Vamp, Wolf, or Shifter?

Pewter High

Things don’t get any less bizarre when I enter the hallowed halls of Pewter High.

People seem genuinely intent on becoming my friends, and I have no idea what to do about it.

“Just go with it,” Julia says cheerfully as she escorts me to my locker. “Like I said, Cooper is pretty much a god around here. With him on your side, people will pay a lot of attention to you. Just smile and pretend like you’re used to it.”

“How do you know she’s not used to it?” asks Max from my other side. “She’s a pretty girl. I’m sure it’s not the first time she’s gotten a little attention.”

Julia doesn’t look particularly hurt or jealous about his comment, which is good, since they’re clearly a couple. She just smiles as she comes to a stop at my locker and hands me a slip of paper with the code to my lock on it.

I try to keep my head down as I shove the contents of my bookbag into my locker, but it’s hard not to notice the intent gazes of the various passers-by—especially when I see him.

He’s tall—even taller than Cooper—and nearly twice as broad and muscled as Cooper, which is really saying something. His brown hair is lighter than Cooper’s, with hits of an even lighter, sandier color, and it’s messier and longer. His face is stubbled with something between a five o’clock shadow and a beard, and his eyes are dark—really dark.

And he’s glaring right at me.

“Ugh,” says Julia when she follows my gaze. “Ignore him, like the rest of us do.”

I look away from him, slamming my locker closed and turning my back on him. “Who is he?”

“Dean Morgan,” Max explains to me with the same disgusted tone as Julia. “Total asshole. Don’t spare him another thought.”

- - - - -

I try to do as Julia and Max suggested and not spare Dean another thought, but doing so proves more and more difficult as the day progresses.

There’s something weird about this school. I’ve seen segregation before—the student body sectioning off by race or even by financial status—but the way this school sections off, it’s almost like it’s by… 

Well, by something else entirely.

There’s the people like Cooper, Julia, and Max. All gorgeous, with light, haunting eyes, fit, trim physiques, and clear, translucent skin that almost seems to glow, no matter what color the skin is. 

Then there’s the people like this mysterious, new character, Dean. They’re more rugged—more broad—rougher around the edges, and with darker eyes. Where the Coopers of the school seem to walk on water, this bunch seems to prowl around like they’re on some sort of… hunt.

And then there’s everyone else. And they all just seem sort of… fascinated.

Well, I’m right there with them. Though a better word might be “terrified.”

In seventh period—last class of the day—I’m assigned a lab partner.

Dean Morgan.

You have got to be kidding me, I think as I drag my feet over to the empty desk next do his. He’s glaring at me, just as he has been all day. There’s something undeniably sexy about that glare of his, in a very different way from Cooper. Neither way is particularly describable.

“Hi,” I say awkwardly to Dean when the teacher finishes prattling off instructions about the chemistry lab we’re supposed to be doing. “I’m—”

“I know who you are.”

His voice is as dark and sexy as his eyes. It’s rough, like sandpaper—the exact opposite of the smooth, serenading tone of Cooper’s.

“O…kay,” I manage, glancing down at the beaker in front of us. I drop the required amount of chloride into it, then sit back, waiting for him to apply the next ingredient.

He glares down at the beaker for several seconds before speaking again. “You’ve moved into the Roswell Estate.”

Well, he certainly does know who I am. “Uh… yeah. That’s right.”

He nods, as if satisfied that I’ve assured him I’m as despicable as he thought. He drops three drops of some sort of yellow substance into the beaker, then sets his dropper back down.

I scan the smaller bottles around us, but I’m having a hard time remembering what instructions the teacher gave us. “Do you have some sort of problem with the Roswells?” 

He snorts. “You could say that.”

I wait for more, but he doesn’t give it. He certainly isn’t a man of many words. I sigh, reaching for the small container of what I’m fairly certain is hydrogen sulfide, eyedropper it out, and add it to the big beaker.

Our concoction is starting to develop a strange smell, I can’t help but notice.

“I didn’t choose to live with them, you know,” I inform him as he takes his turn. “I didn’t choose any of this.”

He pauses, seeming to consider my words, then snorts again. “Right. Glitzy mansion, two-hundred-acre estate, handsome and wealthy benefactors. You must have been devastated.”

Okay, now I’m pissed.

I can handle this guy acting grumpy, but this? Judging a girl he knows nothing about for the circumstances she was forced into when her parents died?

I part my lips to snap at him, but before I get the chance, I clock the eyedropper he’s got hovering dangerously close to our beaker.

I don’t know the name for the greenish liquid inside the dropper. I don’t know anything about chemistry; back at my old school, I was taking biology.

But I do know that what he’s about to do will cause an explosion.

Don’t ask me how—I just do.

For some reason, as much of a prick as this guy is, it’s my instinct not to save myself, but rather, to save him. So I launch myself at him, knocking him backwards in his chair. We both hit the ground with a painful thud as my right arm takes the brunt of the sizzling, popping acid spewing out of the beaker—acid that, had I not intervened, would likely have killed him.