Chapter 69

KATHERINE.

“Does Blake have a brother?” Helena asked, gently nudging me with her elbow while grinning at me, and I stopped sipping my milkshake before heaving a sigh.

“Yeah, two. Yeah, they're good looking. Yeah, they already have mates.”

“Damn it!”

I rolled my eyes at her reaction before Josie raised her brows at me, silently asking why Helena wanted to know that. “She thinks Blake is hot.”

“Ah,” Josie muttered, not surprised, while Helena corrected me, “Uh, I know Blake is hot.”

Again I rolled my eyes and resumed sipping my milkshake as I returned my attention to the people doing laps in the pool. Chelsea was one of them and we waved at each other when she got to the end before getting out of it.

The four of us – Josie, Helena, Tiffany, and I – were in the pool room. My friends and I had come here because they wanted to use the jacuzzi while Kit went with Aunt Vivian, who arrived a couple of minutes ago, to get breakfast and we’d met Josie here – she was here because her sister was swimming. We were currently sitting in the stands because my friends didn’t have swimsuits to change into but thankfully, Josie had some new ones and was willing to give it to them. They were being brought over now.

“Jo,” Josie’s younger sister called out as she came up to the stands and Josie got up from the bench to go talk to her while I texted my aunt to know if she and Kit were still at the dining hall. Moments later, she responded, letting me know they were on their way to the recreation center.

“Oh my God. Is that Poppy?” Tiffany asked, shock evident in her voice, and I followed her line of sight to the familiar girl with the platinum blonde hair.

“Unfortunately,” I muttered with a sigh and Tiffany and Helena frowned.

“What is she doing here?”

“She’s on the swim team.”

They both jerked their heads in my direction, their eyes wide. “She’s a student?” Helena hissed and I pursed my lips as my gaze bounced between them.

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” She sounded betrayed and my shoulders sagged as I pouted.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you guys to worry.” That was the truth. The three of us had planned to go to Irving before the seer came with her prophecy about my mate and then all of a sudden, I was going to Blackwood. We’d heard stories of how mean people from higher ranking packs could be and since Blackwood was filled with those kinds of people, they had been worried I was going to get bullied. They stopped worrying when they found out I became friends with Lenore and I hadn’t wanted to make them worried again by telling them about Poppy.

“Has she been harassing you?”

“It’s not that bad,” I replied and Tiffany narrowed her eyes at me while Helena drew her brows together. ““I swear. Also, I attacked her brother yesterday.”

Their eyes widened at that again. “Noah?!” Helena all but shrieked, making Josie glance at us for a moment, and I couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out of me.

“Fuck no. Steve.”

Noah was Poppy’s twin and he attended Staerdale. He was even more vicious than Poppy was and much more violent so I wouldn’t have been able to do to him what I did to Steve because where Steve struggled to get his hair out of my grip, Noah would have had it out in an instant and proceeded to beat the hell out of me. Also, he didn’t have a ponytail so…

“Oh,” Helena muttered before Tiffany leaned even closer to me.

“Tell me you got him good,” she said and the corner of my mouth turned up as I remembered how he screamed.

“I got him good.”

She grinned and gave me a high-five while Helena shook her head before asking, “What if Poppy decides to retaliate?”

“Ah.” Even though she hadn’t attacked me when we ran into each other today, I still expected her to. Probably sometime after the anniversary ended. “She should give me at least four weeks before she does,” I said and Helena tipped her head to the side. “I’m in a combat training club. I’ll be able to properly defend myself in at least four weeks.”

“And if she wants to retaliate before then?”

“I’ll stick with Josie or Blake whenever I’m out of my dorm then.”

Helena shook her head again, obviously thinking of the different ways things could go wrong for me, while Tiffany snorted and muttered, “Loser.”

I sneered at that before wrapping my arms around Helena. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“We won’t worry if you ply us with werewolf alcohol,” Tiffany said and I groaned at the fact that she still remembered that while Josie came back to the bench with a bottle of water. “Hey, Josie. Where can we get werewolf alcohol?”

“Oh… Are you really sure you want to try it? It’s quite intense.”

“One hundred percent.”

“Okay. They don’t sell it on campus yet, but Theo always has some– Oh, there he is.”

At that last part, I immediately followed her line of sight to Theo who just walked into the pool room with Lenore and I set my mouth in a hard line. She was saying something that was making him smile and my eyes lingered on them for several moments before I looked away and Helena nudged me.

“That’s Theo?” she asked, a pleasantly surprised expression on her face, and her brows shot up when I nodded. “The one getting married to your roommate?”

“Yeah,” I muttered at the same time Josie suddenly did a spit-take of the water she was drinking, making my brows snap together, before she descended into a violent coughing fit that made me get to my feet and hurry to her side.

“Are you okay?” I asked, rubbing her back till the coughing subsided, and when she lifted her gaze to me, surprise was written all over her face.

“What?”

“Are you okay?” I repeated, thinking what she meant by that was ‘what did you say?’

“The fuck? Why’d you tell them Lenore’s getting married to Theo?”

My brows tugged together in confusion. “Uh.” I didn’t understand. “Because she is…” Was no one supposed to know?

Josie blinked at me once, twice, then suddenly burst out laughing, startling me a bit, before getting to her feet just as Theo and Lenore walked into our section. She leaned over the railing, grabbed their arms before they could walk past us and pulled them closer. “Guys! Kath thinks you two are getting married.”

“What?!” they said in unison, surprise washing over their face, before they focused their attention on me and I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

“What?”

“Why would you think that?” Lenore asked incredulously and I grew even more confused by what was going on right now.

“You were telling Priyanka about a wedding date when we went jogging.”

She screwed her face up at that. “And why’d you think I was talking about Theo?”

My gaze slid to Theo who was sporting the same expression Lenore had on her face before I scratched the back of my neck. “I–I don’t understand. Are you guys not ‘together’?”

She screwed her face up even more. “Katherine… Theo’s my cousin.”