Chapter 6

By the time I finally finished, my face was bright red, and my breathing was coming in short pants as I collapsed on my back on the grass beside my mother. She looks down at me.

"Just remember, Kat. I am doing this for your own good. I go easy on you; the rest of the kids will be hard on you. Also, I couldn't exactly let you talk to me like that and get away with it, especially in front of other students; you need to work with me here," I try to catch my breath, raising my arms over my head, feeling like I was going to have a heart attack.

"But I did nothing; he approached me, not the other way around," I whine, everything hurting.

"Doesn't matter next time; watch your tone," my mother says before stalking off.

"Shirley, can I speak with you please," Alpha Ezra says, making me turn my head to the side to see him walking over to her.

"Of course, Alpha," my mother says. Alpha Ezra looks over at me, dying on the ground, and I look away; I must look pathetic right now. Jasmine walks over, handing me her drink bottle, and I squirt some water into my mouth before sitting up.

"Damn, and I thought my dad was strict. What did you get in trouble for?"

"Apparently, my attitude," I tell her, and her brows furrow.

did nothing

"But you didn't do anything," she states.

"Tell my mother that," I told her before standing. My legs felt like jelly as I walked toward the building. School finished an hour ago, so I was a little shocked to run into Angie as I went to my locker. Her blonde hair was highlighted to perfection, her blue eyes bright. I could see why she was so popular. She was gorgeous, but the snarl on her face said her nature was anything but.

I open my locker only to be shoved against it. Jasmine pushes her away, but that doesn't stop her as she grabs the front of my shirt, tearing the collar.

"Stay away from the Alpha bitch, or I will make your life miserable," She spits at me.

"You stayed back an hour after school just to tell me that. Geez possessive much," I tell her, ripping her hand away and turning to retrieve my stuff.

"Angie, go away. She hasn't done anything. What is it pick on the new girl day, geez she just ran twenty laps of the field, lay off her," Jasmine tells her.

Angie grabs my hair, and I hiss as I feel my hair ripped from my skull. Turning, my hair painfully pulling from my head when I punch her. She shrieks, clutching her face. I was not in the mood today, and besides, my mother told me to use my fists.

"You fucking whore," she says, wiping her lip as blood trickled down her chin. Angie swings at me, but I duck, and her fist connects with my locker door behind me with a thud, the metal denting from the force.

"What's going on here?" I hear a voice and look up at Beta Mateo, walking down the corridor toward us.

"The bitch punched me," Angie tells him.

"Is this true?" He asks Jasmine and me.

"She started it; she grabbed Kat's hair and threatened her," Jasmine tells him. I keep my mouth shut just as my mother and Alpha Ezra walk around the corner. Just my luck. Not only do I need to put up with this psycho, but I am also about to be scolded once again. Angie runs to his side, but he steps away from her at the last second before she can touch him.

"She hit me; your daughter hit me," Angie said to my mother. I was expecting my mother to yell and scream at her words, but I had to try to hold my laugh when she replied.

"Well then, you must have deserved it," my mother tells her. That's my mum. On-field, she is strict, but off-field, she was my mother. Angie glares at her, and my mother tries to hide her smirk before looking at me and sending me a wink.

"Go put ice on it, and Angie, stay away from Katya in the future," Alpha Ezra tells her. Angie ran off with tears in her eyes and I kind of felt bad for her, but that lasted a second before my mother spoke. Her motherly nature turned to teacher mode.

"Katya, trouble on your first day, gosh," my mother says, shaking her head, yet it wasn't a scolding, just expressing her disappointment at me for drawing attention to myself.

"Angie attacked her first; she was defending herself," Jasmine blurts out once again, coming to my defense, and the more I am around her, the more I like her. 

"That may very well be, but you know I don't condone violence off the field. You will have detention with me tomorrow, Kat," Alpha Ezra says. My mother says nothing, but I watch her lips press together. Jasmine ducks her head, looking at the ground.

