Bitten (Once Bitten, Twice Shy #1)(61)

Penelope just rolled her eyes at Katherine’s outburst. “I don’t know why you dislike him. He’s so hot!”

“He may be hot,” Melanie pointed out, “but he’s a complete jerk. If you had to attend classes with him, you’d know that.”

“Uh? Do you guys really have to discuss how dreamy you find another dude in front of us?” Jonathan spoke up. “It’s kind of emasculating.”

“Kind of?” Mack interjected loudly. “I’d like to at least be able to pretend I’m still the proud owner of a pair of testicles, thank you very much.”

Penelope completely ignored the both of them. “Rip’s not a jerk! He’s a normal hot-blooded male. I’m sure that as soon as he dumps Priscilla and actually finds a nice girl to be with, he’ll settle down.”

Katherine could understand Penelope’s abhorrence of Priscilla easily enough. But her mammoth-sized crush on Rip was downright irritating.

“You do realize that he’ll never go for you, don’t you?” Agnes addressed the girl frankly.

Penelope’s face reddened and became pinched. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that you’re not a werewolf! And Rip is. Your infatuation with him is inconsequential because werewolves don’t mate with humans. You know that.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t plan on remaining human forever. Ever think of that?”

Her announcement was met with tense silence.

Katherine was surprised when it was Nathaniel who broke it. “How could you possibly want that?” the usually quiet boy demanded angrily. He was the only other non-werewolf at the table. “You know the risks! The odds of a girl like you surviving the change are abysmal.”

Katherine winced, but Nathaniel didn’t even glance at her. He quickly snatched up his still half-full plate and marched out of the cafeteria.

A few moments later, Melanie nudged the baffled brunette with her elbow. “You know he wasn’t talking about you when he said that, right? He probably wasn’t even thinking-”

“What was that about?” Katherine demanded, cutting the other girl off.

Melanie sighed and gestured for Katherine to join her in the hallway outside of the small cafeteria. Katherine immediately obliged. Once there, the black-haired girl told her all about how Nathaniel came to live in Haven Falls. Apparently, his older sister was bitten by a werewolf a little over three years ago. She, Nathaniel, and their parents were immediately taken to Haven Falls for their own protection. It was all for not, however, as the girl didn’t survive her first transformation. Regardless, Nathaniel and his parents were stuck at the colony as they already knew of the existence of werewolves.

It was a heartbreaking story. And when Nathaniel approached her later that day to apologize for his thoughtless words, Katherine surprised even herself by pulling him into a tight embrace.

She’d learned how Mack ended up in Haven Falls the Monday immediately after. He’d told her during P.E. It was on the day that Markus, the tyrannical brute he was, had the class playing flag football in the haphazardly mowed grass behind the school.

Katherine had been appalled when Markus announced they’d be playing flag football after she and the rest of her classmates had finished running their daily laps in the gym.

Half an hour into it, however, she was mostly just bored.

Katherine realized quickly that the boys in her class considered football a man’s sport and thus, only allowed other males to ever actually touch the ball. As a result, most of the girls in her class had been reduced to playing defense and pulling on the red or yellow flags hanging from the boys’ hips – usually, in ill-disguised attempts at groping said boys.

Okay, so maybe Katherine was still a little appalled.

“You throw like a girl, Collins!” Mack shouted at the gangly boy currently acting as their team’s quarterback. He’d just thrown two incomplete passes – both of which had landed far short of their intended receivers.

“Excuse me?” Agnes exclaimed from her spot beside Katherine. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The quarterback – Collins, apparently – turned to her. “What do you think?” he asked snidely. “Girls can’t throw – they shouldn’t even be allowed to play football as far as I’m concerned.”

“I can throw better than you, you dunce.”

Katherine believed it too. Collins really did throw like a girl – a prepubescent girl at that.

“Oh yeah? Let’s see it then,” he taunted, shoving the pigskin into Agnes’s arms.

“Gladly,” she sneered before leaning over slightly to murmur softly to Katherine. “Get open. Twenty yards or so down the field and to the left.”

Katherine grinned and immediately agreed. She was all too happy to help Agnes show Collins and all the other sexist pricks in her class what girls were really made of.

Hint: It wasn’t sugar, spice, and everything nice.

Maybe a little spice, though.

Markus blew his whistle and the two teams quickly lined up. Mack hiked the ball to Agnes. Following the other girl’s instructions, Katherine ran about twenty yards down the grassy field before angling her body slightly to the left. As promised, Agnes threw the ball right at the small brunette. And because no one was covering her, she had no trouble catching it.