“I’m sorry. You’re my oldest friend. My best friend.” She looked at the ground. “I apologize.”

“It’s not me you need to apologize to.”

Her gaze met his again, but she shook her head. She kicked chairs from her path as she stormed out of the cafeteria.

I slumped into Dastien. He wrapped an arm around my waist and looked down at me. His smile made me giggle. It was the same one from the night of the party—the one I hadn’t seen since I woke at St. Ailbe’s. It made him deadly gorgeous. I reached up to touch his face.

Meredith grabbed my arm and pulled me away from him. “Maybe a little less intense on the shushing next time. You’ve turned the poor girl to pudding.”

I whined as she tugged me away from Dastien.

“Come on, Tess,” she said. “Everyone’s going to be coming in here soon for a pre-sundown dinner. We should get out of here before people see the mess and start hounding you. Plus, I think you could use a cold shower.”

I stared back at Dastien as she dragged me out the cafeteria doors. He bent over, picking up pieces of the table. The only thing I knew about him was that we had the same odd taste in music and that his butt looked really awesome in those jeans. There was so much I didn’t know about him. And I really wanted to know everything.

As if he could feel me staring, he looked at me and winked.

“Get me out of here before I do something really embarrassing,” I said.

When we got back to the dorm, Meredith did as she promised and shoved me fully dressed into an ice cold shower. I screeched as the water came down and jumped out of the way.

“What the hell was that for?”

“You actually let me put you in the shower. That should tell you something about how you were acting.”

I turned the hot water on full blast and closed the shower curtain. “It was like my brain capacity went from smartish to total dimwit in five seconds flat.”

“You can thank Dastien for that. He over did it on calming your wolf. I hear it’s like being drunk.”

“Remind me to never get drunk.” I shed my soaked clothes and stepped into the now steaming spray. My mind and body were out of my control. That was enough to chill me to the core.

***

Friday I woke up completely groggy. The sirens had gone off nearly every hour. I desperately wanted to look out the window, but we were under strict orders not to look. Plus, I wasn’t going for a repeat, but worry for Dastien kept me up most of the night.

I probably should’ve known something was up when I saw Mr. Hoel at breakfast in the morning, but ignorance was bliss. He was the President of the Board and, as such, had decided that all us youngins needed a three-hour lecture about the situation on campus as it were.

There were more than a few nasty looks shot my way when news hit in my first period class. It seemed like he was using my example of getting snatched from the dorm for his talk. It was going to eat up everyone’s—except for the Freshmens’—martial arts class. With vampires close by, that was the last class that anyone wanted to skip. Even for a day.

I was with them on that, but I didn’t mind skipping Were history, which was kind of interesting-ish, or metaphysics, which seemed like a load of hogwash. This week’s metaphysics lessons comprised trying to make magic have a scientific edge. I wasn’t sure that any amount of rhetoric would convince me chemistry and spells were synonymous.

After lunch, we all piled into the gym. Folding chairs had been lined up and a podium sat in the front of them. I hadn’t been in a room—other than the cafeteria—with the whole school before. Spread out across the cafeteria I didn’t get much of a sense at how many people actually went to the school, but all in this room it felt both bigger and smaller. Smaller because of the number of people—there couldn’t be much more than a couple hundred of us. And bigger because all the energy of the pack together made it feel like there were well over a thousand in the room.

Mr. Dawson, Sebastian, Donovan, and Dastien stood in the back of the room. Dastien and Donovan laughed at something Mr. Dawson said. There was really way too much hotness going on back there. The laughing only made them that much more attractive. Those two really didn’t need the bonus points.

I found a chair between Meredith and Adrian. Chris was still keeping his distance from me after Dastien’s freakout. I didn’t blame him, but it chafed.

Once we were all settled, Mr. Dawson walked up and introduced Mr. Hoel. “Rupert Hoel is the head of the school board here at St. Ailbe’s. He wanted to speak to you all about the vampire attacks on the school and the repercussions they could have on student life. I hope you’ll all give him the attention he deserves.”