who sits beside me staring out the window, but then I realize her earbuds are playing music too loud for her to hear me anyway.
Sighing, I try not to worry about it. Tod and Kim separate as soon as they're off the bus, Kim going with Mr. Atherton to the ski shop and Tod showing no sign whatsoever that he wants to follow her.
I hang out with Aliah on the slopes. She's a lot better than I am, but unlike Sam, she's modest enough she doesn't mind staying on terrain I can handle. Sitting in the coffee shop afterwards, we watch Tod and Warren play in the terrain park.
“You miss your leopard, don't you?”
I shrug. “This is sort of our place. Not that Seth's my leopard.”
Gentle laughter answers that. “Of course not. But you do miss him? That's why you're upset? It's not because Kim managed to snag the seat next to Tod on the bus?”
So, she noticed that too.
“Well...” I sigh. “I can't say that has me all thrilled either, what with Kim's history of messing with guys I care about and with Tod's complete idiocy concerning pretty girls.”
“Yeah,” Aliah agrees softly. “How can someone so freakishly smart be so terrifyingly stupid?”
“I have no idea.” Shaking my head, I tap my fingers against the side of my mug. “But I'm more worried about Seth right now. I know everyone says he's just off thinking... But I have this incredibly bad feeling about it.”
“Like how bad? Have you had any visions?” Aliah leans forward expectantly while I blink at her.
“Visions? No...” I run a finger around the top of my mug. “A couple of bad dreams though. Last night, I dreamed he was locked away somewhere dark and something was about to happen.”
“But you didn't know what?”
I shake my head. “Only that it was bad.”
She makes a thoughtful sound.
“I'm sure it's just my imagination.”
“Maybe?” She sounds even less convinced than usual.
“What, do weres usually have a lot of visions?” I feel compelled to ask.
“Not a lot...” She shrugs. “Sometimes our animals know things they can't explain to our human parts? And when they tell us, it's like it's something metaphysical?”
Nodding, I think about that. “Human dreams are similar. But, no, I think they're just telling me I'm scared. Letting me visualize things my conscious mind would label crap and ignore.”
“Maybe,” she whispers. “Still... I would pay attention to them, you know? Just in case?”
“Yeah... Just in case...”
I'm thinking about that when I fall asleep. But even if the dreams I have are somehow real, they aren't helpful. I just see darkness and pain. Violence. Anger. The idea it could be real terrifies me, which I'm sure is why I'm having the dreams.
He's just taking a vacation, that's all....
I wish Kim would take one, even though she just got here. My luck at avoiding her wears itself out Friday afternoon, when she appears at the edge of my hunting and tracking class. Scowling at the other students, probably because they're freshman, she stands several yards away from any of them, shifting whenever someone looks like they might possibly try to address her.
But then Warren appears, and suddenly she does want to talk.
She runs up to him, brandishing a broad smile. Meeting the advance with a polite nod, he stops and waits expectantly. Her hand reaches out to touch his arm. Something rumbles deep in my throat.
Warren takes a half step backward, freeing his arm. As Kim's hand drops, he glances towards me.
Quickly, I look away.
Claws break through my gloves.
Gasping, I look back toward Warren. He's laughing and bouncing on the balls of his feet. He shakes his head and then starts to walk in my direction. His stride is very nearly a skip.
Cursing at myself, I turn to hide my action, then bend my neck to slide my ruined gloves off of my hands with my teeth. Frantic, I shove both the gloves and the clawed hands into my pockets.
“Hello, Michaela.” He sounds more chipper than I have ever heard him sound.
“Warren.”
A long, wolfish laugh responds to my uncivil growl. “You're in a bad mood.” He looks down at me with sparking eyes, his mouth twitching as it curves.
“And you're not,” I observe dryly.
“Nope.” The grin wins its battle to appear. My narrowed eyes do nothing to daunt its enthusiasm. “Michaela...”
Presumably, he was going to say something after that, but class starts. When the instructor tells Warren he's going to be tutoring Kim along with me, his humor flees.
“I told him not to do this,” Warren hisses at me as the class breaks into its assigned groups. He makes like he's going to go deal with the issue, but I grab his arm.
“Where are your gloves?” he demands in a rough growl.
“I lost them.” And thank God I've managed to lose my claws now too. “But I'm fine with Kim joining us. Hiding from her just gives her more power over me.”
The wolf watches me for a few seconds, then nods with approval. “Alright.”
He takes his gloves off and hands them to me. “Wear these though.”
They slide on loose. They're are several sizes too large for me, big enough there's a chance they'd fly off if I were to wave my hands around in the air, but they're full of comforting warmth – warmth from their fleece and from Warren's heat clinging to them. They're a lot warmer than the pair I just slaughtered.
Warren ignores Kim as she comes up to us, instead filling me in on the day's objective without bothering to explain what we're doing to her.
If it wasn't cold enough my tears would freeze, I'd be tempted to cry. I wasn't expecting him to be so unwelcoming of her. That he is being this much of a jerk is incredibly sweet of him.
He wasn't exactly friendly to me on my first day either, but thinking back on it, all that comes across more like shyness now. This... This is what Warren's like when he wants to be antagonistic. He doesn't say anything out of line, but the looks he gives her makes those early sullen glares he used to give me seem like cheerful overtures.
It all slides
right over Kim though, who continues to bat her eyes at him and purr her stupid little lines. Warren may well be the first guy she's met who wasn't instantly crazy about her, and it confuses her too much for her to even process it.
“I'm cold,” Kim whines for the twentieth time or so, sidling towards Warren, clearly angling for him to share some of his body heat with her. He counters the move perfectly, almost as if they're dancing. Dancing some sort of dance that keeps him a perpetual ten feet away from her, with me between them the whole time.
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