Blood Of The Marked

That night, I looked for Theo in the Dining Hall at dinnertime, but he wasn’t there—even though the rest of the Darken were.

I made sure to stay away from them.

“I sort of doubt that he’s intentionally avoiding you,” Iris said over dinner, obviously trying to make me feel better.

“He’s probably just busy with something.”

“Yeah, maybe.” But even if she was right and he really was just busy, he could have at least told me when we’d seen each other in the parking lot. It was the way he had turned away from me, as if he didn’t want to talk to me at all, that made me think this had something to do with me.

“Hey, can I sit with you guys?”

I glanced up to find Vince standing next to our table. “Sure. Iris, this is Vince, Vince, this is Iris.”

“Hey,” Iris said with a smile.

“I love your sweater,” Vince said as he sat down across from her. “What House are you in?”

“The Descendants. How about you?”

“The Crescents,” Vince replied as he stabbed his baked potato with a

fork.

Iris’s eyes widened and she glanced over at me then back to Vince.

“So, I guess I’m going to have to get used to the fact that I now have bad wolf friends.”

“Big bad wolves, baby,” Vince said with a wink as he began to dig into his pot roast.

“Actually, I have a question about werewolf sizes,” I said. Vince glanced over at me sharply. “Like dick sizes?”

“No, I mean like height and weight, you perve,” I said with a laugh. “Do female wolves stay average in size?”

“You mean human-sized?” Iris asked with a giggle.

“Human-sized! Yes. That’s the perfect word for it,” I replied with a

“Yup,” Vince said, nodding his head. “They don’t get big or tall like male wolves, but they do get muscular and strong as fuck, so I wouldn’t mess with them.”

“Like those girls,” Iris whispered as four girls walked past us. I wasn’t sure what it was, but everything about them felt so… badass.The girl at the center of the group had long, straight jet-black hair that fell to her waist. She was about five foot eight with a slender but strong- looking body. She did her makeup as well as a YouTube vlogger. Something about the girl told me she was the main girl, the Regina George of the group.

The girl who stood to the right of her was her polar opposite. She was on the short side with shoulder-length bleach blonde hair and fair, freckled skin. I recognized her from my Lunar Magic 101 class. I was pretty sure her name was Destiny.

To the Main Girl’s left, there was a girl with dark skin and short dark hair with caramel highlights.

The fourth girl of the group had fair skin with brown hair and wispy bangs. She sort of reminded me of Zooey Deschanel.All four girls were wearing matching leather jackets and leather attire; the main girl had on a short leather skirt, while the others were all wearing leather pants.

They continued past us and headed out of the Dining Hall. “Who were they?” I asked with wide eyes.

“Those would be the She-Wolves,” Vince explained. “The She-Wolves?” My eyebrows lifted.

“Yeah. That’s what they named their pack. Original, I know,” he replied with an eye roll.

“They’re the descendants of one of the strongest all-female packs in the world, but they’re more than just that. They’re also one of the biggest cliques at this school,” Iris informed me. “No one messes with them if they know what’s best for them.”

“How do you guys even know about them? You’re first year students, too,” I pointed out.

“People talk about them. The leather clothing is a dead giveaway,” Vince explained.

“The rumors are already flying about them,” Iris added. “The Alpha of the pack—the tall one with the black hair is Jessica Davis. The blonde is Destiny. The one with the crazy bangs is Nadia, and the other one is Crystal.”

“I didn’t know girls could be Alphas,” I commented.

“They can if it’s an all-girl pack. I guess, in theory, it’s possible that a girl could be Alpha in a pack with both genders, but it’s never happened before, to my knowledge,” she replied.

“Trust me when I say you should stay away from them,” Vince added. “I know I will be.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” I replied. “The less wolves I get involved with here, the better.”

As it was, Milos already wanted to get to me, dead or alive. The last thing I needed was even more enemies.

—-

The next day, Theo did show up to school, proving that Rhys was right. Wherever he had gone, it hadn’t been very far, likely just for an escape.

I saw Theo sitting with the Darken in the Dining Hall that morning, but I didn’t bother to sit with them again. The last thing I needed was another lecture about it from Professor Wickburn. Plus, I wasn’t exactly sure how to approach Theo after he had obviously turned away from me the night before.During his class, we didn’t talk, either. In fact, he barely even looked at me. Our eyes met a couple of times, but we had both looked away, pretending that the other hadn’t noticed.

And Theo wasn’t the only one. None of the Darken talked to me for the next few weeks, except for when it involved coursework for their classes, and even then, their communications with me in comparison to the other students were minimal. Colton was the only one who touched me— and that was only to teach me how to properly hold the gun he was teaching us to use in Weaponry.

The worst part about it all? As the weeks went by, it felt like my body craved Theo even more than I had in the beginning. It was the withdrawal of not talking to him, of not touching him, or kissing him. It was almost like I missed him so much it ached. I would him between the class we did have together and then throughout the entire night.

The strange thing was that I still had no idea why the Darken were even avoiding me. It wasn’t like anything had even happened, or like I had done anything that could have made them want to avoid me.I kept wondering if Headmaster Black might have said something to them. Maybe they had been told they needed to back off from hanging out with me, considering other wolves—both professors and students had begun to notice.

Or maybe Professor Wickburn had already dug her claws into Theo. Maybe she had let him know she had feelings for him, so now he no longer had any interest or need for me.