by Noelle Marie
Wait. Haven Falls had a school?
“School?”
The corners of Bastian’s lips dipped to form a frown. “Yes, werewolves…” he paused as if feeling out her reaction to the word. She forced herself to remain impassive. “Werewolves,” he continued, “typically attend school until the age of seventeen. It’s considered the age of majority.”
“I’m sixteen. I’ll be seventeen this spring. That’s close enough.”
Bastian pinched his nose between his thumb and fore finger of his hand. “Not according to the council it’s not. They’ve decided that you’ll go until you’ve turned seventeen. They went as far as to say it’d be inappropriate to not send you there – that the school is the best place for you to learn about our culture.”
Katherine was incredulous – and completely unwilling to accept that premise.
“But can’t you teach me? You and the rest of the pack? I don’t want to go to school! I don’t know anyone and everyone will stare – it’ll just be an all-together uncomfortable situation.”
Bastian shook his head. “I can assure you that they don’t particularly care about your comfort.”
“But…” Katherine searched her mind for reasons that sending her to school was a terrible idea, “but, I haven’t even survived the change! What if when the full moon rises in a few weeks, I die? Making me go will have been pointless!”
“Don’t say that!” Bastian spat, his face turning nearly as blue as his eyes. “You’re not going to die,” he insisted through clenched teeth before roughly rubbing the palms of his hands deep into his eye sockets. “They know you haven’t been through the change, but they’re set in their decision.”
Katherine waited a moment for the man to regain control of himself before opening her mouth again. “You keep saying they,” she noted shrewdly. “Not we. Does that mean you agree with me? That you don’t support their decision to send me to school either?”
For a long moment, Bastian refused to meet her eyes. When he finally did, they shone with an emotion she couldn’t identify. “No, I don’t. But they’re convinced that this is the right course of action and there’s nothing I can do about it short of disappearing with you and the rest of the pack in the dead of night.”
If Katherine didn’t know any better, she’d say the man seriously considered that an option.
But she knew it wasn’t.
And as the man confessed that he didn’t want to send her to school any more than she wanted to go, she felt the fight drain out of her.
“Fine, I’ll go.”
Bastian’s eyebrows rose in surprise at her sudden compliance. “Really?”
“I said I would,” she snapped. “It’s not like I really have a choice in the matter.
He smiled at her words, but the sardonic grin that stretched across his face was anything but happy. It was dark. Self-depreciating. “No, I suppose you don’t.”
Katherine shifted her weight from one foot to the other as an uncomfortable silence descended upon the study. “Is that all you wanted to talk about?”
Bastian shook his head. “No, actually, there’s more – something else.”
Katherine was quickly growing impatient. “What else is there to discuss? I already said I would go!”
Bastian sighed in frustration, but didn’t answer her question.
“Well?” she demanded when the man refused to open his mouth and explain himself. “What else do we need to talk about?”
“You’re an unmarked werewolf.” The words burst pass the man’s lips seemingly without his permission.
She continued to gaze at him with incredulous eyes. “What?”
Bastian scratched the back of his neck in obvious discomfort, a faint red color spreading across his cheeks. “Are you aware that certain animals like to… mark their territory?”
Katherine’s confusion continued to grow. “Like dogs? That pee on fire hydrants?”
“Yes,” Bastian immediately agreed, his relief apparent. The tense lines that had formed on his forehead disappeared at her understanding. “Yes, like that.”
But the problem was that Katherine didn’t understand. And she was fed up with his cryptic crap.
“What does this have to do with school?” she demanded.
The tense lines made a reappearance. “I can’t – that is to say I won’t – allow you to attend school as an unmarked wolf.”
Katherine threw her arms in the air in utter exasperation. Honestly, couldn’t the man have just said that? “How do I go about getting marked then?”
Bastian shifted in obvious distress, and she couldn’t deny that she took some perverse pleasure in seeing the usually so put-together man squirm. Even if she didn’t know what it was he was so embarrassed about.
Finally, he opened his mouth. “Your example was actually a rather good one.” He paused. “The one about the dog.”
Katherine felt her whole body stiffen as realization dawned. But there was no way she was understand him right. “Are you trying to tell me that you need to mark me as your territory by peeing on me?!”
Bastian sighed wearily. “I knew you’d be unreasonable about this.”
"Unreasonable? Are you kidding me? I am not going to let you pee on me!"
“You don’t have a choice in the matter,” he repeated her earlier words.
"No,” Katherine snarled. “This, at least, I have a choice in. Hygiene issues aside, I am not your territory.” She was disgusted by the concept. “I’m no one’s territory and I refused to be treated as such!”
Bastian crossed his powerful biceps over his chest, clearly unimpressed. “I can’t let you go to school unmarked. It would be an absolute catastrophe.”
“Why? Who cares if I’m marked or not? Why do I even need to be marked?”
“Wolves are marked so that other wolves know they belong to a pack. All pack members smell like their alpha; it’s just the way it is. If I left you unmarked, no one would respect my pack’s claim on you.”
“So?” Katherine goaded the man, knowing she was being childish, but not liking the fact that he thought he had a claim on her any more than she had appreciated being referred to as territory.
