“Jade, he loves you,” she said, solemnly, giving me one of those looks that said that I should have already known it.
Ha! Loves me. What a joke. I didn’t even bother to acknowledge that comment, and thankfully, Marcy didn’t push it. If Dominic loved me so much, then where the hell had he been all this time? Ignoring me. That’s where. Or playing cruel pranks on me and then pretending he couldn’t remember my name. Sure, the cruelness wasn’t only directed at me, it was directed at all the outsiders, but still … one weekend of playing nice didn’t make up for all the nastiness.
We broke through the trees, stepping off the gravel path and into the parking lot, just as the warning bell rang out. The lot was full of empty cars with only a few stragglers rushing into the school.
“We need your car back,” Marcy said, as we both began to sprint across the parking lot.
The hallways were packed with students rushing to their lockers, or darting into homerooms. Marcy and I quickly parted, both mumbling ‘See you,’ before taking off to our lockers.
Dominic’s locker was only a few down from mine, and I heard his laughter even before I rounded the corner and he came into view. He was leaning against the wall of metal, with Aidan and they were laughing. Laughing!
I was stunned, gawking at them. Aidan was the first to notice me, and he smiled and winked at me. The way he looked at me was as if we shared a secret. And darn it, but those pesky butterflies started to wake up in my stomach. What was it about this guy that made my nerves all jumpy? He was cute, he had helped me out, but really, this was a bit ridiculous. I wasn’t, and would not become, one of those boy crazy girls just because a boy winked at me, even if he did have a knee-melting smile.
Aidan hadn’t shaved. That was the very first thing I noticed after getting over the shock of seeing him acting all buddy-buddy with Dominic. He was in dark blue jeans and a deep green hoodie that almost looked black. His hair was messy, not in a messy style, but just messy, flipping up at the sides. Everything about him, the way he held himself, the way he dressed, said that he didn’t care what people thought. And that alone made him, well, it made him seriously attractive. I loved confidence, and he emitted it like a tidal wave.
I snapped my mouth shut, realizing that my jaw had started to drop, and steeled myself, letting the thick doors within me slam shut, sealing off my emotions. It was something my father had taught me. ‘Just imagine big doors, honey,’ he had said. ‘And when you want to hide, just pull them closed.’
It worked for about two seconds.
All the doors were sealed tight. I took a deep breath, gripped my travel mug a bit tighter, and I started down the hallway again toward my locker, focusing on my footfalls instead of staring at them. I could figure out why they were suddenly friends later.
I focused on walking, counting the tiles as I went. Anything for a distraction. I didn’t get far. A pair of bright red heels came into my line of vision and I looked up. Erika. The black leggings and a black, frilly empire cut shirt made her look extra-thin. Her pouty lips were painted to match her shoes, which, personally, I thought seemed like way too much effort for school, and her jet-black hair fell straight over her shoulders.
“I’m only going to tell you this once,” Erika said, drumming her fingernails on her hips. “Stay away from them.”
My eyebrows lifted so high it felt as if they were in the middle of my forehead. I didn’t have to ask who she was talking about. It was clear by the way she stood in front of Dominic and Aidan, as if she was trying to block them from my view. “And if I don’t?” I asked, with a strangled laugh. I don’t know what made me say it, but it came out before I could stop it.
She made a tsk sound and wagged her finger from side to side. “It’s really not up for debate, Jade. I know you’ve been sneaking around, trying to get Dom’s attention. And I saw you checking out Aidan. They’re mine. Both of them.”
Erika held my stare and she looked … threatened, as if I was standing in her way and all she had to do was knock me over and the prize would be hers. And that was confusing as all hell. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Aidan was watching me intently with a half smirk and curious eyes, and Dominic, well, Dominic looked as if he was about to burst out laughing. I couldn’t say if it was at me, or at Erika. His eyes were darting too quickly between us to really tell.
I smirked. “We’ll see about that.”
Her jaw dropped, and I stepped around her, feeling almost giddy from the dirty look she shot me, and I went straight for my locker. I know it was a horrible thing to think, but honestly, I was absolutely thrilled (and royally pissed off) that one of the she wolves was considering me a threat, even if I really had no clue why.
~ AIDAN ~
Jade was livid when she stormed past me and it was the cutest thing I had ever seen. It was also the most confusing thing I had ever seen. She shot me (or maybe — hopefully — it was to Dominic) an ice-cold glare. It was penetrating, and commanding, and my inner-wolf clawed at my stomach, wanting to run after her and make her happy.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Dominic said.
