#Chapter 7: The Bonfire

Third Person POV

The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. Then nothing.

Derek pulled it from his ear and stared at the screen. Call Failed. He tried again. Same result. A third time.

It took him four attempts to understand.

She had blocked him.

His jaw clenched until the muscles in his neck went taut. The team went quiet around him. Someone cleared his throat. Nobody collected the money.

She had blocked him. The girl who answered his texts in nineteen seconds. The girl who had never, not once in three years, refused him anything. She had blocked his number and left him standing here with an audience.

"So..." one of the guys started.

"Shut up."

He shoved his phone into his gym bag and yanked the zipper hard enough to jam it. His hands were shaking. Not from sadness. From the fury of being told no by someone who'd never said no before.

She was angry about Brielle. Fine. She'd found something she wasn't supposed to see and she was throwing a tantrum. Let her throw it. She'd calm down in a day or two, unblock him, and come crawling back the way she always did. She didn't have a wolf. She didn't have status. She didn't have a single person at this school who would take her if he let go. She needed him. She had always needed him. Where else was she going to go?

He walked off the field without paying. Nobody asked him to.

Lila's POV

That evening, Gemma found me at my desk with a half-finished essay and a pen between my teeth.

"You're not seriously studying right now." She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "The bonfire starts in an hour."

"I don't have anything to wear." I didn't look up. "I'll just embarrass myself."

"You will absolutely not." She crossed the room and closed my laptop. "I'm doing your hair and we're going."

From the other bed, our suitemate groaned and pulled her blanket over her head. She'd been running a fever since noon, her face flushed and miserable. "Take my dress," she said, muffled. "The new one on my chair. I just bought it and I am not letting it go to waste."

The dress was ivory with thin straps and a fitted waist. It showed my collarbones and fell just above my knees. It was nicer than anything I owned. My roommate curled the ends of my hair and painted my lips a color she called ambitious nude and when I looked in the bathroom mirror I barely recognized the girl looking back.

"Perfect," she said. "Let's go find you some trouble."

The bonfire was roaring when we arrived. The flames climbed high enough to light the whole clearing and I felt the heat on my face from thirty feet away. The air smelled like smoke and pine and cheap cologne. Students clustered in groups everywhere, girls in dresses, boys in suits and borrowed blazers, everyone holding drinks and laughing too loud over the music. The bass from the speakers vibrated in my ribs.

I tugged at the strap of the borrowed dress. It fit but it wasn't mine and I was very aware of that fact. My roommate linked her arm through mine and pulled me forward.

Then the crowd near the front shifted. Girls started screaming. Not frightened screams. The kind that came with grabbing each other's arms and rising onto tiptoe.

Professor Aldrich Awalked into the clearing.

He wore a black tailcoat with satin lapels that caught the firelight. His tie was a perfect Windsor knot against a white shirt. He was taller than anyone around him by half a head and broader by a full shoulder width, and he moved through the crowd like it wasn't there. His jaw was set, his posture straight, his expression uninterested in being admired.

Gemma's nails dug into my forearm. "Oh my God," she whispered. "He came. He never comes to these."

"Why not?"

"Because he doesn't need to." She was still whispering even though we were fifty feet away. "His family is old money — like, generations of it. He's running for president after his teaching contract ends. His entire life is meetings and elections and expanding the pack's reach. He doesn't have time for parties."

I watched him accept a glass from a passing server without making eye contact. Even from here, I could feel it. That pull. Something about the way he moved made my mouth go dry and I hated myself for noticing.

"Tonight," Gemma said, gripping my arm harder, "every girl in this school is going to lose her mind."

The dance lottery was the main event. Partners were drawn by Alpha-ranked teachers and students from a glass bowl. If an Alpha drew your name, you danced. No exceptions. No refusals. That was the rule.

Near the bonfire, a cluster of girls whispered and pushed each other, fixing their hair, adjusting straps. Brielle Brielle stood at their center, her glossy dark hair pinned up, her red dress fitted like armor. Her followers fussed around her.

"She'll definitely get the professor," one of them said. "Or at least the captain."

"Obviously. She always gets the best partners."

Brielle tipped her chin with a practiced smile. "They're both wonderful," she said. "I'd have such a hard time choosing."

One of her girls spotted me and nudged the others. They looked me up and down. The borrowed dress, the uncertain posture, the absence of any wolf anyone could sense. Their mouths curled.

"Don't get your hopes up, sweetheart," one of them said. "This isn't the library. Why don't you go back to writing your little papers?"

Another one covered her mouth. "Can you imagine? A wolfless girl at the bonfire dance. Who would even draw her?"

I didn't answer. Gemma opened her mouth to say something sharp but I squeezed her arm. It wasn't worth it. I turned toward the bonfire and told myself the heat on my face was from the flames.

The announcer stepped forward with the glass bowl. Names were drawn. Partners were assigned. Girls shrieked or groaned or clutched each other's hands. Brielle's name was not called. Her smile tightened by degrees.

Then the announcer paused. Looked at his paper. Looked again.

"We have a duplicate," he said. "Two Alpha draws — same partner."

The clearing went still.

He read the names. The captain. The professor.

Both had drawn me.