Chapter six

Something happened on Friday afternoon.

I was walking down the main hall toward the library when Mia appeared from a side corridor. She had her bag over one shoulder and her grey eyes locked on me the moment she saw me.

I kept walking, looking straight ahead and pretending I hadn't seen her.I almost made it.Her foot slid out just as I passed her.I didn't even have time to put my hands out. One second I was walking, the next the floor was near my face. My knees hit the hard tiles with a crack that made several nearby students wince.

My bag flew open and my books scattered across the floor.

Laughter came next, immediate and loud."Oops," Mia said above me.I pressed my lips together and reached for my books. My knee was throbbing with stinging pain. I could feel something warm and wet soaking through my tights. I was bleeding."Careful, Charlotte," Eva said sweetly. "The floors are slippery."

There was more laughter.I gathered my books as fast as I could with my hands shaking and stuffed them back into my bag, and stood up. I didn't look at Mia. I didn't look at anyone.

I just started walking again, each step sending a sharp sting up from my knee.

The laughter followed me down the hall.I turned the corner, ran down to a quiet corner and finally stopped, leaning against the wall and looking down at my knee.

The tights were torn and blood was seeping through, a slow dark patch spreading against the white fabric.I sucked in a breath and went to the bathroom to take off my tights.It was fine. It wasn't deep.

I had survived worse.I straightened up and started toward the library again.Halfway there, I heard running footsteps behind me. I turned.Isaac was coming down the hall fast with his blazer open and his jaw tight.

He looked like someone who had been in the middle of something else entirely and had suddenly been pulled in a completely different direction against his will.He stopped in front of me and his eyes went straight to my knee.

"I'm fine," I said before he could speak."You're bleeding.""I know. It's not serious."

His jaw worked. "Mia....""I know who did it."

I pulled my bag higher on my shoulder. "You don't have to do anything.""Charlotte....""Isaac." I looked up at him. His eyes were dark. "How did you even know? You were all the way across the school."

He said nothing.

But I already knew the answer.

The bond.

He had felt it. From wherever he had been, doing whatever he had been doing, he had felt my knee hit that floor. I didn't know whether to be amazed or horrified."You can't keep doing this," I whispered. "You can't keep running to me every time something happens.

People are going to notice.""I don't care if they notice.""I do." My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. "I'm the one who has to live here, Isaac. I'm the one who has no wolf and no protection and no name that means anything.

When you walk away I'm still here. Do you understand that?"

Something changed in his expression. He looked at me for a long moment.Then he reached into his blazer pocket and held something out to me. It was a small square packet. A wound seal from the nurse's kit.

"For your knee," he said quietly.

I took it without touching his hand."Thank you," I said.

I turned and walked away.I made it all the way to the library before I let myself lean against the shelves in the empty back row and press my hand over my eyes.The warm pull in my chest hadn't faded the entire time. 

It hadn't faded at all.****The swimming contest was on Saturday morning.

The whole school turned out for it. Students lined the bleachers around the pool, loud and excited, waving handmade signs for their favorite swimmers.

The air smelled like chlorine and popcorn from the stand someone had set up near the entrance.I hadn't planned to come.

But Kate had practically dragged me by the arm, saying I spent too much time alone in the library and it wasn't healthy.

I didn't have the energy to argue so I let her pull me into a seat near the middle of the bleachers.

The boys swim team was already warming up in the pool below.

Lane was doing lazy backstrokes near the far end. A few other boys were stretching on the poolside.

Isaac stood apart from the others the way he always did.

He was at the edge of the pool with his arms crossed over his chest, listening to Coach run through something on a clipboard. His swim shorts were dark blue. 

His shoulders were broad, muscular and relaxed.I looked away before I could think anything else."This is going to be so good," Kate said beside me, pulling her jacket tighter. "Lane told me they've been training for weeks.""Mm," I said.I was scanning the bleachers out of habit. Looking for Mia and looking for Lydia.I found them both.

They were sitting together. Three rows above us and to the right, Mia and Lydia sat side by side. Mia was talking and Lydia was listening with her arms folded and her blue eyes moving slowly across the crowd. She hadn't found me yet.My mouth went dry.So it had happened already.

Mia had made her move and Lydia had accepted. Two days. That was all it had taken.I sank a little lower in my seat."You okay?" Kate asked."Fine” I askedThe contest started and I tried to focus on it. 

I really did. But my eyes kept drifting upward toward Mia and Lydia, watching the way they leaned toward each other between events, watching the way Lydia's eyes continued to sweep the crowd.

It was during the third heat that I noticed my bag was gone.I had put it under the bleacher seat beside my feet.

I reached down for it between events and my hand found nothing. I looked down. There was only empty floor. I stood up and looked behind the seat, under the row in front of me.Nothing there. "Kate, did you see my bag?"

She looked down at the floor. "It was there a minute ago."I stood up fully and looked around. A girl two seats away caught my eye and quickly looked at the pool.

She had seen something."Excuse me," I said to Kate and squeezed past the knees of the people beside me.I found my bag at the end of the row near the exit, sitting against the wall like someone had kicked it there.

I grabbed it and unzipped it quickly, checking for my purse, my phone.Everything was there.But when I pulled out my history textbook to check it, something fell out from between the pages onto my lap.

A leaf.

It was small and dark green. Almost black at the edges.I froze.Wolvesbane!Someone had slipped a wolvesbane leaf between the pages of my book.For some seconds, I just stared at it.

Then the burning started.

It was slow at first, creeping up from my fingertips where they had touched the pages around it, spreading across my palm like something invisible pressing a hot iron to my skin.I shoved the book back into my bag and stood up fast.I needed water.

I pushed through the exit doors and half walked, half ran down the corridor toward the nearest bathroom, cradling my hand against my chest.

The burning was getting worse, climbing toward my wrist now, and I could feel the familiar weak, heavy feeling starting in my legs that always came with wolvesbane exposure.

I couldn't break down here.

Not in front of everyone.

I shoved through the bathroom door and went straight to the sink, twisting the tap on full and thrusting my hand under the cold water.It didn't help.I already knew it wouldn't. Water didn't stop wolvesbane.

It spread it. But my brain wasn't working properly from the pain and I had done it before I thought. Now the burning was moving faster, up my arm, toward my shoulder.