Chapter Ten
Beta at Aboit High
J
ules responded with, “that’s probably a bad idea,” and then set her phone down on the desk. It’d been half of an hour and Ricky still hadn’t moved. His head stayed bent over his phone while he did whatever he was doing to pass the time. Jules had tried to start a conversation once, but his hearing was either obscured by his music or he was just very selective with what he chose to hear.
A group of students came into the library on assignment. Jules kept one eye on Ricky as she helped them. She saw one older werewolf boy named Landon Reynolds approach Ricky. She eavesdropped on their conversation, it remained fairly neutral.
Jules’s attention was pulled away momentarily by her vibrating phone. “Probably so, but I’m outside.”
“Wait there,” she sent back.
Jules typed out a quick message to Belinda.
After the next bell rang, pulling the current group of students into their next class, she told Luca to go to the office. A few minutes later, Belinda returned with Luca two steps behind her. “This is very odd Jules,” she commented as she showed him into the library.
“Is it?” Luca asked.
“We don’t usually allow attractive uncles such as yourself into our school, but Jules has vouched for you,” Belinda told him.
“Did she?” Luca chuckled.
Jules tried to suppress the utter joy she felt upon seeing him, but one smile slipped through the façade. “Thank you, Bee,” she said while pointing Luca in the direction of Ricky’s turned back.
As Belinda left, Luca raised his eyebrows and pressed his lips together. Jules assumed this was his own version of being discrete. Ricky didn’t look up from his phone until Luca sat down across from him and tapped his hand on the table to get his attention. Ricky slowly pulled his headphones out of his ears. “What are you doing here?”
“A friend called,” Luca replied.
Jules’s phone vibrated again but she ignored it. Whatever it was it could wait.
Ricky looked from Luca to Jules and then back again. “This vampire is your friend,” Ricky asked skeptically.
Luca nodded. “She is.”
Jules wasn’t sure she would have gone with that approach, but Ricky was Luca’s pack member. How he handled this was his call.
“Okay, but what are you really doing here?” Ricky asked, clearly not buying the ‘you can trust her because she’s my friend’ angle.
Luca sighed. “I need to know if you are going to tell Carson or anyone else that she works here. Doing that would put her in danger, and I don’t want that.”
“So, order me not to,” suggested Ricky sarcastically. “Only Carson could demand the information from me then.”
Luca leaned forward across the table. “I don’t want to do that. Forced control is not my style. I would rather just decide that I can trust you.” Jules watched him closer. She’d never heard a man that she loved utter such a thing in her life. Yes, it was not directed at her but… Jules realized in that moment that it was true. I do love him. I love Luca Cain.
“Jules?”
Luca’s voice pulled her back to the present. She’d been, not so discreetly, staring at him.
“I’m fine,” she said and then looked anywhere but at the werewolves.
LUCA
“She’s Juliet.” Ricky’s comment took Luca by surprise.
“No, she isn’t,” Luca said, but doubted that he’d recovered enough to sound convincing.
“My name is Juliana,” Jules said.
“I know,” Luca replied, continuing to look at Ricky.
“Yes, she is.” Ricky stood, knocking into the table as he did. “You’ve been making goo-goo eyes at each other since you walked in here. You have this crazy forbidden love thing going on and you don’t want me to tell the pack your secret.”
“I don’t make goo-goo eyes,” Luca said, trying to remain calm and stretching his feet out in front of him.
“Have you seen your face?” Ricky asked rhetorically.
“Not recently,” Luca admitted a bit sarcastically. “Sit.” Luca used a little more of his Beta power than he would have liked to get Ricky to do so. However, he couldn’t take the chance that Ricky would run.
“Well it’s not hiding what you want it to,” Ricky said while he slumped back in his chair.
“I’m going to go talk to my…” Luca pointed toward Jules, “friend. Stay,” he ordered.
“Woof Woof,” Ricky snapped back angrily.
Luca walked over to Jules’s desk and leaned across it. With his elbows resting in the middle of the desk his shoulders were of equal height to Jules’s.
“What do we do now?” Jules asked, her voice below a whisper.
