Chapter 4: The threatening verandah guy

~ Gwen ~

Two faces appeared below the edge of the bench, looking directly at us.

There was a moment of complete stillness.

Then chaos.

They dragged us out from under that table so fast I barely had time to register what was happening, and the second my feet hit the floor I did the only reasonable thing I could think of.

I screamed.

Loud. From the bottom of my lungs. The kind of scream that comes from genuine fear and zero filter, echoing off every wall in that lab.

I was crouched under a laboratory bench in a werewolf school, I had just been discovered, and two very large boys who had turned wolves in the rink were pulling me out by my arms like I was luggage.

So yes. I screamed.

I screamed like my life depended on it, which, based on everything Elodie had told me in the last twenty minutes, it very possibly did.

The other guy who looked innocent slapped his palm over my mouth with wide eyes. "Stop," he said urgently. "Please, just stop…"

I stopped. He removed his hand carefully, like he was defusing something.

I screamed again.

His hand came back. This happened two more times before they clearly accepted that hoping I would voluntarily be quiet was not a plan that was going to work. 

Fanny produced a cloth from somewhere and they used it to muffle me and I glared at all of them over the top of it with everything I had because what else could I do.

Elodie stood to the side looking mortified.

"Jesus, Elodie," Fanny said, her voice sharp with irritation. "Where did you find this one? Why is she even in here?"

I looked around properly for the first time since being dragged out. 

The innocent looking one was studying me with open curiosity. Up close he was genuinely handsome — softer features than Yates.

"She's beautiful," he said, looking at me with a grin.

Honestly, after the morning I had just had, I needed to hear that. I felt my shoulders relax by about half an inch.

Yates moved close to me and Fanny, in all her protectiveness held his arms. 

“Yates, don’t get too close, she is only human”

Yates gaze landed on me and stayed there and I knew immediately — I could just tell by the way his expression didn't change but his eyes did — that he was thinking about the verandah. About me standing there with the curtains open and nothing on. A slow heat crawled up the back of my neck and I held his stare anyway because I refused to be the one who looked away first.

"You will not repeat anything you heard in this room," he said. His voice was even, like he was stating a fact rather than making a request. "Do you understand me?"

I nodded. Quickly and repeatedly. I wanted to be on the other side of that door more than I had ever wanted anything in my recent memory.

"If I hear anything, I know where you live,"

Fanny's head turned towards him so fast I heard her earrings swing. Her grip on his arm tightened and her eyes went sharp and narrow. "What do you mean you know where she lives?" Her voice had dropped half an octave. "Do you know her?" She looked between us, back and forth, doing very quick and very suspicious calculations behind her eyes. "Is that why you stepped in this morning when I was going to deal with her?"

"I don't know her," Yates said. He turned to Fanny and lifted her chin with two fingers, calm and practiced, like he had done it a hundred times before. "She lives near me. That is all."

Fanny's mouth closed. Her expression said she was filing that answer away for a later date when she had more information.

The innocent looking one was still watching me with that curious open expression. "Are you actually human?" he asked. "Like fully?"

I nodded.

"Then why are you here?" He seemed genuinely puzzled, not cruel about it, just honestly confused. "Did nobody warn you about what happens to humans at this school?"

My stomach dropped through the floor.

What the fuck happens to humans here? Did Elodie skip that part?

Yates looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, "If we take that off, you stay quiet. No noise, no running, no screaming. And you never say a word about anything you heard today." He paused. "Are we agreed?"

I nodded so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash.

He stepped forward and reached out and removed the cloth himself. His fingers were close to my jaw as he did it, and I felt it the second his skin made the slightest contact with mine. A strange current moved across my skin like static electricity that had somehow gotten personal.

I opened my mouth to exclaim about that electric shock but his hand came straight back up and covered my mouth before a single syllable got out.

I could not believe this man.

I stared at him over his own hand with my most withering expression fully deployed. And he stared back at me, but something had shifted in his face. He looked caught off guard.

Like something had surprised him that he had not been expecting. His eyes dropped to where his hand was covering my mouth and then he pulled it away quickly, stepped back, and looked somewhere past my left shoulder like that was a much more comfortable place to focus.

An awkward silence settled over the room.

Did I have electricity in my skin? Was that a human thing or a werewolf thing or a me specifically thing? Was I broken?

"Leave," Yates said finally. The word came out rough at the edges, with that low growl underneath it that I was starting to recognise as the sound he made when he was done with a situation.

Elodie grabbed my hand immediately and steered me towards the door and I went willingly because leaving was all I wanted.

The cool air outside hit me like relief.

Elodie walked fast, pulling me away from the building and towards a path that led further into the campus, glancing back once before she spoke.

"You must never repeat anything you heard in that room," she said, low and serious. "Not to anyone. Not even casually. Do you understand?"

"Elodie," I said, stopping and pulling my hand free. "I need you to listen to me very carefully."

She stopped and looked at me.

"I do not care about what I heard in that room," I said. "I genuinely could not care less about their staged fight or their coach or any of it. My problem is that I am enrolled in a werewolf college, and I would very much like to continue being alive. So with all due respect to your very reasonable advice…"

I turned around, walked straight to the school gate, found my car in the car park, got in, and drove like a maniac, my mind racing. 

Werewolves. My parents were rebels. I’m a Casteel. I reached the house in record time, skidding to a halt on the gravel driveway. 

I scrambled out of the car, heart thumping against my ribs. 

I just needed my passport and the black card. I’d figure out the rest later.