Arianna's Tale: The Beginning (34 page)

“Does it?” Jack hissed, spinning around to
face Ty and taking hold of my hand in the same movement, but Ty’s
lips curled into a grin.

“Tread carefully, werewolf… figuring her out
may just lead to her downfall,” Ty evaded, like Ty always evaded
and I sighed as I scrubbed the tears from my face.

“Go away, Ty,” I murmured, spinning around
and walking back inside, but not without hearing Jack and Ty still
arguing out in the yard. As I rounded the corner to head to Dad’s
office, Rayne was standing in the middle of the hallway, staring at
the exact spot I walked into.

“They are… coupled off right now… I didn’t
want you to walk in there and feel out of place or awkward or
something stupid…” Rayne uttered while I kept walking toward him
and peeked into Dad’s office to find Austin and Amy sitting on the
sofa talking and Jason and Trina holding hands and whispering in
the corner. The smile that slipped onto my lips was
bittersweet.

“Will you take me back to the house?” I
asked, glancing over at Rayne as he barely nodded his head and I
actually stepped into the doorway, instantly causing all four of
them to look over at me. “I think I’m finished for today. Rayne’s
going to take me back to the house. You guys take your time, okay?”
I saw Jason start to argue, but Trina discreetly squeezed his hand
and instead he barely nodded his head.

“Go ahead,” Austin agreed with a soft smile,
“We won’t donate anything without running it by you first, but that
can wait until tomorrow.”

I nodded and felt Rayne’s hand slip into
mine the second I was out of the doorway, and my eyes darted up to
him. “How do I get the troll out into sunlight?” I demanded and he
sighed as he led me out of the house to the car he and Jack had
driven over only to find Jack already sitting in the backseat.

“It’s nearly impossible… It’s been done so
few times, I wouldn’t know where to begin on accomplishing it,”
Rayne admitted as we started back toward the wolf house.

Before school started, we finished cleaning
out the house, and Amy helped Austin go through the process of
advertising the place and actually getting it rented out to some
local college kids.

Whatever Jack was blackmailing Alex with was
definitely keeping the scum of the earth away from me, and I wasn’t
about to complain. Sam, Caiden, and even Sage were really more or
less avoiding me, though each for different reasons. Trina had
become so engrossed with Jason that she stopped worrying about
Aeril and me; and Jason was so engrossed with Trina that he stopped
following me around everywhere and actually started to hang out
with some of the pack kids that were his own age. The same could be
said of Austin who spent all of his time at work, or with Amy until
his college Freshman pre-class stuff started up right when my high
school classes started. I had expected having Jason at the same
school as me to become an issue, but it didn’t seem like it was
going to. He really did spend his time with Trina, and when school
started, they rode the bus together while Rayne drove me to school
each day.

There was an open house the day before
classes started, and despite being some of the only seniors there,
Rayne had dragged me to it so that he could show me around the
school in hopes that I wouldn’t be lost on my first day. He
obviously had more faith in my abilities to navigate than I did… It
did, however, give me a chance to get my schedule early, so he got
his, too, and found out we were in two classes together. He
insisted on going from classroom to classroom on my list and to my
locker between each room so that I would know how to get from one
to the other, all of which I still thought was crazy, because I
wasn’t any good at remembering how to get around places.

“I want to feel like you’re safe,” he had
remarked at one point, “I don’t want to spend the day worrying that
you’ve gotten lost and gotten yourself hurt somehow….”

I focused, I really did, but I still didn’t
think it was going to work. This school was nearly maze-like, and
my classes were all over the place. We’d brought Trina and Jason
over with us; Jason had to come because he was a Freshman, but
Trina decided to come be his tour guide. Once we’d gotten to the
school, they disappeared off on their own, but as Rayne and I were
making our way through the halls with him constantly holding my
hand and trying to point out landmarks with his other hand, I
froze. Jason and Trina were making out in this really tiny little
alcove. Just as I started to say something, Rayne tugged on my hand
and led me further down the hallway.

