Then, for the second time in ten minutes, someone spun away from me with a ridiculous, dramatic swish of their cape. But this time I hated to see that person go.
And that was all the more reason to focus my crush energy on Daniel Helms. These stupid impossible feelings for Laith Brighton needed to be stamped out once and for all.
“Hey, Remi! Over here!” Winter’s voice rang out in the sugary-sweet, sing-song tone she normally only used to torment me in front of professors.
I turned toward it against my better judgment and found her sitting on one of the couches against the wall, sandwiched between two boys in wolf masks, who were eagerly chowing down on bone-shaped sandwiches from the plate I’d watched her take from Derek.
The visible halves of my nerds’ faces at least had the good sense to look sheepish when I clomped over to them as fast as my heels would carry me.
“What the hell is this?” I demanded, and my heart twinged, remembering Laith’s delighted smile when he made fun of me with the same words just moments ago.
“Oh, hey, Remi,” Xander squeaked. Kanze waved.
Winter smiled, teeth flashing beneath her wolf mask’s sequined muzzle. “Listen, Remi, I’ve been talking to the boys, and I don’t want you to worry about a thing. They are more than welcome to join my pack.”
“Excuse me?” I snarled, fists clenching at my sides.
The boys shrank into the couch, but Winter’s lips pushed into a pout. “Don’t be angry, Remi. I’m only trying to give you peace of mind.”
“Peace of mind?” I sputtered. “How would stealing my pack give me peace of mind, exactly?”
“Well, I mean…” she lowered her voice to a stage whisper, “since you aren’t going to be here much longer.”
My fingernails dug into my palms and I gritted my teeth. One day, I would rip her throat out, but it wouldn’t be with my human mouth. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Winter made her blue eyes big behind the mask. “So you’re shifting again? That’s wonderful news!”
“Remi, that’s amazing!” Xander shouted, drawing several stares. He lowered his voice. “When did it happen?”
I could feel my face turning as red as Winter’s stupid cape, so I ducked my head and stared at the hem of my gown, rustling just above my heels. “It hasn’t. Yet.”
Xander’s face fell. “Oh.”
“But it will,” I said firmly. “And soon. I’m not going to fail. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I admire your determination, Remi,” Winter said, sliding the plate onto Kanze’s lap and getting to her feet. She touched my elbow. “But if it doesn’t work out, my offer still stands. I’ll take good care of the boys. In fact…” Her eyes lit up and she turned back to the couch. “You know, my friends Jadice and Kamilla were looking for dance partners. Maybe you’d like to come find them with me?”
Xander’s jaw dropped. Kanze set the plate aside and scrambled to his feet.
I threw my hands up in the air. “Are you kidding me?”
Kanze glared at me from behind his silver mask. “Were you going to dance with us?”
“If you want to dance, Remi—” Xander started, jumping up.
“You know what?” I pushed my hands toward them. “Go for it. I hope you thoroughly enjoy whatever bizarrely cruel prank Winter has planned for you.”
Winter gave me a pitying look. “I know this must be difficult for you, Remi, but there’s no need to take it out on your friends.” She looped her arms through my nerds’ elbows. “Come on, guys. You’re too cute to be wallflowers.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I’m too cute to be a wallflower, I thought for the hundredth time in the hour since I’d planted myself on the couch and shamelessly devoured the rest of the food from Derek’s plate. Even the grotesque meatballs with spaghetti spider legs.
But I made no move to get back out there and mingle. I didn’t want to watch Xander and Kanze going over to the dark side. I didn’t want to risk Laith being the only person to ask me for a dance that would mean nothing even while it drove my body to cellular meltdown.
I should just go back to my room.
Behind the mask, my eyes felt sore around the edges, and not just from the tight threads holding it in place. I hadn’t exactly been crying during my time on the couch, but I hadn’t exactly not been crying either. Standing on the balcony earlier, I had let myself believe the one thing I never allowed myself to believe—that something magical might happen before the night was over. Now it just seemed like part of a dream I’d been rudely woken up from before it ever really got started.
I gathered my dress up so I wouldn’t step on it when I stood, but a shadow fell across my lap, making me look up. Warm brown eyes peered down the golden wolf’s nose and a worried expression tightened the lower human half of Daniel’s face.
“Remi? That is you, isn’t it, darling?”
“It’s me.” I forced a laugh. “Just another gray wolf in the crowd. Except, you know, not.”
“You’re not just another…” He sank onto the couch next to me, but a respectable distance away. He rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his clasped fists. “We’re going to fix it. I promise.”
“When?” I threw up my hands. “I’m running out of time. I got an F on my Practical Shifting midterm, and a D in the P.E. part of Health and P.E. because I can’t join in any of the werewolf games.”
Why am I picking a fight with him right now?
“Soon. I can feel it, darling.” He reached over as if he were going to place his hand on my knee, then pulled it back. “We’re almost there.”
I stared at his hand. Almost where?
He tilted his head. “Is that the only thing bothering you?”
I snorted and flung a hand toward the dance floor. “Winter stole my pack.”
Daniel shook his head. “She can’t do that. Packs are set.”
