Werewolf Academy Year Three - Jayme Morse Page 0,25

secretly wished that the fires would just start already, that the war would be close to beginning so I could get rid of them. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen from here on out, but the one thing I did know was that our lives were a whole lot scarier knowing that Milos and Iris were still walking this earth.

One Thursday in late November, Iris didn’t show up for our homeroom class. A part of me secretly hoped that she had decided to finally give up on whatever game she’d been trying to play all semester, but I had a feeling that there was no way I could have been that lucky.

No, I was pretty sure she had probably just taken a sick day or something.

Later that afternoon, I was almost at the Darken house when I saw Vince walking behind me.

Crap.

I started to quicken my pace. He was the last thing I wanted to deal with right about now.

Somehow, telling Vince about everything that had happened now was even worse than telling him about what had happened at the beginning of the school year. Because now, I needed to explain to him why I hadn’t told him everything then, too. I had dug myself into a hole, and I wasn’t really sure how to unbury myself.

“Raven, stop. Please!” Vince called out. “I need to talk to you. My mom died.”

I stopped in my tracks and then turned around slowly. “Are you okay?”

“I will be, but right now, what I need more than anything else in this world is my best friend.” His eyes met mine. “I don’t really understand why you haven’t talked to me all semester, but we can’t go on this way. Please just talk to me and tell me why you seem like you’re mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you, Vince. I get why it must look that way to you, but I’ve never been mad at you. I promise.”

“I know this has to do with you and Iris more than it does with you and me. But it still feels like you’re mad at me, considering you’ve been dodging you all semester,” he said with a sigh.

“I’m not dodging you. I’ve just been running from the problem.”

“Well, I need you to stop running. Can we please just go somewhere so we can talk in private? And in case you’re wondering, Iris went back to the human world to visit her mom in Savannah today, so we don’t have to worry about her interrupting us.”

Bullshit. Ever since I had found out the truth about Iris, that she was an ancient, I was pretty sure that she didn’t even have any family in Savannah. Considering the virus had killed most of the ancients, it seemed highly unlikely that any of her family had survived. In fact, I was willing to bet that Iris had probably gone to visit Milos during every summer and winter break.

But I knew he wasn’t making up the fact that Iris was gone, considering she hadn’t shown up to any of our classes today. It really seemed like she had left. I was sure that she had probably gone off with Milos to devise a plan to kill me, but at least she was out of my hair for now… and I would take any Iris-free moment I could get.

As we approached the house, I glanced over at Vince. “Do you want to come inside?”

“Hell yeah, I want to come inside. Because you have a lot of explaining to do.” As I unlocked the door to the house, Vince continued. “There’s something I need to tell you, by the way.”

“What is it?” I glanced over at him.

“My mom didn’t really die.”

“What? You lied to me?” I just stared back at him, dumbfounded that he would lie about something so big.

“I wasn’t sure how else to get you talk to me, considering you’ve been dodging me all year, Raven. So sorry, but not sorry.” He shrugged. “I just want to know the truth. I deserve to hear the truth.”

He was right. He did deserve to know why I had been avoiding talking to him like the plague. But now that it was finally time to tell him, nervousness was beginning to take over and a million questions of doubt were flooding my mind.

What if he hated me for pushing him away all year? What if he didn’t think he would ever be able to forgive me?

What if he didn’t even believe