Luca shrugged a little. He didn’t have an answer. Not a good one anyway. “He is right. I could order him to keep quiet, but I don’t want to do it. I really hate taking away someone’s free will. It’s not right.”
A look that Luca hadn’t seen before crept across Jules’s face. She lifted her hand like she might brush some hair out of his face but pulled her hand back quickly instead. But then she smiled, picked up a pen, and scribbled something. Pulling the, now written on, sticky note off of the top of the large stack, she stuck in on the desk between his arms. It read, “I really like that about you.”
Luca chuckled.
“You two really think you can fool people?” Ricky asked. Luca had honestly momentarily forgotten he was there.
“I told you coming here was a bad idea,” she whispered.
If Luca was being honest with himself, he’d known that she was right even before he had left the Den. But he had wanted to see her, and this was as good of an excuse as any. So, as a response, he simply shrugged minutely and offered her a playfully-guilty looking expression.
She made a face that he took to mean that he was silly and maybe a bit sweet. This was, of course, true.
But what to do about Ricky? It hurt Luca to even consider ordering Ricky not to speak of Jules. However, if he couldn’t get through to the boy, it was very likely the only way to protect Jules and keep their secret safe.
Luca let out a long breath, his head hanging low for a moment. “Okay,” he finally said.
“Luca.” Jules’s hand clasped down on his arm.
“What?” He looked back up at her. He saw worry in her eyes.
“Hide.”
Luca looked over his shoulder. Through the glass, he saw Gabriel heading in the direction of the library. Luca ran back into the stacks, crouching by one of the book-filled shelves that would obscure him from the view of the front door.
“Gabriel, hi.” Jules’s cheerfulness sounded forced. “Don’t you have class right now?” This was said a little more naturally.
A class? He works here too! Luca thought.
“You haven’t been answering my messages,” the male vampire’s angry voice said a few seconds later. Luca thought that perhaps he could’ve asked her if everything was okay, rather than coming at her so accusatorily.
“I’ve been a little busy today.” Luca could hear some annoyance in Jules’s response.
“Too busy to respond to a text message?”
Jules didn’t speak.
Luca was distracted from the conversation by the sound of tentative footsteps walking across the library. He waited for Jules to call out to warn him. The sound grew closer. What was he supposed to do if Gabriel discovered him?
Luca’s gaze shot sideways when Ricky appeared. He’d backed across the library, evidently less comfortable in Gabriel’s presence than in Jules’s.
Gabriel’s voice raised.
“There is a werewolf in here, Jules. One I don’t recognize.” He spoke low enough that a human would have been unable to hear him.
“Yes, Gabriel, there is,” Luca heard Jules say, and wondered for a moment if she was going to tell Gabriel about him. But then she continued, “he’s a new student. And if I had to guess, you are scaring him. You do know you teach quite a few of them.”
Luca thought that this would shut the male vampire up. But instead, he said, “and the one sitting outside in his car. What about that one? Is he just a new student too?”
Luca and Ricky exchanged confused looks.
“What are you talking about? Who’s outside?” Jules asked, voicing Luca’s confusion.
“I don’t know. Some beast. Scrawny, glasses, overactive camera.”
“Jed,” Luca said under his breath.
“Why is he here if not for us?” Gabriel continued.
Luca was horror-stricken. Jed must have tracked one of them here. How long has he been out there? Had he seen Luca enter the school building? Had he spotted the Jeep in the parking lot? Luca’s mind was spinning as he caught sight of Ricky watching him. The kid was looking at him kind of strangely like he was trying to decide something. Then, suddenly, Ricky cleared his throat, drawing all attention in his direction, stepped away from Luca’s hiding spot and said, “he’s here for me.”
Luca’s astonishment made him sway in his crouched position.
“My mom’s dating the Alpha now. I don’t think he trusts me,” Ricky added.
Luca didn’t know how or why he was coming up with this lie but he was eternally grateful that he was.
“See, Gabriel,” said Jules. “You may, in fact, be overreacting.”
“Don’t start with me, Jules,” Gabriel spat back. Tension filled the seconds that passed. Luca held his breath. All at once, he heard footsteps recede.