“Anna… you wanted his attention elsewhere…
he’s happy… isn’t that all that matters?” Rayne questioned as I
leaned against the wall and sighed.

“What are the chances she could accidentally
shift and hurt him?” I finally asked. It had been on my mind for a
long time by then, for each of us.

“Slim, but possible,” he quietly admitted,
“The older we are, the better trained we are to manage our
emotions, especially anger, which is the worst trigger for
accidental shifting… We don’t enter into relationships with humans
lightly, Arianna. Trina doesn’t get angry much, and I trust her to
be able to get away from him without hurting him if she ever does
get that angry… just like I trust Amy, and Jack, and even myself.”
I felt the tiniest knot of guilt in my stomach, but it shifted into
butterflies when I spotted the look of pure desire in his eyes
which he blinked away a second later.

“Why do you do that…?” I whispered, slightly
surprised when he didn’t try to act like he didn’t know what I
meant.

“Because you have feelings for Jack… and
Jack loves you,” he answered almost silently, while I stepped
slightly closer to him.

“But Jack never looks at me like that…”

“You never
catch
Jack looking at you
like that,” Rayne corrected as his fingers slid across my cheek
before he ever-so-softly pressed his lips to mine.

Someone cleared her throat, and he slowly
backed away. When his eyes lighted on the person, they lit up into
hysterics and he almost laughed. “Ironic,” he managed to blurt as I
finally looked over to find Trina and Jason standing there, both
with their arms crossed over their chests.

“We’re ready when you are,” Trina
interjected into the silence.

The first two days of school were pretty
normal school days. Jack was up bright and early to see me off with
a homemade lunch, which he said he made for me so that I wouldn’t
forget about him during the day. I absolutely got lost, but not so
much so that I didn’t find my way to class by the second bell each
period. When lunch rolled around, I didn’t even bother with the
cafeteria; this school was relatively lenient about lunch and had
several picnic areas available to the students, they just wanted us
to stay on campus.

Day one, I was only focused on getting
outside, but once I did, my feet froze. The tension in the air was
absolutely insane from where I was standing. To the right of me
were a bunch of people that were laughing and joking around, it was
also the corner of the school building and more sunlight flooded
onto it. To the left of me were a bunch of quieter, kind of
brooding people, a lot of whom seemed to have earbuds jammed into
their ears, and this side had more trees so it was more in shadow.
My eyes locked with his and he grinned as he stood up from his
table under a particularly tall tree, but then those ice blue eyes
turned deadly and I looked up in time to spot a guy with fire red
hair, pulled back into a ponytail, and deep blue eyes walking over
to me.

“You’re Anna Gray, aren’t you?” he asked in
a perfectly pleasant voice, but I glanced again at Ty to find him
frozen with that strange smoke starting to form around him again.
Oh boy was he ever pissed.

“Yeah… I must have gotten turned around…” I
murmured, starting to turn toward the door and go back inside when
the guy laughed and I swear the sunlight grew brighter.

“Don’t run off, you can come sit with us,”
he offered, lightly resting his hand on my arm and motioning
towards the cheery side of the outdoor area, “My name is Wren, by
the way.” I still hesitated and he threw me a charming smile,
“Well, come on.”

“But…” I faltered and he finally followed my
gaze to Ty as the sky suddenly grew darker.

“Anna,” Tobias called from the doorway and I
turned to him with absolute relief in my eyes, “I was looking for
you. Rayne said we had the same lunch period. Come on.” He was
smiling, but his eyes weren’t. Still, I smiled and nodded, turning
to Wren.

“Like I said… I got turned around. But thank
you for the invitation,” I stated with the most genuine smile I
could manage, “It was nice to meet you, Wren.”

“You, too, Anna Gray,” Wren finalized with a
smile, that like Tobias’, didn’t reach his eyes.

As soon as the door closed behind me, Tobias
pulled me into a hug. “Don’t do that again…” he whispered urgently,
“You know about Ty… he’s not the only fae at school… and there
isn’t just one kind of fae, Anna… they really don’t get along, and
you just walked into the middle of their turf war.”