My blood ran cold. He couldn’t know that she was making me crazy, none of them could. If they knew … “What’s that?” I asked, glad that my voice sounded uncaring, and I glanced his way.
He laughed. “That she’s adorable when she’s mad.”
“That she is,” I agreed, watching as Jade disappeared around the corner and Erika scowled after her. My heart started to beat again, and the knot in my stomach loosened. He didn’t have a clue. Who was that girl? The question echoed through my mind again, relentlessly. I just didn’t get it. I could take down an alpha, command an entire pack of twenty-nine werewolves to submit and grovel at my feet, but this … this … human girl could make me cringe with just one glance.
Erika turned to us with a big grin on her face and started over. I snapped my gaze to meet hers and said, “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” It came out harsher than I had intended, but it worked, and without a word, she backed up a step and then took off down the hall.
“Stay away from her,” Dominic said, casually, as if he was talking about the weather, and not really trying to tell me what to do. I had heard the line more than I could count in the last forty-eight hours, and each time I heard it, it only made her all the more interesting.
“That’s her call to make, not yours,” I retorted, keeping my tone just as light. He still refused to enlighten me about his obsession with Jade, and spending the weekend following her around hadn’t helped me figure it out either. The most I had gotten from that was confirmation that she missed him.
Dominic pushed off from the locker, and stretched his arms lazily over his head. He smiled a little. “She wouldn’t even look at you if she knew who you were.”
The second bell rang, signaling that we were late for homeroom, and we started down the hallway, neither of us in any rush to get to class. “Why are you so concerned about her?” I asked.
“I’m not,” he said, cutting me a murderous sideways look.
I chuckled. “Not sure if I believe that this is your I could care less face.”
Dominic stopped just outside our homeroom. The morning announcements began, and the distorted buzz of our principal’s voice droned through the old speakers. “She’s lost enough to this pack,” he said in a low whisper, just barely audible over the announcements. “She doesn’t need to lose more than she already has.” His voice, his body language, his scent, everything about him said he was guilty. I just wished I knew why.
I pulled the classroom door open and gestured for him to go in. “You’re really going to go through with this class stuff, aren’t you?” he asked with a huff. “You know I don’t need a babysitter.”
I grinned. “Think of it as bonding time.”
CHAPTER 10
~ JADE ~
Erika watched me. I felt her eyes burning a trail along my back in homeroom, and then in English, and still in Math. Every move I made, she was there, watching. And it was starting to drive me batty. But she wasn’t the only one that watched me. So did Dominic.
And I watched Aidan, if only to piss them off. Well that and I couldn’t bring myself to directly look at Dominic.
What was it about this guy that had them on edge? I really wanted to know. When Dominic wasn’t staring at me, he was watching Aidan, and Erika … Well, Erika looked as if at any moment she was going to cock her leg and pee on him to mark her territory. Did female dogs do that? Well, if they did, I was sure she would do it soon. The whole thing was starting to make me feel a little sick.
Erika wasn’t the only she wolf acting like that, though. Linda, Becca, and Tiffany were all following Aidan around, giving dirty looks to any girl that looked his way. And they were snapping at each other just as much. They stared each other down, and shoved each other around. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen. Weren’t girls usually more tactful than this? What happened to the snide comments and mean girl manipulation?
Aidan took it all in stride. It was as if he didn’t even notice. He talked to everyone. He was friendly. He smiled. Everyone seemed to like him, especially the pack, and darn it, but I did, too. And it made my stomach sink. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with anything that would get the pack away from him. It was clear that they were recruiting him, and the more I thought about it, the more the sinking feeling in my stomach grew.
But the weirdest thing was that no one was talking about Ray. The police still hadn’t said anything. His death hadn’t been in the paper, and as far as I knew, the pack hadn’t had any kind of a service. The only thing that I managed to find out was that Ray’s wife had vanished. Their house was empty. It was almost as if neither of them had ever existed.
I still hadn’t talked to Dominic, but then, he hadn’t made an effort to talk to me either, and I was beginning to think it was better that way. All I was getting from him was a bunch of what I thought were supposed to be meaningful glances, except I didn’t know what the meanings were. I figured he was trying to make a point, but the joke was on him, because whatever the point was, I wasn’t getting it. I was pretty much ready to chalk up the weekend to a weak moment. It was probably better to just forget it. And if he had stopped watching me, I would have done just that.