Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
I glance at the floor where the panties dropped when he lost control of the use of his fingers. I point. “Give me those,” I say to Seb.
Seb complies, picking up the panties and searching my face as he hands them to me. I’m sure my behavior seems like a complete one-eighty. My usual aim in this class is taunting our substitute teacher not defending her.
I hold them up. Everything in me is hardened and mean. “What are you saying about these?”
The part that throws me off is the way Carlotta’s face drains of color when she sees the panties.
Are these her panties? Eric did tell Seb to smell them.
I shove them in my back pocket, trying to get control of my wolf’s rage.
He didn’t touch her. No way.
My mind is going wild, though. What if he got to her after I did? No. I don’t believe it.
Besides, if he had, she wouldn’t have been wearing panties.
So, what the fuck?
I turn my attention back to Eric, who I fear I will genuinely murder.
I bang his head once more and punch him in the kidney. “Tell Ms. James what you’re saying about her.”
“I’m sorry!” Eric yelps. “I said we had sex. I’m an asshole, okay?”
I watch Carlotta’s face transform into shock then outrage. But does it mean she didn’t have sex with him? Or did she?
Fuck, I’m so off-balance here. I don’t know if I can’t trust any of my thoughts about that female.
“Both of you, to the principal’s office. Now,” she snarls.
My gaze meets Carlotta’s and locks. Color has returned to her face through two bright spots high on her cheeks. Anger flashes in her golden gaze. “Now, Asher.”
I gotta hand it to her. She knows how to infuse alpha command in her tone for such a petite shifter. It doesn’t affect me physically, but she sure sounds like she wields deadly force behind it.
I don’t want to let go of Eric, but what else can I do? He confessed and apologized. Unless I’m actually going to kill him, the fight is over. Reluctantly, I lift my vise-like hold on his head, then grip him under the armpit to haul him to stand.
I stalk out of the class, grabbing my backpack on the way out the door. Outside the classroom, I turn to give Carlotta another look.
She’s watching me with–is it misgiving? Regret?
Well, she should be sorry.
I hope she’s spent as many nights awash in misery as my mom and I have for what she did to us.
Lotta
I tap on Principal Olsen’s door even though his secretary told me he was waiting for me.
I’m a teacher now–an adult, I try to remind myself because I’m feeling very much like a naughty school girl. Well, I did fuck up. The adult thing is to own it completely.
Unless he doesn’t know what happened. In which case, I should keep my mouth shut. Ack–I don’t know how to play this!
“Carlotta.” His gaze is disapproving to say the least. “Have a seat.”
I sit in the chair opposite him and cross my legs.
“I came in this morning to find your clothing strewn throughout the hallway. Care to explain?”
My face burns hot. Fate, I hope he assumed it was because I shifted and not that I had hot and heavy sex with someone in the school.
“I am so sorry. I had a…mishap last night.”
“Of what nature?”
“This is really embarrassing, but the truth is, I haven’t shifted since I left for college.” I force my hands to stop fidgeting in my lap by holding them tightly together. “After the first few months, I found the full moons actually weakened my energy and life force. But last night while I was painting here, I heard the pack howls, and my wolf awoke. It was like I was a prepubescent teen again–I had no control over the shift. I ran to get out of the school. When I returned, I discovered I’d locked myself out. I planned to come in early to rectify the clothing in the hall situation, but somehow, I guess as a result of my first shift in almost five years, I completely overslept.”
I leave out the part about realizing my fated mate is here, in Wolf Ridge. A member of this pack. What are the chances? Of all the hundreds of thousands of wolves scattered across the globe, my fated mate would be from my hometown. The place I am desperate to get out of.
Principal Olsen frowns, exuding that alpha power and sternness that makes him a good principal to a school full of wolf shifters. “You should have contacted me last night when you realized you were locked out.”
“Yes, sir.” I want to throw out the excuse that my phone was locked inside as well, but I could have gone to my parents’ house to borrow one of theirs. I just didn’t want to admit to my mom anything of what had transpired.