“But if I get kicked out…”
He did place his hand on my knee then. Warmth shot up my leg, straight to my brain, and I could have sworn the chandelier over the dance floor brightened. A flash of red caught my attention, but it wasn’t Winter’s cape. It was Dean Mardone’s hair snuggled up under Laith’s chin as they swayed in place like this was a high school homecoming dance and not a formal masquerade ball.
The Dean’s eyes were shut blissfully tight and the fabric of Laith’s bronze tuxedo bunched under her grasping fingers. A pang of guilt flashed through me for not taking him seriously earlier. That woman was a shameless predator.
Laith’s dead-looking eyes landed on mine. They darted to the golden wolf beside me, and then away from us completely. I knew what he must be thinking, but this was not the same. Daniel was a good man. Nothing like Lenore Mardone.
“Ah! Looks like it’s professor’s choice?” Daniel said, turning his hand palm up on my knee. “Shall we?”
Fireworks exploded inside my chest as I laced my fingers through his and let him pull me to my feet, drowning out any alarm bells that might have accompanied his total misreading of the Laith/Lenore situation
He didn’t lead me out onto the dance floor, but drew me close right where we stood, gently placing his other hand on my waist. Our chests brushed as we both started out on the wrong foot, and we let them stay that way once we finally got the hang of things.
“I was never very good at this,” he said softly. “My ex always said I had four left feet.”
I swallowed. “Your ex?”
His thumb caressed the back of my hand. “Have I not mentioned her?”
I remembered him saying something that first day in class. After I asked my embarrassing question about wolves mating for life. But I shook my head because I wanted to know more about the person he was probably imagining in my place.
“Ah, well. Nothing interesting to tell, really. We were together, and then we weren’t. Same old story.” He shrugged the shoulder that my hand rested on.
“When did you break up?” I wasn’t sure I really
wanted to know, but it seemed like he wanted to talk about it. Just my luck.
He twirled me like a ballerina and then brought me close again. “That’s the funny thing, I suppose. We never did. After graduation, she just stopped talking to me. I don’t even know where she is.”
“We call that ghosting,” I said.
His wolf mask’s nose bumped against mine. “All for the best I suppose.”
And then we stopped dancing.
He lifted his mask, and he had the same painful red lines I had seen in the mirror earlier, but his eyes shone with warmth and… something maybe sort of like desire. A shiver ran down my back.
Is this really happening?
“All I’m saying, Remi, is that I know what it’s like to feel rejected.” His breath felt warm on my cheek. “But sometimes those just weren’t the people we needed to accept us.”
My blood pounded in my ears. A tingling sensation raced through every vein in my body. Daniel’s hand grazed my cheek on its way to push my mask up onto my forehead. Our human faces were suddenly very, very close together.
A guttural, off-key howl ripped through the night, and I jerked away from Daniel’s parted lips, searching for what seemed likely to be a drunken source.
Daniel’s fingers pressed into the small of my back. “What is it, Remi?”
“Didn’t you hear…?”
My words trailed off. The sound of bubbling water faded into my ears, as though someone were slowly turning the volume up.
Daniel and I were no longer in the Great Hall. We were in the alcove under the tower, in the dark corner farthest from both the main entrance and the bookstore. I twisted my head to the left and there was the magnificent fountain, its enormous spray of water glittering in the moonlight. The three animal statues had their backs to us.
How? When?
Another discordant howl rang out, and I startled backward out of Daniel’s grip. “Don’t you hear that howling?”
His brow furrowed. “No one is howling, Remi. Are you feeling alright?”
I turned away from him, stepping out of the alcove and onto the driveway that looped around the fountain. I cocked my head, straining for another sound. Something is out there. My heels clicked on the cobblestones as I ventured further away from the building.
“Remi! Where on earth are you going?” Daniel caught up with me, laying his hand on the small of my back, but much lower than he had before.
I twisted away from him. “Whoa, hey, no. What are you doing?”
Both of his arm snapped back to his sides and he lowered his eyes. “My apologies. I seem to have misread… something.”
“Misread what?” I snapped, my eyes darting to the main entrance, which suddenly seemed a long ways off. My palms twitched with an urge to hit all fours and run.
Daniel glanced up at me through his thick eyelashes. “Well, in my office, darling. I asked… and you said I didn’t need to ask…”
My lip curled up in disgust. “That is not what I meant!”
He smiled and batted those long eyelashes. “But… wasn’t it?”
A snarl bubbled up louder than the fountain, and I whipped toward it and the motionless bronze beasts. “How can you not hear that?”
“Remi, there’s nothing out there.” He came up behind me again, this time touching my shoulder.
I pushed his hand away. “Dude. Stop. I need some space here.”
Daniel took a step back, bowing his head. “As you wish.”
I lifted my hands to my head, which was practically vibrating with the volume of the now persistent growling. “Why can’t you hear this?!”
“Because there’s nothing to hear.” His brow creased. “Tell me, did you have anything to drink this evening, darling?”
“Don’t call me that!”
“I’m sorry. I’m, ah, just a little confused here. You have to understand…”
“I don’t have to understand anything.” My hands fell to my sides, fingers curling into the fabric of my skirt. The sound had become a series of short, choppy howls bouncing off the walls of my skull.