Bastian’s eyes narrowed and his arm muscles bulged under his shirt sleeves. “Don’t you understand?”
Katherine pursed her lips. "Understand what?"
"The danger of attending school unmarked! If they – the students, the teachers – don't smell me on you, there are bound to be unpleasant consequences.”
She snorted derisively. “Like what?”
“You could be attacked!” Bastian softened his tone when he spied the astonished look on her face. “But for the most part,” he admitted, “I’m worried about you being recruited. No one will mess with you if you’re marked.”
Katherine wasn’t sure exactly what sort of recruiting he was talking about, but the way he spat out the word made it clear that it was nothing good. "Why would anyone attack or… recruit me?"
Bastian relaxed his arms and swiped a hand through his hair. “Plenty of reasons. You know turned females are rare. You’ll cause a stir – interest those you shouldn’t.”
Nothing the man was saying was making her feel any better about having to attend school. “I’ll blend in.”
Bastian looked at her like she’d just announced she was a unicorn. “Impossible. Haven Falls is too small a community for any new additions to go unnoticed. I’m sure you’ve already realized that after touring the town with Sophie. Besides, no one could not notice you.”
Katherine had no idea what that was supposed to mean.
“But aren’t there other ways to mark me? I mean, did you have to pee on the others too?” She couldn’t stop the corner of her lips from lifting into a small smirk at the image that assaulted her brain – Markus in the same position as she was.
“No,” he admitted, causing Katherine to deflate as the hilarious image she’d concocted disintegrated. “By the time we formed the pack, we’
d all spent enough time together that they smelled like me already.”
It was true, Katherine knew. Although the members of Bastian’s pack all smelled differently, the same underlying scent clung to them all.
"What about Caleb?" she asked. “I mean, he told me he’s not a born werewolf.”
Bastian’s reaction to her question surprised her. His eyes hardened and his lips straightened into a hard, unyielding line under his mouth. “Yes, he told me he shared that with you, but no… it was my father who marked him.”
Recalling the story Caleb had told her, a light bulb went off in Katherine’s head. “Was it your father that saved him?”
"Yes," Bastian divulged, but looked away from Katherine’s piercing eyes before she could ask any more questions. It was clear that he didn’t want to reveal anything else to her.
She couldn’t help but wonder where he – Bastian’s father – was. And his mother for that matter. Obviously, Bastian was old enough to be considered an adult in this culture – he wasn’t in school after all. Her curiosity got the best of her. “How old are you?”
He furrowed his brows at the abrupt subject change, but answered her anyhow. “Eighteen.”
So he was an adult according to American culture too. But that still didn’t explain his absentee parents. A horrible thought occurred to her. What if they were dead? She clamped down hard on her lower lip. It was possible by the way Bastian was acting. He never mentioned them.
She was torn out of her thoughts by Bastian’s voice. “I assure you that I’ll make this experience as comfortable as I can for you. I’ll do it right before you go to bed tonight and you can shower right after. I’ll even transform into my wolf form if it makes you feel better.”
What?
"Your wolf form?" Katherine deadpanned.
Bastian looked thoroughly annoyed. “What? Don’t tell me you still don’t believe?”
“No,” she snarked, then immediately backtracked. “I mean yes, I believe, but it’s not the full moon.”
"Though it can be difficult, once one experiences the change, it’s possible to transform at any time,” he explained.
Katherine desperately tried to stop her temper from erupting. "Then why didn't you just do that to prove your existence to me?" she asked in disbelief.
Bastian grimaced as he realized she had made that connection. “I thought it might do more harm than good. You already didn’t believe in werewolves. It would have been a shock I wasn’t sure your fragile psyche could handle if one of us morphed into a giant beast in front of you.”
Fragile psyche? Fragile psyche?! She’d show him a fragile psyche!
“You’re excused, by the way.”
Katherine’s body, which was trembling in anger at the insult, abruptly stilled. “Excuse me?"
The corner of Bastian’s lips jerked, as if he was fighting off an amused smile. "Exactly – you're excused. You may leave."
Who did he think he was?
She fumed silently, glaring at the brazen man, but the sight of his twitching mouth only served to infuriate her more. She marched out of the study, making sure to slam the door behind her.
Katherine was marked later that night. It was a wholly foul experience as far as the small brunette was concerned and she scrubbed her body down for an entire hour afterwards.
The only thing remotely pleasant about the ordeal had been once again seeing Bastian’s wolf form, though she’d nearly had a heart attack when he’d bounded into her room on all fours. He’d called himself a gigantic beast earlier, but she couldn’t help but think the creature he transformed into was majestic and even beautiful.
She just really wished she didn’t.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Katherine was not nervous.
She could not feel what seemed like hundreds of tiny butterfly wings flapping in her stomach. And she had certainly not had trouble sleeping last night or forking down her breakfast this morning due to said butterflies.
She wasn’t nervous and those stupid butterflies didn’t exist because she didn’t care what any of the people attending a frickin’ werewolf school thought of her.
Really, she didn’t.
