Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,30

and his whole dysfunctional family. And as far away from Justin as possible. She would miss her grandfather and Trick a lot.

“What would your pack think of me?” she asked him. The mistake?

“It doesn’t matter what they think of you, cher. What matters is how they treat you. I am the alpha, and if I accept you, they will, too. We’re more disciplined than the Fenners. And I’m not losing my mind.”

All plusses. And she and Cordelia could be friends again. She had no one now.

“I’m afraid of what would happen to my grandfather.” She decided to leave Trick out of the discussion. She didn’t need to go around advertising to werewolves which humans in Wolf Springs they could use as leverage to get her to do what they wanted. “They might retaliate.”

“Did he think of you, forcing you to come here?” Dom asked her. “He knew a girl had been killed in the woods. There has been a second one since your arrival. Your teacher is missing. Does he send you home?”

“How do you know . . .?” she began, then trailed off. Had someone told Cordelia about Mr. Henderson? Did Dom Gaudin have a spy in Wolf Springs?

“He’s still my grandfather,” she said.

“And Cordelia is your best friend. She’s the only real friend you have. And you’re the only friend she has. She risked everything to keep you safe. She could have died. Her pack has been her whole life, and she’s going to be lonely in my pack, until she makes some friends.”

“Tell me where she is,” Katelyn asked.

“You say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when you speak to me, cher,” he said, not unkindly. “I’m an alpha. You need to show me respect.”

“Please tell me where she is.” She tried not to sound impatient. All this ritualistic manners stuff was annoying when there were bigger issues at stake. “Please.”

“I will send someone to take you to her,” he said. “Tonight. Be ready.”

Alarm bells went off. “Where? What time?”

“Your cabin. Midnight.”

“No, wait. I think they’re watching me.”

“We’ll make sure they aren’t,” he said.

He disconnected.

Lunch.

And Trick was studying her. Since it was a cold November day, everyone was crowded inside the lunchroom. She would be welcome to sit at his table — his arty, slightly nerdy crowd really liked her — but she kept to her spot in the stairwell of the unused staircase at the back of the room. She was going through the motions of eating the peanut butter sandwich her grandfather had made for her the night before. He had added an apple. It was the exact lunch he made for her every day, and she found it very touching. All she was missing was a juice box and she’d have the lunch she used to pack for herself in elementary school. But the truth was, she had no appetite. Her phone call with Dom was swirling in her mind. Could she really leave? Just go? And then what? What kind of life would she have? She’d be a runaway. A statistic in the growing population of Wolf Springs citizens who had met bad ends.

And if she went missing, her grandfather would go crazy. Could she do that to him?

The questions were drowning her, so she made a pretense of texting so she could keep to herself and try to figure out her next step.

Even with staggered lunch periods, students were packed in tightly and the place was steamy, making the wolf mural that filled one wall look like it was sweating. Beau was also looking at her from across the room, and she kept up the show of texting so she would have a good excuse for avoiding him, too.

Then Kimi actually texted her.

Yo!

Hi, Katelyn texted back. How’s it? Jane?

Left me 4 a boy! came the reply.

Abandoning texting, Katelyn called her. “What?” she said once the connection was made. “Some friend she turned out to be.”

“You know how some girls are,” Kimi said. “Girlfriends are what you have until you hook up with a guy. And, hi.”

“Ridiculous!” It felt like old times. She wondered if that was why Kimi had started texting her again. But it didn’t really matter, did it? They were talking.

“It’s no guy you know,” Kimi said. “Doesn’t go to our school. He’s a total stoner, though, so boring.”

Katelyn was nearly giddy with the normalcy of their conversation. She almost burst into tears, which made no sense, but she held onto the phone with both hands and tapped her toes happily on