An alarm call.
It was me.
My wolf.
Even though she was still on the other side of some insurmountable barrier, I felt her power coursing through my veins. My eyes lifted slowly, taking in the man in the champagne tuxedo, his silly blue cape twisted limply to one side. His golden mask sat on his forehead, nose pointing up at the sky, revealing its empty plastic interior.
“Daniel.” I took a step forward, my eyes locked on his. “Why don’t I remember coming outside?”
Daniel looked around with a confused quirk to his lips. “I asked if you wanted to get some, ah, fresh air. Remember? You said yes, and I helped you down the steps because you were tripping over your skirt. And then we had another dance, and then we… well, it seemed that we were…. perhaps, ah, going to… well, anyway, I see now that I was wrong.”
The hapless stammer that had always seemed so charming suddenly seeming like a glaring affectation. I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “I’m going back inside.”
He lowered his head as though he were going to respect that, but the moment I passed by him, his hand shot out and clutched my arm.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that, darling,” he murmured, and his breath wafted right into my nose.
My recoil nearly brought us both to the ground, but his fingers tightened on my elbow, holding me up as he planted his feet. I flung my head away from the putrid stench flowing from his lungs as my own seized up, coughing as though they were full of smoke. My stomach heaved and I spit bile onto the cobblestones.
“You see, Remi, you’re not feeling very well,” Daniel growled, fighting to keep hold of my arm as I wrenched it this way and that.
“It was you,” I gasped.
The truth flickered behind my eyes with every breath. The first time we met. The empty stairwell. His fingers around my head. He hadn’t botched reversing my shift. He had purposefully caged my wolf.
“You son of a—” I sank my human teeth into the fingers gripping my arm.
He yelped and stumbled back, doubling over and clutching his bleeding knuckles with the hem of his cape. But a crazed grin spread across his face.
“It’s true then,” he panted. “You have the gift.”
I stepped backward, kicking out of my heels because it was clear now I would need to make a run for the door. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do.” He straightened up, flinging his cape back into place. “Forgive me for eavesdropping, but I overheard you talking to Ms. Shirley in the bookstore. I’ve found that young women do have a tendency to lie…” His lip curled in disgust. “So, I had to find out for myself.”
I remember his arms lifting me up the stairs that day. I’d just assumed it had been good timing, but no. He had been lying in wait.
My hero, my ass.
My eyes darted to the entrance, calculating my chances of outrunning him in my stupid gown. I would have given anything to be stuck with two nerds in a three-headed dog suit right then.
“You could run, yes,” Daniel—No, let’s go back to Helms—said. “But wouldn’t you rather stay and find out why poor Ms. Shirley warned you not to tell?”
“I don’t have anything to tell,” I growled. “So no, I’d rather get back inside with my friends.”
“Your friends?” He scoffed. “The ones who abandoned you the first time a prettier girl gave them a better offer?”
“Nice try.” I rolled my eyes. “But finding out you prefer blondes, too, isn’t exactly going to break my heart, all things considered.” I hiked my skirt up to my ankles. “I’m going inside now. You can follow… if you want me to scream.”
He leapt forward with lightning reflexes, blocking my path. “You’re not safe here, Remi,” he said softly, fluttering his eyelashes. “Come with me back to Hawtrey. Unless you fancy the idea of spending your golden years blind and sniffing out books?”<
br />
“Get out of my way.”
He grasped me by the elbows, and his words tumbled out so quickly and quietly I could barely understand him. “The scent-sight is the only way to locate a young shifter before he turns into a wolf in the middle of the grocer’s. Ms. Shirley is the youngest one left in the U.S. If they find out you can sniff, it won’t matter if you graduate. They’ll never let you leave. Do you understand me?” He shook me a little. “You will become a slave, Remi.”
A rectangle of light opened up over Helms’ shoulder, and a tall shadow with two round ears on top of his head stood in the middle of the warm glow.
“That you, St. James?” Laith called.
“Yes!” I hated the way my voice cracked. “It’s me!”
“Sorry to interrupt, but would you mind coming inside?” His silhouette leaned against the doorframe. “We’ve got a developing situation on the dance floor. Your pack mates are trying to get a macarena going.” He shuddered. “It’s not good.”
“Oh no! Be right there!” I called, pulling against Helms’ grip.
Helms’ mouth flattened into a tight line and he dropped my arms, turning to face Laith with a flourish of his cape. “While that does sound dismal, Mr. Brighton, Remi and I were on the verge of a breakthrough with her, ah, little problem.”
“In an evening gown?” Laith came down the steps, letting the door slam shut behind him, his own black cape billowing behind him.
“The beast does what it will.” Helms shrugged, but I caught the way he squared his shoulders and planted his feet. “Isn’t that right, Remi?”
Laith sauntered to the edge of the alcove under the tower. “Yeah, I bet he does.”
“I’m not quite sure I like what you’re imply—”
“You feeling shifty, St. James? I can leave you be, but…” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Seriously. You’re their alpha.”
Really? I am?
Wait, not important right now.
Academy of Shifters: Werewolves 101 Page 13