Katherine could almost have convinced herself that that was true. If only she hadn’t spent over half an hour picking out what to wear and a further fifteen minutes gazing into the mirror, inspecting her appearance for imperfections.
The outfit she had finally decided on was a simple pair of jeans and a long-sleeved, black V-neck shirt. She’d also shoved a glittery headband that Sophie had insisted on buying for her at The Closet into her hair in a desperate attempt to tame the mass of brown waves. Katherine was no fashionista, but she thought she actually looked half-way decent.
Unfortunately, no amount of primping and preening at herself in the mirror would calm those inanely persistent butterflies.
Knock. Knock. Knock. “Katherine, are you ready to go? Bastian’s waiting for you in the SUV.”
Katherine released a small gust of air she hadn’t even been aware she’d been holding before leaving the bathroom attached to Bastian’s bedroom. She had absolutely no idea where the tall man had been sleeping the past two nights. Not in his room, obviously. She’d been taking his bed.
Which was really weird now that the petite brunette thought of it.
She’d even put away her new clothes in the room’s spacious closet, which, bizarrely enough, had been cleared of the shirts and pants that had occupied it earlier.
“Are you excited about your first day of school?” Sophie accosted Katherine as soon as she exited the room.
“Sure,” she agreed half-heartedly, retreating down the hallway to the front door and tugging on her knee high boots. She wasn’t about to admit how nervous she was to the blonde. Besides, Sophie seemed excited enough for the both of them.
She had one arm through her leather jacket and was reaching to pull open the door with the other when a hesitant hand landed on her shoulder. Katherine turned toward Sophie who was gnawing on her upper lip in a seemingly anxious gesture.
Maybe she wasn’t so excited after all.
The blonde released her tortured lip. “Katherine?”
“Yeah?”
“Bastian’s told you about recruiting, right?”
Katherine couldn’t stop her forehead from creasing and the edges of her mouth from forming a frown. There was that word again. Recruiting. Bastian had briefly mentioned it the other night, but as for explaining it? “No, not really,” she admitted.
Sophie huffed. “That just figures,” she muttered, visibly annoyed by Katherine’s answer. She tugged an aggravated hand through her blond strands before meeting the curious brunette’s eyes. “Recruiting,” she explained, “is how werewolf packs are formed. I assumed that my idiotic brother would have told you this since recruiting, for most wolves anyway, begins and ends during their last year of school – right before they turn seventeen.”
Well, that was certainly interesting. But Katherine failed to understand how it applied to her. Wasn’t she already a member of a werewolf pack – this pack, in fact? Wasn’t that the whole point of – Katherine scrunched her nose in revulsion as she remembered – getting marked by Bastian the other night?
Katherine voiced her thoughts. “I thought I was already a member of this pack.”
“You are,” Sophie rushed to assure her. “Most werewolves are born into packs and remain members of them until they reach the age of seventeen – it’s the age of majority for us. As soon as they turn seventeen, however, they are free to choose their own packs. They may decide to remain a member of their current alpha’s pack or approach a different alpha and request to become a part of his pack. Unless they’ve been recruited by that specific alpha, though, they are usually forced to prove themselves to him in some way – typically by completing a task or trial of some sort. If they fail, they’re almost always rejected by the alpha and have to approach another for a new chance to prove their worth.”
; Katherine’s head ached as she attempted to retain all of the information Sophie was spewing forth. “What exactly is recruiting then?” she asked, still not quite grasping the concept.
“It’s when an alpha,” Sophie paused, clearly searching for the proper word to use, “woos a werewolf – tries to convince him or her to join his pack.”
Having finally managed to shove her second arm through her jacket, Katherine crossed her arms over her chest. “If recruiting and all this other crap is inevitable – and you seem to be under the impression that it is – then why did Bastian insist on,” she pursed her lips, willing herself not to blush, “marking me last night?”
Katherine glowered at Sophie when she grinned. “Yeah, that. Bastian seems to think that if he makes his claim obvious, the other alphas of Haven Falls will be more hesitant to recruit you.”
Katherine furrowed her brow. “Is he right?”
Sophie sighed, her amused smile drooping. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just wanted to make sure you knew exactly what kind of situation you were walking into today. Nearly every wolf your age is looking to be recruited. It’s very competitive and by nature, we werewolves are very prideful creatures. Just… be careful.”
Well, wasn’t that wonderful?
As if the butterflies in her stomach weren’t enough, Katherine now felt as if a full-blown dragon was flying around in there.
A blaring car horn sounded from outside.
Sophie rolled her eyes. “Sounds like he’s getting impatient. You’d better get going.”
Katherine nodded, but didn’t make a move for the door. Despite the gigantic beast now taking residence in her stomach, her curiosity had been roused. “Hey, Sophie?”
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Why… I mean, did Bastian… how was this pack formed?” she finally managed to spit out.
A sad smile enveloped Sophie’s face. “Well, when our parents died, Bastian was sort of forced to become the new alpha of the Prince pack. Prince. That’s our last name.”
Katherine’s stomach dropped as her suspicions were confirmed. Bastian’s and Sophie’s parents were dead. Just like hers. Unconsciously, she clenched her hands into fists, her blunt nails digging into the soft skin of her palms.