“He’s pleasant,” Ricky said flatly.
Luca looked up when Jules rounded the corner, looking down at him.
“That was close,” she said.
“Too close.” Luca took the hand that she offered to help him stand. He should let go of her hand, but he didn’t.
“Why did you do that?” Luca asked the boy who was now standing a few feet away.
Ricky contemplated his answer before speaking. “I’ve decided that you can trust me.”
Luca glanced at Jules.
“Both of you,” Ricky added. “I don’t really know why, but I think I’m like on your side or whatever.”
At this, Luca smiled mischievously and tugged on the hand of Jules’s that he was still grasping. She fell into him gracefully, one hand coming to rest on his abdomen as he simply gazed down at her.
“I guess we’ve got a friend,” Jules said, looking up at him and then over at Ricky.
Ricky shrugged and blushed all at the same time.
CARSON
Carson had taken Demetria back to bed once the house had emptied out for the day. She lay snuggled against him. She felt familiar next to him. Thirty years was no time at all to a werewolf. It was true, those thirty years she had lived with the man she’d chosen over him, but he was dead now. And Carson had become the Alpha of this pack, despite her and Micha’s betrayal.
Carson saw silent tears escape from her eyes as he stroked her hair. However, he chose not to speak to her about the reason she was crying. His mind was on other things.
Jed had text to say that he’d discovered where the vampires worked. Carson couldn’t believe that the pack’s children had been in danger for years and he had not known. This oversight was a mistake that he’d carry with him. Every day they went to school, they were at risk of not returning home to their parents.
Of course, he had no intention of telling the parents this. Why worry them?
However, this vampire problem would need to be dealt with as soon as possible. Another thing that troubled him greatly was that his Beta had been seen entering that same school and had not yet reported the vampire’s location. He would have to do whatever needed to be done to find out where his Beta’s loyalties truly stood.
Carson picked the knife he always carried up off his bedside table. He caressed the silver blade, making sure not to slice himself with it.
Demetria sniffled beside him. “Why do you keep that?”
“This?” he asked holding up the knife.
She nodded.
“To hold something so deadly in my hand, to control if it kills, is the essence of power.” Like the gift granted to him over his subjects, the weapon could only do what it was meant to do with strength behind it.
“Oh,” Demetria said quietly. He patted her arm. She didn’t have the temperament to understand such things. She did, however, understand how to kiss. He leaned over, pressing his lips to hers.
GABRIEL
Gabriel passed back his student’s essays and returned to sit behind his desk. “Girls, you are not whispering as quietly as you think you are,” he said while peering over his book. “This is a literature class, which means you are to be reading, not talking.” Two giggling girls in the back of his class exchanged a few more hushed words but then quieted. Silence again overtook the room.
Gabriel looked back at his own book again but couldn’t seem to concentrate on the words he was supposedly reading. What is going on with Jules, he wondered silently to himself. The werewolf presence was far too prevalent in this town and Jules was continually ignoring the problem.
Gabriel was not blind, he knew not all werewolves were mindless beasts. In fact, he had three werewolf students in his class at this precise moment. One of them, Amy Reynolds, was one of the best students. Gabriel simply could not trust werewolves. But he was also not a monster. He’d never dream of harming an innocent: human or werewolf. And Gabriel truly believed that Amy and the others he taught day to day were still to be considered innocent, and thus were to be protected.
However, there was a reason for Gabriel’s mistrust. Years ago, Gabriel had sought solace in teaching children on a reservation out west, Eileen’s people. He lived near the reservation. Some disliked him, they called him an outsider. The elders even rejected the suggestion that he should live on the reservation as well as teach at the school. But Eileen was always kind and welcoming. It hadn’t taken much for him to fall in love with her.
Back then, he had only Jules in his life. As much as he cared for his mentor and friend, it was not enough. Finally, he saw that he needed more. He needed Eileen. However, he knew he couldn’t have her. She was human. He was never going to take that away from her. And he hadn’t.