"What about Angie? That's unfair. She started it," I ask; my mother gives me a warning look telling me to shut my mouth.

"Beta Mateo will deal with Angie," Ezra says before looking at Mateo, who nods but is clearly not happy about it as he sighs.

"You may go," Alpha Ezra says, and I grab my bag. I chased my mother as she walked down the hall in a hurry.

"Always drawing attention to yourself," she hisses at me.

"But you said to defend myself," I tell her, and she stops looking at me. I see Jasmine walk out the doors down the other end of the corridor. Mateo and Ezra were still talking in the hallway. My mother grabs my arms, looking me dead in the face, making me look at her.

"Yes, but we need this to work out here Kat, I know what I said, but this is it for us. We have nowhere else to go. This doesn't work out; we have no choice but to go rogue."

"But we could go to another pack," I tell her.

"No, Kat, this is it. No other pack would take us because of Alpha Jackson. It was a miracle Alpha Ezra took us in," she says before letting out a breath; she rubs my arms gently before stepping away.

My mother then turns on her heel, storming out the doors, making me chase her to keep up. Getting to her car, I hop in the passenger seat. My mother said nothing to me the entire way home, and I could tell she was angry by the way she kept drumming her fingers on the steering wheel impatiently.

  I disappointed her, and now tomorrow I have to deal with Alpha Ezra. The one person whose attention I couldn't afford to have directed at me. 

Getting home, I was about to race to my room when my mother stopped me.

"No, go see your father first," my mother snaps at me. I groan, but I move toward the kitchen with one growl from her, where I could hear him busily cooking.

"Hey there, pumpkin," my father says as I step into the kitchen. My mother walks in behind me and walks to the fridge, grabbing a bottle of water out.

"Well, aren't you going to say something to her?" My mother scolds my father. He gives her a questioning look.

"Kat," my father sighs. "What did you do this time?" He asks, and I shrug because I did absolutely nothing in my eyes.

"She was annoying the Alpha when she was meant to be training, then got into a fight with another student," my mother tells him.

"Did you win?" my father asked excitedly while shadow boxing in the kitchen, and I couldn't help the smile that tugged at my lips. My mother slaps his arm, and my father sends me a wink.

"What kind of father are you? She is drawing attention to herself, and the Alpha already scolded me for disciplining her"

"The Alpha scolded you?" My father asks, turning to look at her.

"Yes, because I made her run laps. That's why we are late. Do you just tune out when I Mindlink? I told you this already," my mother snaps at him.

"I was busy and must have missed that part," my father tells her, though I would tune her out if I wouldn't get my ass beat for it.

"Yes, it was quite humiliating getting reprimanded on my first day," she says, and I go to sneak off. "Katya, I am not done talking to you," my mother snaps as I go to turn and make a run for it and leaving my father to fend for himself.

"And now Katya has detention with him tomorrow."

"Detention?" my father asked, his head turning to look at me while I was looking for an escape at the door.

 "It's a bit odd for an Alpha to be doing teacher duties," Come to think of it. It was a little strange that he was leaving the packhouse just to watch me sit through lunch. How boring, I thought to myself. 

"You need to be more careful. We can't have Alpha breathing down our necks for you misbehaving. What if he finds out you have no wolf before we have proven you useful to the pack?" My father says.

 The same bloody lecture. This wouldn't be an issue if they didn't lie and just told him the truth.

Now, if we get kicked out, it will be my fault, as if I haven't got enough stress on my shoulders with changing schools and trying to fit in. I was already trying to be invisible amongst the pack; maybe it would be better for everyone if I just disappeared. I was feeling like a burden on my family. Some dirty little secret they were ashamed of.

"Okay, can I go now?" I ask, wanting to be on my own to be just me and not the Beta's daughter, not the freak, just Katya.

"Yes, you can go, but seriously Kat, this is it, we fuck this up; we are rogue. You know packs don't like to have wolf-less pack members," my father says, reminding me of my pathetic situation once again.