Crescent Wolves - G. Bailey Page 0,35

are you doing in detention?" I ask.

"Sitting," he replies. "Talking. Thinking."

"We just had to get stuck in here with you, didn't we, Shade?” mutters Silas, shooting the guy a look.

“I don’t know what you mean,” the new guy, Shade, retorts. “I thought I was stuck in here with you. What’d you do this time? Beat up an old lady? Set fire to the boys’ bathroom?”

Landon rolls his eyes. “Guys, come on. Can’t we just go back to sulking in silence?”

“No way,” Shade replies, leaning forward in his desk. “Silas and I are just joshing each other, aren’t we, Silas?”

Silas rolls his eyes.

“Besides,” Shade continues, “I want to hear more about the new girl.” He grins at me, his gray eyes sparkling. “I heard you kicked Amelia Ash’s ass at lunch today.”

“Hey,” snaps Hunter. It’s the first thing he’s said since I got here. “That’s my sister you’re talking about.”

“Yeah,” Shade says, “and you still ended up in here, didn’t you?” Hunter doesn’t reply, hunkering lower in his chair, and Shade turns back to me. “So is it true? Can you really shift into multiple forms?”

“That’s what they tell me,” I reply, “but right now I can’t even do that right. Whenever I do shift, I just end up looking like some… hideous blob of body parts.”

“Ha! Nice!”

I can’t help but chuckle. “Easy for you to say. You’re a… what are you again?”

“Wolf shifter,” Shade replies proudly. “Listen,” he continues, a thoughtful expression appearing on his face, “if you need help learning how to shift, maybe I can help you.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Yeah?”

He shrugs. “Sure. It’s always come pretty naturally to me.”

Hunter makes a scoffing noise but doesn’t say anything.

“Well, I…” I blink. I hadn’t considered the possibility of someone tutoring me before. Considering how well my classes have gone so far… “Yeah,” I say, smiling a little. “That sounds good.”

Shade smiles, his silver eyes meeting mine for a split second. My heart flutters a little in my chest. “How’s tomorrow morning before breakfast?”

I purse my lips. “Aren’t we, like, not allowed out before breakfast?”

Shade shrugs. “What’s the worst that they’re gonna do to you if they catch you? Send you back here?”

“You have a point,” I reply.

“Then it’s settled,” Shade says, sitting back in his chair. “Tomorrow morning at six, on the quad. I’ll show you a thing or two about turning into a wolf.”

“Come on,” Hunter says finally. “Can you not ask the new girl out right in front of me?”

Before I have time to process the implications of his anger, Shade is already replying gamely. “Hey, I never said it was a date. You can come too, if you want. I’ve heard you’re not doing so well, yourself.”

Hunter snorts. “Not happening.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Shade tells him. “So, Millie,” he says, “how did you end up winning the shifter lottery, anyway?”

“No idea,” I reply. “I never knew my parents.”

“Damn, really? Join the club.”

My eyes widen at the same time as Landon’s. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Shade replies. “I was adopted.”

“Holy shit,” mutters Landon. “I spend my whole life angsting about my past and then I meet two others like me in less than a day? It’s a small world, I guess.”

Silas, who’s been silent for some time now, speaks up. “It’s even smaller than that,” he says slowly, turning around in his chair to look at the rest of us. “I’m an orphan, too.” There’s a pause, and he adds, “That sounds pretty pathetic when I say it out loud.”

“I’ll be damned,” says Landon, looking between the three of us with newfound respect.

“Well, looks like we’re a regular Breakfast Club in here, aren’t we?” says Shade. “Next thing you know we’ll be dancing on the desks and confessing our darkest secrets to each other.”

Silas snorts, but there’s humor behind it. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

“To be honest,” Landon says, “until I met you, Millie, I thought hybrids didn’t exist.”

“Oh, they existed, all right,” replies Shade. “They say they were experiments done by witches, but then the humans took them out.”

Silas clears his throat but says nothing.

I open my mouth for a moment and then close it, debating, before asking, “So what happened, Silas? To your parents, I mean.” There’s a pause, and I realize how insensitive the question must have sounded. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I add hastily, already feeling my cheeks going red. What the hell came over me?

“It’s all right,” Silas replies. He takes a breath, meeting my