Bitten (Once Bitten, Twice Shy #1)(51)

Katherine ignored the invitation completely. Instead, she remained standing, pulling her arms across her chest defensively.

“What am I in trouble for now?” Katherine couldn’t be bothered to beat around the bush. She had no desire to be in the overbearing man’s presence any longer than absolutely necessary.

Bastian released a weary sigh before swiping a hand through his already disheveled hair. “Nothing as far as I know. I actually wanted to talk to you about what the other alphas and I discussed at the Council meeting today.”

Oh.

Did they decide what they were going to do with her? Katherine tightened her arms around her torso. “You already told me that the meeting was about me,” she reminded Bastian.

“I know,” he agreed, “but what I didn’t tell you was that we were deciding whether or not you were fit to attend school.”

Wait. Haven Falls had a school?

“School?”

The corners of Bastian’s lips dipped to form a frown. “Yes, werewolves…” he paused as if feeling out her reaction to the word. She forced herself to remain impassive. “Werewolves,” he continued, “typically attend school until the age of seventeen. It’s considered the age of majority.”

“I’m sixteen. I’ll be seventeen this spring. That’s close enough.”

Bastian pinched his nose between his thumb and fore finger of his hand. “Not according to the council it’s not. They’ve decided that you’ll go until you’ve turned seventeen. They went as far as to say it’d be inappropriate to not send you there – that the school is the best place for you to learn about our culture.”

Katherine was incredulous – and completely unwilling to accept that premise.

“But can’t you teach me? You and the rest of the pack? I don’t want to go to school! I don’t know anyone and everyone will stare – it’ll just be an all-together uncomfortable situation.”

Bastian shook his head. “I can assure you that they don’t particularly care about your comfort.”

“But…” Katherine searched her mind for reasons that sending her to school was a terrible idea, “but, I haven’t even survived the change! What if when the full moon rises in a few weeks, I die? Making me go will have been pointless!”

“Don’t say that!” Bastian spat, his face turning nearly as blue as his eyes. “You’re not going to die,” he insisted through clenched teeth before roughly rubbing the palms of his hands deep into his eye sockets. “They know you haven’t been through the change, but they’re set in their decision.”

Katherine waited a moment for the man to regain control of himself before opening her mouth again. “You keep saying they,” she noted shrewdly. “Not we. Does that mean you agree with me? That you don’t support their decision to send me to school either?”

For a long moment, Bastian refused to meet her eyes. When he finally did, they shone with an emotion she couldn’t identify. “No, I don’t. But they’re convinced that this is the right course of action and there’s nothing I can do about it short of disappearing with you and the rest of the pack in the dead of night.”

If Katherine didn’t know any better, she’d say the man seriously considered that an option.

But she knew it wasn’t.

And as the man confessed that he didn’t want to send her to school any more than she wanted to go, she felt the fight drain out of her.

“Fine, I’ll go.”

Bastian’s eyebrows rose in surprise at her sudden compliance. “Really?”

“I said I would,” she snapped. “It’s not like I really have a choice in the matter.

He smiled at her words, but the sardonic grin that stretched across his face was anything but happy. It was dark. Self-depreciating. “No, I suppose you don’t.”

Katherine shifted her weight from one foot to the other as an uncomfortable silence descended upon the study. “Is that all you wanted to talk about?”

Bastian shook his head. “No, actually, there’s more – something else.”

Katherine was quickly growing impatient. “What else is there to discuss? I already said I would go!”

Bastian sighed in frustration, but didn’t answer her question.

“Well?” she demanded when the man refused to open his mouth and explain himself. “What else do we need to talk about?”

“You’re an unmarked werewolf.” The words burst pass the man’s lips seemingly without his permission.

She continued to gaze at him with incredulous eyes. “What?”

Bastian scratched the back of his neck in obvious discomfort, a faint red color spreading across his cheeks. “Are you aware that certain animals like to… mark their territory?”

Katherine’s confusion continued to grow. “Like dogs? That pee on fire hydrants?”

“Yes,” Bastian immediately agreed, his relief apparent. The tense lines that had formed on his forehead disappeared at her understanding. “Yes, like that.”

But the problem was that Katherine didn’t understand. And she was fed up with his cryptic crap.

“What does this have to do with school?” she demanded.

The tense lines made a reappearance. “I can’t – that is to say I won’t – allow you to attend school as an unmarked wolf.”