Page 85 of Wolf Unseen

“Everyone’s afraid of him around here. His wolf is feral.”

I shrugged, not caring what everyone else thought. If Tank scared them, good. Maybe it would encourage the dumb fucks to leave me alone.

“Anyway, have you heard the latest?” Simon bounced on his chair with a gleeful smirk.

“No?” I hoped this juicy gossip didn’t involve Tobias being caught sucking someone’s dick in a public place because if it did, I might just gut the unlucky asshole involved.

I refused to admit to being jealous, but being beaten half to death had put me in a real shitty mood.

“Um, so Chance Carson and Damien Hart, the two wolf shifters who attacked you in dodgeball yesterday, got the absolute shit kicked out of them last night.”

“Wait…what?” My hand jerked, spilling my coffee everywhere. Thank the goddess I wore black pants. After wiping up the mess with a stack of napkins, I swallowed hard. The karma bus had arrived for assholes one and two, and while I liked the idea that they’d had a taste of their own nasty medicine, I’d hoped to be the one shoving it down their throats.

Simon looked positively gleeful as he described their injuries. I understood why, but it left me feeling deeply uncomfortable. I’d have gone after them in a more subtle way. And not on campus, where the risk of being caught was so high.

“Who attacked them?” I tried to keep my expression neutral, not wanting to give away the identity of the wolf I suspected was involved.

“No idea. Neither of them would say, but they’re in a bad way. Whoever was behind it must have commanded them not to shift and heal.”

That meant it had to be a powerful alpha wolf, which cemented my suspicions. There were only three alpha wolves that strong on campus, two of whom had made it more than clear last night that they viewed me as theirs.

Stupid assholes.

Simon prattled on about the sorry state of the two wolves while I pushed a lump of congealed egg around my plate. Broken bones were apparently the least of their issues.

Goddess, what was Tank thinking? It had to be him. Tobias was obsessed enough to seek revenge on my behalf, but Tank was brawnier, more lethal, and his wolf lacked restraint. He also had a lot of fighting experience from what I knew of his activities in the underground shifter fight ring.

If anyone beat the living shit out of those numb nuts, it was Tank.

“Leone was pretty pissed about what happened to you in the game,” Simon was saying when I tuned back in. “He came back after he’d taken you to the healer and tore strips off the two wolves. I’ve never heard him so angry before. It took me ages to get up after he’d slammed us all to the floor with an alpha command.” From the pallor in Simon’s cheeks, being hit with the full force of an alpha’s rage must have been unpleasant.

“I’m sorry you had to deal with that,” I said with a sigh. “You did nothing wrong.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t much fun, but nobody dared complain. It’s why he’s the most feared teacher on campus. I doubt even the mafia heirs would go against Leone.”

It occurred to me in that moment that Tank Frosthaven wasn’t the only suspect in the Great Shifter Beatdown. If Simba had been angry enough about a student being attacked in his lesson, could he have taken matters into his own hands?

While detention was great and all, running laps for a few hours was hardly a just punishment for nearly killing another student.

I groaned under my breath. It wasn’t like I could ask him. Or Tank, for that matter.

No, I needed to stay away from all of them and focus on my mission to find Lorna.

After spending the day in bed, chatting with Felix in between snoozing, my first class the following morning was with Miss Raven. A day in bed had rejuvenated me. The felines had been in touch, and Bree was excited to show me the costume she’d bought for me to wear to the Halloween ball. I hadn’t dared to ask what exactly it looked like. Knowing her, I’d be going as a slutty cheerleader or something equally gross.

I arrived at the classroom ten minutes early, alert and ready to take notes like the hard-working student I was (not), and found a seat near the back of the room.

As I sat doodling mini knives and axes on my notepad, the room filled up slowly. Most students ignored me, like always, but I heard a few whispering about the dodgeball incident. News of the fate that befell the idiots who attacked me had spread, and almost everyone assumed Tank was responsible.

That worried me, but Miss Raven’s arrival soon captured my attention, as well as everyone else’s. She sashayed in wearing a tight pencil skirt paired with a red silk blouse unbuttoned enough to show a hint of a black lace bra, accessorized with scarlet lipstick and smoky eyes.

How she got away with her licentious behavior baffled me. Half the students groaned and shuffled in their seats at her arrival, and even my half-human nose could detect all the testosterone and lust in the air.

“Welcome, students,” she purred while leaning back against her desk. Wow, the buttons on that blouse are doing some heavy lifting. “Today I’d like to discuss in detail how magicals interact with humans.” Her cat eyes slid over me for a second before she returned her attention to the slavering males in the front row.

“There have been several reports lately of anti-magical sentiment online and in person. Can anyone suggest why humans might be hostile toward the magical community?”

Several hands shot into the air.