Chapter 4

The boy in the front row gave her a smile.

It was slow and soft, and it was the worst thing she had ever seen. He raised two fingers to his own eyes, then turned them toward her in a silent gesture: I’m watching you. Then he faced the lecturer again, as though nothing had happened.

Goosebumps crawled up Isla’s arms beneath Tricia’s jacket.

He was the only student who had turned around all day. Why him? Why that smile? Did he know what she was? If he did, it was over. They would be dead before sunset.

Beside her, Tricia pressed her thumb so hard against her phone screen that a crack split the glass from corner to corner. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Our next session will be practical,” the lecturer announced, a beautiful woman with tired eyes and a sharp, dark gaze. “Dismissed.”

She swept out. The students rose in eerie silence and filed away.

Isla, Tricia and Remy practically ran. It was their last lecture of the day, and none of them wanted to spend one more minute inside those walls.

“Wait for me at the car,” Isla said, breathless, when they reached the courtyard. “I need to pee. My bladder’s about to burst.”

Her friends nodded and leaned against the car, scanning the grounds like hunted deer.

Isla found the campus map on the notice board and traced the route to the nearest restroom. It wasn’t far. She pushed through the door of the female convenience, stepped into a stall and stood there.

Nothing.

She frowned. A minute ago she’d been desperate. Now the urge was gone completely, as though someone had switched it off.

She came out and went to the sink, splashing cold water on her face to wash the dryness from her skin. She looked up into the mirror.

He was standing behind her.

It was the same boy. Same pale face, same steady eyes, and the same smile.

Isla didn’t turn around. She kept her eyes on his reflection. “What do you want?”

“Your thoughts are loud.” His voice was mild, almost friendly. “Very loud. I could hear them from the front row. Do you know how rare that is, in a room full of us?” He tilted his head. “I made you need to pee, by the way. I wanted you to come here alone.”

Her heart slammed against her ribs.

He can read minds. He can control my body.

“You made me...”

“You’re not a werewolf,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Are you?”

Isla’s face went numb. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think about Mr. Tip Tap, or the letter, or being human, don’t think about anything.

But the harder she tried not to think, the louder it all became.

His smile widened.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, fastening her collar with shaking fingers. “I have to go.”

She ran. Behind her, his voice carried down the tiled hall, calm and soft as a lullaby.

“I’ll come for you.”

The Alpha’s glass house sat on a hill above the city, a cold, beautiful, expensive thing with windows that reflected the whole sky and nothing of the people inside.

He had left campus early, as he always did. He hated being the last to leave anywhere. He timed everything to the minute, and when the minute came, he went.

But he left angry.

The humans had slipped through his fingers. Their scent was still in his nose, faint and sweet and maddening, and the cameras had shown him nothing. Not one suspicious face. He couldn’t remember the last time something had gotten past him.

“Wherever you’re hiding,” he muttered, climbing the stairs while servants bowed low on either side without daring to lift their heads, “show yourself. Because if I find you first, I won’t be gentle.”

He pushed open the door to his bedroom.

Someone was lying on his bed.

She lay on her back with her legs crossed and her ankles swinging, laughing quietly at something on her phone. She hadn’t noticed him. Her dark hair spilled across his pillow, and the scent of her perfume had already soaked into his sheets.

“Emma.”

She looked up and smiled, slow and pleased, as if she’d been waiting all day for him to catch her.

“Kozell! You’re back!”

She slid off the bed and crawled toward him, and when she reached to embrace him he shoved her back with one hand.

“Come on, Koz,” she pouted, settling on the edge of the bed and crossing her legs again. “I’ve been waiting.”

Emma was the only vampire wolf in the wolf nation, and the most beautiful female the nation had ever produced. She had been raised by a mivran wolf, which made her powerful and unpredictable. She knew his true name, a name that only two kinds of wolves in the entire world had ever heard.

Kozell stared at her with flat, tired eyes.

“What do you want?”

Emma’s smile curved like a blade.

“It’s simple…”

The drive home was silent.

Nobody spoke the whole way. Isla stared out the window while Tricia gripped the steering wheel, and in the back seat Remy pressed her forehead against the glass, trembling. The three of them were thinking the same thing. The best, safest, most reasonable choice would have been to stay home. Stay uneducated, stay afraid of nothing worse than rejection letters.

The moment they got inside, Remy dropped onto the couch and hurled her bag across the room.

“Are we going to school,” she said to no one in particular, “or are we going to hell to meet the devil?”

“Remy,” Isla started. “We’re all in this together, and nobody’s to blame...”

“Don’t.” Remy was on her feet. “Don’t give me the peace speech, Isla. We are human beings. We’re in a building full of monsters and you want me to stay calm? We can’t fight them. How long do we keep avoiding them before they smell us? And you, Isla, you’ve got a short bob. How are you going to hide your neck? Wear sweaters in July? And that old man never even mentioned the tattoos!” Her voice cracked. “So what are we even going back there for?”

Silence.

“We shouldn’t go back,” Remy said. “Ever. That’s all.”

Isla’s mouth fell open.

“What?” Remy said, rolling her eyes at their faces. “What?”

“Remy, do you hear yourself?” Tricia said. “That man warned us not to run. He’s one of them, and he’s terrified too. If a werewolf is afraid of the others, what do you think happens to us? We stay and we keep our heads down, and we stay alive.”

“It’s better to stay inside the school with rules than to run and get hunted,” Isla added gently. “They’d find us.”

Remy looked from one to the other. Then she turned and stormed up the stairs, muttering to herself.

She slammed her bedroom door and flung herself onto the bed. She dragged her pillow into her arms and hit it again and again as if she could beat all her fear into it, until the tears came and she cried herself hoarse.

“I wish I could take it all back,” she whispered into the dark. “I’m so scared.”

Eventually, exhausted, she slept.

It was nearly midnight when Isla got up to check on her.

She crept along the hallway so she wouldn’t wake her friend. She eased the door open and slid her head through the gap.

She froze.

The boy from the restroom was crouched over the bed.

The room was soaked in red. It dripped down the walls and pooled across the sheets, and the thing on the bed was no longer recognizable as a girl. His hands moved. A wet, heavy sound filled the room. He drew something dark from Remy’s chest and flung it aside, carelessly, as you’d throw away a fruit pit. Then he bent again, and Isla heard the slick sound of him feeding as if it were noodles.

He turned toward the door.

His forehead was thick with coarse hair. His nails had stretched into black hooks. His eyes had gone a molten amber, and behind him a long, thick tail swept slowly across the sheets. And yet, beneath all of it, she knew his face. It was the same boy.

He smiled at her with blood on his teeth.

Isla couldn’t feel her legs. She couldn’t scream. Her voice had been torn out of her.

“I’ll be back for you,” he said, in the most horrible voice she had ever heard, a voice like a thing wearing a person’s mouth.

He stepped onto the windowsill and vanished into the night.

Isla stood in the doorway, alone with Remy’s body.

Then the scream came, and it tore from her so hard that it shook the windows of the empty house.