Heyo guys ^_^ Sorry for how long it's taken me to update. Stupid exams and life in general. Hopefully things can start picking up the pace.

I wanted to say thank you to the 20 of you out there who consistently read my story even though my updates are like once every three months. You are awesome and I love ya xx

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Damien and I walked down the busy hallway. We had to plaster ourselves to the walls to avoid being run over by students rushing down. The whole school was in a flurry of motion to sort out the final touches before Halloween next week. I'd learned very quickly from my three weeks at this school that they took their celebrations very seriously, especially the whole Salem witch trials memorial thing.

This year, just like every year, they planned to have a party in school on the Friday and the following Saturday, one of the students was holding a party in their parents' house. Damien and I were already given the invite by one of his friends, Eric, who was part of the basketball team.

He was the stereotypical jock; blond haired, blue eyed and a sweet smile. I kind of liked Eric. Not like like, the way I felt about Hunter, but like.

Whoa! Hold up. Did I just admit that I liked Hunter? What on earth was wrong with me? I didn't like Hunter at all. Nh-uh.

Weird dreams with the dude did not mean I liked him. Hell, given the fact that he may or may not turn into a big shaggy wolf -jury is still out on that one - was even more reason for me to stay the hell away from him.

I ignored that thought- it was stupid to think that, especially after last night- and turned my mind to Eric. He always stared at my eyes when I talked and never once did his gaze stray to the scars on my cheek. He was thoughtful, but then again, Damien could have warned him beforehand. Damien's threats tended to have that effect on people.

Whatever it was, I was just glad he wasn't a douche.

Sadly, I couldn't say the same for his friends. It was one of the main reasons I didn't want to hang out with Damien and his friends these days. Plus, I preferred my girl time with Kat.

I shuffled my aching body behind Damien as he led us in the direction of our lockers. The screeching students and blaring lights intensified my headache to the point where I felt like I was going to pass out from the sensory overload.

Damien was talking about something- probably the party- but I drowned him out, only focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.

"...So how about it?" Damien asked.

"So how's about what?"

Damien squinted his eyes at me, lips pursed in a straight line. "Why are you so out of it today? Did you take something?"

I was out of it because I didn't take drugs. Ah, the irony.

"I'm just tired." I sighed, hiking my overflowing backpack higher on my shoulder.

"You know, if you said it differently, I'd be more inclined to believe you."

I shrugged, not bothering to reply to his obvious pry for information.

"You didn't listen to a thing I said, did you?" I shook my head apologetically and Damien rolled his eyes at that. He caught the time on my watch and his mouth dropped.

"Shoot! I'm going to be late. I'm off." We hugged a quick goodbye and he rushed to his first lesson of the day. When he reached the end of the hallway, he turned back to face me and yelled, "I'll pick you up at three, yeah?"

I bobbed my head in agreement, too physically drained from last night to say anything.

With a final worried glance in my direction, my brother was off. I blew out a deep breath and rested my heated cheeks on the cool metal of the locker.

"Boo!"

I screamed loudly. My bag fell off my shoulder and tumbled onto the floor with a resounding thud, the contents spilling everywhere in my haste to face the voice.

The scream trailed off to silence as a gawping Kat raised an eyebrow at me.

"Sorry," I said sheepishly. "I'm a little jumpy."

"You don't say." Kat knelt down on the floor and began picking up my stuff. I joined her, grabbing my orange pencil case and stuffing it in my rucksack.

We worked quickly to gather all my items and Kat handed me the bag. "What's up?"

I swung the bag over my shoulder and turned back to my locker, mulling over what to tell her. My lips pulled up into a fake smile and I decided to go with telling her the half truth. "Nothing much, I couldn't sleep."

Kat rubbed my shoulder sympathetically. "Tell me about it. Me neither."

We fell silent. Both reminiscing about how awesome sleep was and how much we'd like some more. At least, I know I was.

"Eugh!" I grumbled, "We're gonna be late." Realizing that Kat and I were probably going to get a detention, I began walking down the silent hallway to my first lesson. Knowing that I was going to be late still wasn't motivation enough for me to run. Kat trailed after me, dragging her feet reluctantly on the floor.

"I hate Ms Micheles," she huffed, "when will she have the baby and leave."