“That explains a lot,” I laughed faintly
when he stepped away from me, embarrassment written on his face,
“So… where do we eat?” He laughed softly and led me out another set
of doors to a smaller area with only four picnic tables and we sat
down to eat amongst other werewolves.

That was day one, and day two was similar,
minus the lunch fiasco, but I did run into Wren again towards the
end of the day, and he was just as overly friendly the second time
as he had been the first. That is, right up until Ty walked over,
grabbed my arm, and pulled me away.

“Stay away from him,” was all he said before
he, too, was gone and I was left wondering what in the world I’d
gotten pulled into that time.

Wednesday was my birthday. I wasn’t the
least bit surprised to wake up to breakfast in bed surrounded by
nearly everyone in the wolf house, with Jason and Austin sitting on
my bed beside me. After a chorus of happy birthday, and a bunch of
birthday wishes and hugs, I got ready to go to school where I found
my locker decked out in birthday decorations. At first period,
there were balloons waiting on my desk for me, and at lunch Tobias
pulled me outside to pizzas and birthday cake.

I suppose I should explain that I had shut
off my sense feeling after finding out Dad was really dead because
everyone’s sadness quickly got to be so overwhelming that I was
nearly drowning in their sorrows without being able to even start
to deal with my own. I guess if I’d tuned back into it, I would
have better understood what was going on at lunch that first day,
or even would have been able to know about the surprises beforehand
(not that the surprises were a bad thing), but I definitely would
have known that Mark was at the school that day before I spotted
him hiding in the shadow of the building at lunch, but when I
blinked again, he was gone. Right that minute I tuned back into it,
and just as soon as I did, I gasped and passed out.

I woke up hours later in the clinic, but
before I even opened my eyes, I realized my head was pounding and
tried to focus on the why of it all. I noticed a whole bunch of
feelings I wasn’t used to feeling; very distinct ones that were
closer to hearing thoughts than just knowing feelings of others.
One caught my attention so much that I focused on it, tracing the
link back to the source only to find myself looking into Wren’s
eyes and him looking back at me, startled. I quickly slammed off my
sense feeling and opened my eyes, blinking against the harsh
overhead lights and looking around the sterile white and silver
room until I spotted Austin sitting in a chair and his gaze shifted
up to me.

“Hey, kiddo,” he greeted, pushing himself up
and walking over beside the bed. He pressed the back of his hand
against my forehead before he softly kissed me there, “This isn’t
how you’re supposed to be spending your birthday, you know.”

“Sorry,” I whispered, slowly sitting up,
“What are you doing here? Don’t you have college stuff today?”

“I’m your guardian,” he remarked with a
shrug, “They called me, I came over. Care to tell me what
happened?”

I looked around the room again only to spot
the nurse walking towards me with a smile on her face. She briefly
shone a light in my eyes and had me follow her finger with my eyes
before she looked over at Austin.

“She’s alert, reflexes are fine… If you want
to take her home, I’ll allow it, but I think she’s okay to go back
to class. Since the day is nearly over, I’ll leave it up to the two
of you,” she announced before she stepped back out of view.

Except, I stared after her in confused
shock, searching for my sense feeling and realizing it was still
open. The nurse had known my dad, she had actually really liked
him, like as she kept trying to get him to ask her out, liked him.
She felt really bad for us, for Austin… I fought with it for a long
minute before I finally got the door closed on my sense feeling
only to spot the worry in Austin’s eyes.

“Arianna… what do you want to do?” he
finally queried, his eyes searching my face, trying to figure out
what was going on.

“It’s only the third day of class… I think I
should stay,” I answered and he inhaled a deep breath before he
sighed and barely nodded his head.

“Okay, but if you need me, you have them
call me and I’ll come back to get you,” he finalized, lightly
hugging me when I stood up. The nurse popped back into view and
handed me a pass to get back to class and told me that fifth period
was just about to end. Austin walked with me out of the clinic and
hugged me again just as the bell to end fifth period rang. I tossed
my bag over my shoulder and headed for my locker while Austin
watched after me for a long minute before he left the school.