Jasmin had already
left for her Literature class, too angry with me to notice the new
arrival; but I waited, eavesdropping on her conversation with Britney
Samuels as I dropped my History book into my locker.
"We
so
have to go down there soon. It's the only place within an hour and a
half where you can do any decent shopping."
Britney's familiar
voice was full of eagerness. She finally had a new set of ears to
listen to her gossip, a new sidekick to help her flirt, sleep or
otherwise scale her way closer to the top of the social food chain.
I already thought less of the new girl for letting Britney latch onto
her.
As I closed my locker,
Adri's response came floating over.
"That sounds
great; I can't wait to get out of this stupid town."
My locker door hit
with more force than I'd intended. The closest kids edged away from
me, but I was too mad to care whether or not they thought I was going
to suddenly lose control.
I'd spent tens of
thousands of dollars and called in three separate favors with local
officials to get her and her mom past all of Brandon's efforts to
block them, and this was what I got? Another self-absorbed
Britney-clone who was too stupid to realize insulting Sanctuary
wouldn't impress the people who'd spent their entire lives here?
I stalked off towards
my art class, and this time it was
my
power that crackled
through the hall clearing a way between the other students.
Art should have been a
refuge. It generally was a place where I could forget about
dominance posturing and pack business. It helped that it was one of
two classes I didn't share with Jasmin. Donovan had implied that my
father had likewise escaped the burdens of his life by fleeing to the
act of creating. Of course his passion hadn't been anything as
perishable as painting. Still, painting at least had the simplicity
of being something I loved just in and of itself. For all that dad
had liked metalwork; he'd still mostly been driven by the hope of
discovering one of our people's lost arts.
Sanctuary wasn't large
enough for the high school to have a class dedicated strictly to
painting. I'd had Donovan make some discreet inquiries to the school
board, but no amount of implied donations had swayed them, so I was
currently stuck sitting through a section on sketching.
Try as I might, I
couldn't lose myself in my current piece. The indignity of having
helped someone who wouldn't have appreciated the effort even had they
known about it continued to worry at the back of my mind.
When the bell finally
rang, I was out the door before most of the other kids finished
putting up their supplies. I hurried down the stairs only to pull up
short as Brandon turned into the hall six feet ahead of me.
We'd once been nearly
the same size, but he'd put an extra two inches and fifty pounds on
over the last year, and now he loomed over my six-one frame.
"And here I'd
been hoping you'd still be limping."
Even sub vocalized,
Brandon's words carried his usual streak of disdain. My reply was
equally inaudible to everyone else around us.
"No limp here.
It's too bad your pack wasn't two seconds slower though. You'd be
down Vincent and Cassie in addition to needing to explain to the
Coun'hij why it is your pack is violating our territory."
I'd expected his pulse
to jump at least a little at the prospect of facing the one group
that held the power of life and death over every wolf in North
America. It didn't vary in the slightest. There was no scent of
nervous perspiration, nothing. He was either a dramatically improved
liar, or he no longer feared the Coun'hij.
His silent, mocking
laughter implied the latter.
"I wouldn't be
running off to bear tales right now. You'll find that where you're
concerned a slightly different set of rules is currently in effect.
No aid is going to be provided to a pack that isn't strong enough
even to police its own borders. Especially one so busy fighting
among itself."
"I don't know
what you're talking about."
It was a stupid lie,
the kind of mistake I hadn't made in all too long, but his revelation
had shaken me. If things had changed that much, then our pack was
operating under even more of a disadvantage than I'd realized.
"Don't insult my
intelligence, Alec. If all of the blood we stumbled across in the
buffer had belonged to you and Jasmin you'd both be dead. Somebody,
possibly more than one somebodies stepped out of line and you had to
make them bleed to bring the situation back under control."
He was wrong, not by
much but he was still wrong. Donovan said it was his biggest
weakness. Brandon tended to assume that everyone thought like he
thought, wanted what he wanted, and would act like he would act in
any given situation. It was starting to seem like his only weakness.
"When I inform
certain contacts that you've even started sponsoring additional human
traffic into the town, over my direct objections and despite the fact
that it increases our risk of being exposed to the humans, I think
you'll find a blind eye will be turned to almost any activity I
choose to undertake."
"You're wrong.
There are limits to what the moon born at large will accept. If pack
leaders are no longer sacrosanct they'll have an uprising on their
hands."
"Oh dear, stupid
Alec. Always so secure in the nobility of your bloodline. Of course
I can't do anything too overt, but that's the very reason why I've
been given carte blanch where you're concerned. It was your father's
undoing and it'll be yours as well. The Coun'hij can't afford to
have a possible focal point for rebellion running around."
He was right. If I'd
chosen to remain safely anonymous rather than rising to rule my pack,
they'd possibly have forgiven my descent, but now that they couldn't
just execute me at will I'd become too much of a threat.
"I do hope
you've found the Paige's to be all you'd hoped and dreamed."
His departing barb was
too close to on target. I'd been practicing for years to control the
myriad signs that stopped the moon born from lying to each other, but
the rage from earlier reawakened and provided Brandon with a stronger
response than he'd expected.
He turned back to look
at me, flashing a satisfied smile before disappearing towards the
cafeteria.
The fact that I'd just
accidentally painted a big target on the new girl's chest continued
to bother me throughout lunch and into Chemistry. Considering just
how much I currently despised her, it shouldn't have been a cause for
worry; but I'd seen Brandon in action before. Adriana Paige was
going to be used and discarded before she even knew what hit her.
Physics was my second
favorite class, more because Mrs. Alexander was so absentminded than
for any other reason. I slipped into class a couple seconds before
the bell rang, only to pull up short when I saw the new arrival
sitting in the back of the room.