I snickered. "She's not nearly half as bad as you make her seem. Imagine carrying a squirming, growing tiny human for nine months." I shuddered. Children were so not for me. God, sometimes I wished my mom was still alive so that I could ask her how in God's beautiful name did she manage to carry both Damien and I. The human body was weird as hell.

"I guess you're right. I should cut her some slack." Kat pushed open the door to our art class and froze.

"What?" I asked, poking her shoulder and tiptoeing to get a better view of the class over her head. She moved to the side and I, not anticipating the sudden movement, fell forwards. I managed to catch myself before I went splat on the ground, but only just. That would have been awkward.

Instead of Mrs Micheles, a short, whitish-blonde haired woman stood at the front of the class. Her beady eyes locked onto Kat and I immediately.

"You're late!" she snapped. I bit the corner of my lip to stop myself from laughing. Her nasal voice was so high pitched I bet dogs could sense it from miles away.

I peaked at my watch. The time read 8:04. We were only late by four minutes but normally that's excusable because we need time to get to our lessons. What crawled up her ass and died?

She scribbled something on a piece of red card and stamped her way to us. "Both of you have an hour detention after school. Next time, I expect you to come on time."

Kat and I shot each other looks. When I first started this school, Kat had told me that while the issuing of red detention slips was part of the school system, no teacher ever used them. This woman was strange to be using them. Clearly she was a stickler for the rules.

"Okay," we muttered, taking the slips from her red painted talons.

"Good," she chirped. "Now go and join the rest of your class at the back of the room." I looked up at that, realizing that the class was in fact lined up at the back of the room. How I managed to miss that, I'll never know.

"She's weird," Kat whispered to me on our way to the wall.

"You wanted a new teacher," I said with a snort. 'Weird' was an understatement. This woman went from ready to murder us to happy as a clam in the span of two minutes.

"Okay." The teacher clapped her hands to grab out attention and silence descended immediately. "My name is Geraldine Carpenter, but you will call me Miss Carpenter. I will be teaching you for the rest of this semester."

She really did look like a Geraldine. She sure as hell had that old- school meanness to her.

"Now, I'm going to call your names out and you are to sit in your allocated seats. Am I clear?"

There was a unanimous 'Yes Miss Carpenter' as we all agreed to her terms. I felt a little like Matilda in a class with Miss Trunchbull. All this woman needed was a chokey and she'd be the perfect candidate.

"Annabel Atkinson..." she started. With my last name starting with a 'W', I was going to be in for a long wait. My eyes glazed over as she read through the list of students. "Abigail Winters." I looked up at the sound of my name. "Sit here." She pointed to a table of two at the far left of the room.

"That's me. See ya Kat." I made my way to my seat but stopped when she called out the next name.

"Hunter Wilde?" My heart skipped a beat at the sound of his name. Be still my beating heart! I don't know why I was getting so worked up. I wanted, no, needed to confront him about last night. A part of me was still worried about what he would say. Would he think I'm crazy? But I wasn't. He was there. I slipped my hand into the pocket of my jeans and felt his pair of glasses. Either way, he couldn't deny what happened in the forest because I had his glasses.

Unless he had another pair? I ignored the little voice in the back of my mind.

After regaining my composure, I pulled out the chair and plopped myself on it.

"No Mr Wilde? Well, I guess he'll be getting a two hour detention whenever he shows up." Miss Carpenter wrote his name on a similar card to mine and Kat.

As she was doing that, the classroom door slammed open and Hunter limped through. His hair was messily tousled, like he'd just woken up and forgot to fix it. There was a faint purplish bruise on his right cheek and his knuckles looked a little scraped, too.

Indicative of a fight he must have been in yesterday as a furry wolf. I smiled lightly to myself. There was no way he could lie and say he wasn't there.

"Sorry I'm late," he said. For the first time, Hunter looked...human. He looked tired, disheveled, not superior with a slight touch of animal like he normally did.

"Unacceptable." I jumped at the shrill tone of Miss Carpenter's  voice. "Two hour detention after school."

He shrugged, which only proved to anger her further. "Three hours," she threatened.

Her threat had no effect. When Hunter raised an eyebrow at her, the class took a collective gasp of surprise. He was the first to show any attitude to the new teacher and we didn't know how she was going to respond.

"How dare you," she spluttered. Her lips pursed as she glowered at him. Her resemblance to an eagle at this moment was uncanny. It didn't help that she was wearing a brown suit, so with her white hair, she matched the eagle colors perfectly.