A couple of years after he had come to the reservation, he’d gotten too close to Eileen. He decided that he would have to move on and put her from his mind. He remembered every detail of that night perfectly. He asked her to meet him in the woods nearby. He intended to tell her he was leaving, that it was better this way. When he arrived, she was nowhere to be seen. But in the distance, he heard her screams.
He’d known there were werewolves in a nearby town. Not as many as there were in Aboit, just a few families. Jules had said to leave them be, that they weren’t hurting anyone, and he had accepted this instruction whole-heartedly. The war that had raged between the species was not his war. Until that night. The night the beasts had attacked Eileen.
He’d overlooked the fact that it was the night of a full moon and she’d died because of it. He told himself that he’d done what had to be done to rescue the woman he’d fallen in love with. When he reached Eileen, Gabriel had become enraged. The wolves who cost Eileen her life had not made it out of the forest alive. Regardless of if the true cause was the power of the full moon or their choice to hunt, their werewolf natures caused them to commit this atrocity. And Gabriel had taken their lives for it.
Once Gabriel had returned to his senses, he saw that Eileen was too close to death. If he hadn’t bitten her and encouraged her to drink from his wrist, her existence would have ended that night. Her life was saved but she still carried the scars of that attack.
He regretted forcing this life on the woman he loved but she didn’t. For all of her frustration over learning to control her impulses and desires, he liked to think that she was happy in their life. She missed her aging parents, her siblings, and her tribe. He knew this, and he’d assured her that they would return one day. As soon as she could control the bloodlust, she could be with them again.
A reverberating ringing came over the loudspeaker, pulling Gabriel from his contemplations. “Alright class, please get to the end of chapter four by tomorrow and I expect to see all of you and your families at the Carnival tonight.” Then his students left in a surge of stomping feet and he smiled.
LUCA
Once Ricky had made his declaration that he could be trusted, the kid had relaxed and retreated into the confines of his cell phone screen. Luca again leaned across Jules’s desk while he and Jules whispered in low tones.
“You should go,” she said for the third time.
Their fingers had somehow become entwined as they spoke. It was becoming instinctual to need to be closer to her, to touch her. He gazed at her a moment longer before he replied. He wanted to take every inch of her in. She was so little and cute, but sexy and strong as well. He loved the light in her eyes when she looked at him. She was so much more than he had ever known before. “I know,” Luca replied yet again.
“It’s nearly lunch hour, and I have another class coming in just after.”
“Alright,” Luca conceded.
He rolled his eyes playfully and bit his lower lip. He glanced out into the empty hallway and then over his shoulder at Ricky. Facing her again, without warning, he closed the distance between them and kissed her. A giggle escaped her lips, through the kiss, and her hands rose to his neck. This perfect kiss lasted for only one fleeting moment.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said, backing away slowly. It almost hurt to pull back from her; everything in him was screaming for more.
“Go straight to the end of the hall and then turn left,” Jules instructed. “It’s the long way back to the front door but you’ll avoid Gabriel’s room.”
“I can do that.” He looked at her a moment longer and then turned away.
Luca tapped Ricky on the shoulder. The boy jumped, obviously not expecting the physical contact. “I’m leaving,” Luca told him. “Will you be okay?”
Ricky looked over at Jules and then back at Luca. “I’m good.”
“Thanks, Ricky,” Luca said again. They both owed him, and they both knew it.
“Whatever,” Ricky said, but there was no venom behind it.
“I thought you were leaving,” Jules said with a small laugh.
Luca looked over at her again. “I am.” With that, he left the library.
The long way back wasn’t that long. It was strange being inside a high school again. Things had been slightly different in the nineteen-fifties.
Once he was on the outside of the school building, Luca scanned the lot until he saw Jed. He was sitting in his beater car, looking down, taking a bite of a sandwich. Jed looked up between bites. When he saw Luca, his food slipped through his fingers making a mess of the driver’s seat. Luca headed toward the Jeep, chuckling.
Luca weaved through the lines of cars until he reached his Jeep on the far end of the lot. Once inside, he pulled out his phone. He had no new messages, which was a good sign. He hesitated only a fraction of second before he found the contact name and hit send.
The call was answered after just one ring. “Carson,” Luca began, “I’ve found her.”