Adriana Paige didn't
exactly look excited to be in Honor's physics, but the mere fact
she'd signed up for the class was enough to raise her stock with me.
It was the smallest class in the entire school and I had a sneaking
suspicion at least a third of the students were going to drop out at
the end of the semester.
I took my usual seat
in the back of the room as Mrs. Alexander used the blackboard to
diagram the different parts of an electromagnetic wave. Nothing
earth shattering there. My attention turned back to Adriana as the
explanation wound down.
She was prettier than
I'd realized. A lot prettier. It explained quite a bit actually.
Girls that pretty almost never had a difficult go of it in life so
they tended towards self-absorbed and lazy.
Jasmin was an
exception to that rule, but she'd paid for her maturity. You don't
go through the kinds of horrors she'd experienced without figuring
out several times over that the world didn't revolve around you.
Adriana on the other
hand probably resented the move to Sanctuary because it took her away
from all of the malls and hordes of cute, admiring boys.
Mrs. Alexander
finished her lecture and told everyone to start forming into our
usual groups. I should have seen it coming. I'd managed to convince
her I worked best alone. The fact that there'd been an odd number of
students for the first month of school had helped, but with the
addition of Adriana that was no longer the case.
"Miss Paige,
you'll have the good luck of working with Mr. Graves."
Despite my best
efforts, I allowed some of my distaste to show. It was only for a
split second, but it was sloppy. Joni Winters and Susan Bower
giggled nastily when they saw it, and for the first time I realized
just how hard the move was for Adriana.
The emotionless mask
that she'd been wearing slipped slightly and for a brief moment she
was just a lonely girl who'd been torn away from everything she knew.
Mrs. Alexander turned
back to me with a frown, as if I were the one causing all of the
problems.
"I'm sure you'll
enjoy working with Miss Paige, Alec. After all, you can't really
expect to do everything by yourself. Occasionally a helping hand is
exactly what's called for."
The elevated pulse
that had been teasing my ears suddenly shot up to panic levels as
Adriana went completely white. I was the closest to her, but she was
still pretty far away and there were desks in the way.
By the time I realized
she was really collapsing, it was almost too late to catch her.
Without thinking, I sprang to my feet, knocking desks out of the way.
It wasn't until I held her limp body in my arms that I realized what
I'd done.
Full moon born speed
wasn't used where the humans could see. It was an imperative that'd
been drilled into me since before my first transformation. I always
moved with human slowness at school, only I'd just surged forward
with nearly all of my unnatural speed to stop Adriana from hitting
her head.
Mrs. Alexander was the
first to my side. She reached up to check Adriana's pulse as the
rest of the class started gathering around us.
"That was well
done Alec. I saw her start to fall, but was too far away to have
done anything about it. I don't know how you got there before she
fell, but you probably saved her from a nasty concussion."
Hopefully the rest of
the class had either been focused on Adri or looking elsewhere as
well.
"Alec, her pulse
seems ok, but you should get her to the school nurse."
I gave Mrs. Alexander
a nod of assent, and then started pushing my way through the crowd of
other students. I was nearly to the door before I realized that
Adriana had returned to consciousness.
"Put me down, I
mean please put me down."
Her voice was a little
breathy, and her heart rate was back up again. I looked down at her,
trying to ascertain if
she was about to go into convulsions or not, and felt myself pulled
into a pair of the bluest eyes I'd ever seen outside of Jasmin or
myself.
I nearly stopped
walking, had to shake my head slightly to clear it.
"You need to see
the nurse."
"I'm fine. That
wasn't anything, it didn't mean anything. Please put me down."
The tone had changed.
Even more amazing, her smell had changed. She'd tasted sick just a
second before, and now seemed fine. I looked down to confirm what my
other senses were telling me and found an emotionless mask looking up
at me. It was as if there was an entirely different person behind
those glowing features now, and all of her vitals were still too
erratic for me to garner anything from them.
"What do you
mean 'you're fine'? People don't just collapse with no warning. You
seemed fine and then you were falling. You s...you seemed hurt."
I almost bit my
tongue. I'd nearly slipped up again, nearly told her she smelled
hurt. I'd all but come to a complete stop now, completely outside of
my realm of experience.
"It was just the
heat here. I'm not used to it. Now
please
put me down."
She was actually
fussing with her hair now, obviously afraid that it had been messed
up. Suddenly I realized what had happened. People didn't just
bounce back from the level of trauma I'd just witnessed. Not unless
they'd somehow tricked their system into stuttering in the first
place.
I wanted to scream at
her for having tricked me into nearly outing myself, but I took a
deep breath and just barely managed to contain my growing rage.
"It was all just
a game for you wasn't it?"
Her response was the
perfect study of the spoiled, self-centered child I'd initially
thought her.
"You bet. Think
they bought it?"
Unsure whether or not
I'd manage to get away from her before I finally lost control, I
loosened my grip and set her down. I was out of sight while she was
still trying to decide which feminine wile to use on me.
We'd had another night
of peace, but nobody thought it was anything other than a temporary
reprieve. Brandon was probably just worried tempers would run too
high among his pack this close to the full moon. The last thing he
could afford would be for one of his wolves to make a mistake and do
something that couldn't be ignored, either by the rest of the moon
born at large, or by the Coun'hij itself.
I should have awoken
refreshed after just a couple of hours sleep. None of the shape
shifters required much in the way of rest, but I overslept by more
than an hour and still felt exhausted when I finally arose.
There was too much to
be done for me to allow several hours of nightmares to slow me down.
Donovan and I went through our once-monthly extended business
meeting. He brought me up to speed on all of the things that hadn't
been pressing enough to bring up in our nightly discussions, and then
we identified additional ways the family capital could be put to
work.