"What do you want me to say? I can't fly." Yes, but he could turn into a black dog and run really, really fast.

Giving up, she pointed to my table and said, "Sit next to Ms Winters. I want to talk to you later so don't think that this conversation is over."

"You bet I wont," he said with a smirk. Miss Carpenter looked like she was going to hit the roof, but by some miracle, held her tongue.

Hunter moved to my table clearly favoring his right leg. He pulled out the chair beside me and sprawled onto it. "Bambi," he purred in greeting. I bobbed my head in reply, unable to say anything. I couldn't help the shiver that traveled down my spine at the way he said 'Bambi', and I knew he saw my reaction because a lazy smile pulled at his lips.

Ignoring the flutter in my stomach, I said, "We need to talk." I barely opened my mouth as I tried to make as little noise as possible. The last thing I needed was to anger the already slightly psychotic teacher.

"I thought that's what we were doing."

Really? Was that how he was going to reply?

"Mr Wilde, would you like me to add another hour to your detention? You too Miss Winters."

"Sorry Miss Carpenter," I muttered, looking down. Hunter didn't say a word, and nor did he look apologetic.

I faced the front, ignoring - or rather trying to ignore - Hunter as Miss Carpenter went through our project. She told that the person sitting next to us would be our assigned partner for the rest of the year. I looked over at Kat and noticing that she didn't have a partner, but more importantly, she was sleeping. Her face was pressed up against the table and her mouth was agape as the soft snores escaped her.

As she was explaining our task, Kat's snoring got progressively louder. "Am I boring you, Ms Yocher," she snapped, unable to ignore the noise any longer.

All eyes turned to my poor friend. "Kat. Kat. Katherine." I poked her pliable cheek multiple times until she woke up.

"Huh-wha?" Finally Kat moved her face and straightened up. The class tittered, not wanting to risk the wrath of Miss Carpenter.

After what felt like forever, the teacher called a girl from the front to help her hand out some papers. Miss Carpenter told us to turn to our pairs and ask them a series of personal questions. Apparently they should help when we draw their portraits. I didn't see how a bunch of questions were going to help but whatever.

No one breathed a word. Awkward silence descended across the whole room. "Talk!" the teacher barked. Instantly the class erupted in conversation as everyone hurried to appease her.

"Ms Yocher, please sit next to Ms Atkinson for today as neither of your partners seem to be present." Kat left her seat and went to sit next to Annabel.

The moment she left, I turned to Hunter, ready to get the stupid questions out the way so I could grill him about last night.

I opened my mouth to ask the first question which was 'what is your favorite color' but a huge yawn overtook me.

"Rough nigh?" Hunter's lips pursed in amusement.

I glared at him, long and hard. What was he playing at?

I decided to cut to the chase. "I know you were in the forest last night."

Poker face. "No I wasn't. Maybe you were dreaming of me." He waggled his eyebrows. "Wouldn't be the first time."

"Shut up!" I hissed. "You came into my dream, not the other way round."

"Sure," he snickered. "Whatever floats your boat."

I took a deep breath, choosing to not entertain his weirdness. "Lets get this nonsense over and done with. Read the first question," I demanded.

Hunter shrugged and reached for his paper. Here goes. There was no way that he could read the paper without his glasses.

He squinted, and I bit back a smile.

"Why are you smiling?" Hunter patted his pockets. When he didn't find his spectacles there, he frantically searched again. And again.

"No reason."

"They have to be somewhere," he muttered, picking up his bag and emptying the contents onto our table.

Pens, books, and loose sheets tumbled out of the open bag. But the glasses weren't in there.

When I thought he'd suffered enough, I pulled out the black rimmed glasses and placed them on the table between us.

"Looking for these?" I said innocently.

Worry flashed over his features for a second before he pulled on a smirk. "Ah, Bambi." He picked the glasses up and gave them a quick clean.

I raised an eyebrow. "Still going to say last night didn't happen? That it's all in my head?" 

Suddenly, the bell rang, signalling next period.

Hunter sighed. "I guess we have a lot to talk about."

I snorted. "That, we do."

Miss Carpenter's shill voice demanded everyone's attention. "You are dismissed," she said. "Homework is to fill out the questions. It must be done before our lesson next week."

I scrambled to put my things away and stood up. I guess Hunter will just have to tell me all about his wolfiness another time.