CHAPTER 8

KATHERINE. I had thought the things I did while I was drunk last night couldn’t get any worse but boy was I wrong. More of what I’d done, such as begging Priyanka to tell me how she knew Dave was her mate because I needed to find my mate as soon as possible – thankfully I didn’t tell her why I needed to do that – and then acting out the exact way she met Dave with random guys at the party, had came to me while I was in the shower and the urge to drop out on my first day had rode me hard. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that so I had to settle for wearing a hoodie, pulling the hood over my head, and keeping my gaze on the ground as I moved from the dorm to my faculty, hoping no one would recognize me as ‘that crazy girl’ from last night. My ‘disguise’ wasn’t that efficient though because when I was only a couple of meters away from Stavenger Hall, a redhead named Chelsea stopped me and handed me my phone which I thought I’d lost at Clearberry Lake. The phone had a sticky note on top with my name written on it in my own handwriting and apparently, I had given it to her last night to keep me from drunk texting anyone. To say I felt embarrassed when she told me would be an understatement but she was incredibly nice and it was only after we parted ways I realized that I’d made a new friend. Then I headed to my first class, Discovering Biomedicine, and it was there I found out I was some sort of mini-celebrity because most of the guys and a couple of girls would ‘not’ stop staring at me and whispering to someone else anytime I met their gaze. It had been nerve-racking but thankfully, no one approached or said anything to me till I was done with my two classes for the day and now, I was making my way out of my faculty, thinking of how I was going to apologize to Theo for my behavior last night. I already apologized to Lenore during our first class but I didn’t think I could apologize to Theo the same way seeing as we weren’t friends and there was also the fact that if he didn’t dislike me after the ink incident in the library, he definitely now did because of how I behaved at the bonfire. “Damn it,” I muttered before walking into a hallway that had a balcony which overlooked the yard filled with students. “Katherine!” I paused. ‘What the–’ “Katherine!” the voice came again, louder this time, and I furrowed my brows before slightly angling my head to the side to see who it was through the corner of my eye. It was Josie. “Hey, Katherine!” ‘Oh God,’ I thought as I fully faced her and saw that she wasn’t the only one who had her attention on me, some of the students in the yard were staring too and they were grinning like they knew some joke I didn’t know. I really needed someone to tell me everything I did last night. “Yo, it’s Silver Eyes.” “Hey. What’s up, Katherine?” My face flushed as I plastered a smile on my face, shooting it at the boys that said that, before giving a grinning Josie a pointed look. “Priyanka said I should let you know you can sign up for the scavenger hunt club today,” she started and I wanted to tell her to stop yelling and wait for me to get to her, but I’d have to yell that and I didn’t want to draw more attention to myself. Besides, the unbothered look on her face told me I was the only one embarrassed by her doing this and I wondered if she hadn’t done something embarrassing last night. “She’s going to. Do you want to?” I nodded. “Will you go over to their clubhouse now? She plans to,” she replied and I nodded again. “Okay, I’ll let her know.” And with that, she began to walk away while I heaved a sigh. “Katherine,” someone called from behind me and I glanced over my shoulder to see Poppy and a girl I recognized as the daughter of a council member of Silver Bow walking towards me. My heart thundered in my chest. “Shit,” I whispered and her eyes narrowed as if she heard me while I swallowed. I could almost taste the hatred wafting off her like a bitter perfume and though the urge to turn and hurry away before she could get to me was overwhelming, I lifted my chin and kept my gaze on hers. “Yes?” The corner of her mouth turned up and her blue eyes glinted. “I thought I saw you at the bonfire last night but I just assumed it was my mind playing tricks on me because there’s no reason for you to be here,” she said just as she came to a stop in front of me and I pursed my lips. “Not when you’re fighting tooth and nail to steal from us.” By ‘us’, she meant her pack, Silver Bow, and hot irritation flashed through me because the only thieves in this situation were Silver Bow and the other pack next to mine, Blue Moon. “So what’s this? Are you here on a little vacation? Are you here to get new allies for your sad little ‘group’?” Her voice took on a condescending tone when she said ‘group’ and again, irritation pricked at me. Alpha Dawson, Poppy’s father, had been referring to my pack as a group ever since he decided that he wanted our land years ago and she was asking if I was here to get allies because after my parents died, most of my pack’s allies decided not to deal with us anymore. Whether it was because my parents died and they didn’t like the fact that ‘a child’ was going to become River Ash’s Alpha or because they didn’t want to deal with the shit they were getting from Silver Bow anymore, I wasn’t sure, but it stung like hell when they cut ties with us. Poppy clicked her tongue and I held her glare as if winning this staring competition would get her pack to stop pushing for a dissolution of mine. “Don’t you know how to speak?” she snapped and even though I had stayed because I didn’t want her to see me as weak, I didn’t want to say the horrible things I actually wanted to because she was a fire elemental and she had a nasty temper. Sure, she wouldn’t kill me but she could injure me badly and I didn’t want that. I could practically feel the hostility rolling off her in heated waves and just as I realized that she might just choose to attack me for not speaking, the door next to us opened and Professor Helton, the man that taught Discovering Biomedicine, stepped out of the office. He narrowed his eyes at us before focusing on Poppy and her friend. “Shouldn’t you two be at the management office?” he asked and Poppy held her hands up, flashing him an innocent smile. “I’m going. I’m going,” she replied before glancing at me once more. “See you around, ‘Kathy’.” Only my parents and Kit called me that and I gritted my teeth because it was obvious she said it to annoy me. She then shouldered past me before turning around and walking back in the direction she’d come from. “Watch it, Dawson,” Professor Helton said with a small frown. “Sorry,” she called out in a cheery voice before disappearing into a hallway. “Rules state that there should be nothing but respect between students so if she bothers you again, you can let me know.” “Uh, thank you…” I replied, blinking at him in surprise because I hadn’t been expecting him to say that, and he gave me a nod before going back into the office. I then resumed walking down the hallway, still irritated because of Poppy, and when I finally got out of the faculty, my phone buzzed with an email from the school administration, telling me to go to the dean’s office because she wanted to talk to me regarding my admission. ‘...Huh?’