Chapter 13

Ava looked out of the window in her dorm room. The sun was still out, and she couldn't see anything besides the woods. But she could feel Zeke there.

Her door opened, making her turn quickly, but it was just Emily returning with her bags.

Training had been strange. Claire and her friends hadn't made a single move. Besides the initial snarl when she walked in, the session had gone without incident. Her new coach, Coach Henderson, hadn't targeted her like Coach Baxter, so she had stayed in the background the whole time. She'd sparred with the vampire Max, so even that had been stress-free.

But all it had done was make her a little anxious about when Claire would attack. Would it be another ambush?

"Shall I pack this away for you?" Emily asked.

"No!"

What was wrong with this wolf to make her so eager to be someone's maid?

"Thank you for collecting my things, but we need to talk now," she said as she finally walked away from the window and sat on her bed.

The room was still empty. It had been renovated since Claire vandalised it, but it didn't look like anyone had slept in there since.

Emily sat on the edge of the bed across from hers and lowered her gaze.

"Stop doing that!" she said with irritation and then lowered her voice. If anyone wanted to listen in, there was nothing to stop them. She didn't have the benefit of Mr Patrick's magic or Zeke's basement. "Can you just tell me what happened?"

"After Claire attacked you, I started to walk away. But when I saw how hard she was hitting you, I stopped. I didn't want her to kill you, I swear, but I couldn't intervene," Emily whispered.

"So you just stood and watched. Yes, I got that part," she muttered.

Emily's face fell, and she kept her eyes down.

"I was a little jealous of how easily you got all those Alphas running around after you. You were calling Alpha Anderson by his name and hanging out with him so casually as if it wasn't even a big deal for you," Emily said.

"Wait. Was all of this over a boy?"

She'd led her to her death over a boy?! Seriously? She had been to two of Jared's parties, so she knew if Emily had really wanted a piece of that wolf, she could have had it like several of the other girls there. Jaren didn’t discriminate when it came to sex.

Emily swallowed and remained silent.

"Just get to the part about what you saw."

Everything else was irrelevant now.

"Claire was going to kill you, and then you growled," Emily continued. "I have never heard such a threatening growl, and I think you also took Claire by surprise. The next thing I knew, you were on your feet, and you beat the crap out of all of them."

"Like in training?"

What she wanted to know was if she had shifted. She needed confirmation.

"No, it was... It was more. You were partially shifted," Emily whispered. "You chased after them and were ripping into them. Even when they were begging you to stop."

She sucked in a breath and looked down at her hands, at her fingers. And the images from her nightmares filled her head again. Her hands full of blood. Her claws, more menacing than any she had ever seen. Her claws! Shit.

"You only stopped when they stopped moving. And then you threw their bodies into the forest. One by one like trash."

She clenched her hands into fists to stop them trembling and looked up at Emily as she continued to speak.

"And through it all, I couldn't move. You saw me there, and you smiled. I thought I was next, so I ran. And every day since, I've been waiting for you to come for me, too."

"But why didn't they find the bodies when they searched? There was so much blood there," she whispered.

"I don't know. Though we took you to the edges of the village so no one could see us, I don't know why they didn't find them."

So what did it mean? Were they dead when she'd thrown them into the forest? Or was it the forest that had brought them back?

She shivered and stood.

"You should go," she said.

Emily stood, too.

"But I can help. I can—"

"I need you to go, Emily," she insisted.

If anything happened here, she would have the blood of another wolf on her hands.

Emily didn't argue as she let herself out. Then, instead of unpacking and making her bed, she lay down and looked up at the ceiling. Monster. Her wolf was a monster, and the Council would use it to kill other people. Mr Patrick was right.

That thought kept her awake most of that night. By the time she roused herself from the waking nightmare in her head, it was already time to get ready for her duties.

It was only as she was dressing that she realised she hadn't blocked the door and windows as she had planned to. Her door had been unlocked and her window unlatched all night, but no one had come to attack her.

She was late to head out for her duties, so she decided to jog, and when it took her only a short time to arrive, it distressed her. It all made sense now. The quick healing, the increased speed... Her wolf was making herself known even though she was not welcome.

The kitchen quieted down when she arrived on time for duty allocation. The Omegas kept their gazes down, and no one said a thing out of place. They seemed to be actively keeping out of her way. She would have been perfectly okay with it if she didn't know they were reacting to the monster inside her.

Breakfast was the same. She ate alone at the table. No one tipped her tray. No one said a word. And when Claire and her friends walked into the dining hall, they didn't even look at her. They got their food and sat at a table far from her as if they couldn't even sense her.

But she knew they could. They were just playing games with her until they made their move.

By the time the training session started, her nerves were shot. She didn't pay much attention as the coach demonstrated something, so she got it wrong when it was her turn on the mat. She got most things wrong. But still, nothing happened.

In detention, she once again ignored Mr Patrick. There were a couple of other students in there with her, so thankfully, he couldn't speak. She was going to do this on her own; all she wanted was for him to take care of Zeke. She repeated this thought several times so he could understand that this was her final decision.

"Miss Morgan, a word, please," Mr Patrick said at the end.

But she shook her head and left with the others.

Once she was back in her room, she blocked the window and door before she lay down on her still-unmade bed and looked up at the ceiling again.

Just outside her window, she could sense her mate. His misery added to her own as she started the vicious cycle all over again. But he would be okay once all of this was over.

The Council couldn't come quick enough. She was already tired of waiting.