Chapter 44

KATHERINE

“That party was amazing,” Priyanka said cheerily while we took off our jewelry and my brows creased.

“It was?”

“I found it boring,” Josie added, a small frown on her face. “I think I dozed off during the Dean’s speech.” Her frown deepened before she shot me an apologetic look for the nth time this night. “I’m so sorry I abandoned you, Kath. I suck.”

“It’s fine, Josie.”

“The party was amazing,” Priyanka repeated and I shot her a look again before Lenore spoke.

“Her brother didn’t come.”

“Oh,” Josie and I muttered in unison before I snorted.

“Really, it was amazing. I mean, not having to see his face…” She took a deep breath and shook her head sideways with a smile on her face, like she was savoring the memory, before a small frown crept onto her face. “That ‘fool’ wouldn’t stop asking where Yash was though.”

“That ‘fool’ is your younger brother,” Lenore said with a laugh and I gave Priyanka an incredulous look.

“Oh, you should have heard him whining. ‘Where’s Yash? I thought Yash was going to be here. Is he not coming?’ Ugh. I don’t want to see him here during the anniversary.”

“Liar. You cried when he didn’t come to visit us in school last year after you told him not to,” Lenore replied.

“I did ‘not’!”

They began a back and forth of ‘You did’ and 'I did not’ after that and I smiled at the exchange, remembering my younger brother. I couldn’t wait for the day of the school’s anniversary to come so I could see him… I hoped the school would issue an invitation to my pack.

While taking off my dress, I remembered that Lenore and I had left the one Poppy threw a drink at in the ballroom’s restroom and I glanced at her. “Lenore, we forgot the dress.”

“No. It’s at the dry cleaners. The woman that brought the dress went to get it from the restroom after we left it.”

“Oh–” I wanted to say ‘thank you’ again, but I snapped my mouth shut when she shot me a look because after her parents left us, she told me to stop thanking her so much.

“Ah, that’s right. I heard Poppy threw a drink at you,” Priyanka said and I nodded while frowning at the memory, especially the part where I ran to the balcony and cried, before Theo’s words came back to mind.

‘No one will respect you if you don’t stand up for yourself.’

“She won’t be bothering anyone for a while now,” Priyanka added.

“How do you know that?” I asked because I expected her to be up in my face again on Monday.

“She got a nice high five in public and was thrown out. She wouldn’t want to draw any attention to herself for quite a while. She’s probably dying in her room right now.”

‘Ah, that’s right.’

Priyanka and Josie were spending the night in our room so after we all changed into comfortable clothes, we climbed into Lenore’s bed with her. “What’s going on? Why are you all climbing into my bed?” she asked, shooting us a confused look.

“Isn’t this a sleepover?”

“Why don’t you all climb into Katherine’s bed then?”

“It’ll be better if we all sleep in the same bed,” I replied and Josie agreed as we proceeded to make ourselves comfortable in her bed.

“How? Why?” she asked and when no one responded, she heaved a sigh. “You guys–”

“Shh.” Priyanka pressed a finger to Lenore’s lips. “Let’s watch a horror movie. Josie, grab Lenore’s laptop. Why are there no TVs in the room though?”

“I know, right.” Josie got up from the bed and grabbed the laptop before coming back while Lenore heaved a sigh again. “So… what should we watch?”

****

I was beginning to feel a little bit bad for Poppy. Just a little.

I pressed my lips together as I watched a blonde girl dump a drink on her head from behind, something that I had seen happen to her three times today, in the quad. Poppy didn’t say anything, she just sat down there and took it while looking like an innocent victim as some students in the quad laughed. It was kinda brutal.

“Who’s Satomi?” I asked Chelsea as we walked out of the quad. That was the girl Poppy’s drink had accidentally hit while Poppy was bullying someone else yesterday night and though I didn’t know the kind of person she was, I intended to keep my distance from her because sheesh! Poppy was going through the wringer. And all of the girls that hung around her had left her! They’d been behaving like they didn’t know who she was.

“She’s from one of the top fifteen packs, I don’t know which one exactly, but its name is Shadow Rock. She’s the Alpha’s daughter and her uncle is Aziel Castellan.”

“Oh!” Aziel Castellan was a member of the Administration. “Wow.”

“It’s going to be like that till they find something or someone else to focus on,” Chelsea said, gesturing at Poppy who was now heading out of the quad with her gaze fixed on the floor. Her shoulders were shaking and I couldn’t tell if she was crying or just shivering because of the cold weather, but if I was her, I’d definitely be crying… Geez, I better not upset Lenore in public.

“So how was the dinner?” Chelsea asked, snapping me out of my thoughts of the entire school coming after me if I upset someone at the top of the hierarchy, and I blinked at her before remembering that she’d told me she didn’t attend the dinner because she didn’t have ‘that kind’ of dress.

“Ah, it was boring. The only notable thing was the Satomi and Poppy thing… and the food.”

Chelsea giggled at that before saying, “I heard you sat at Dark Moon’s table.”

I drew my brows together. ‘People are talking about that?’

“Yeah, I did,” I replied and a small smile crept onto her face as she stared at me.

“I wonder how you got roomed with Lenore.”

It took me a couple of seconds to process that and when I did, I furrowed my brows even more as I wondered how it happened too. Based on how this school treats hierarchy, she should be roommates with someone close to her ‘level’, so why did I end up as her roommate instead? Was it a fluke?

I kept thinking about it as Chelsea and I turned onto a path that would take us to our dorms. There were a couple of water elementalists on the path, using their element to create a heart made of water around their friend who was taking pictures in front of a fountain, and on my way past them, my foot suddenly caught on something and I grabbed onto the person closest to me to stop myself from going down. ‘That person’ was one of the water elementalists and my sudden action caused her to release the water shape she was holding in the air above the girl taking pictures, drenching her.

‘Oh God, no!’

“What the hell?!” the drenched girl shrieked while her friends turned to see what had happened and just as I opened my mouth to quickly apologize, ice-cold wetness smacked me in the face. No, not just my face, it was all over… I was completely soaked.

‘Oh my God,” I heard Chelsea mutter while the elementalist that I’d grabbed to steady myself drew the water from her soaked friend’s hair and clothes, making her dry once again.

“Are you crazy?”

“She didn’t mean to,” Chelsea said, sounding like she was about to start panicking, while I apologized again, “I’m sorry I didn’t know that would happen.”

“Didn’t know my foot! It seems like you lower ranks are getting a backbone!”

“Come on, Dakota,” a familiar voice said and I glanced in the direction it had come from to see Blake walking up to us with a small frown on his face. “She said she didn’t mean to.”