MY STEPBROTHERS, MY MATES

THE WARNING

CHAPTER THREE

VIOLETTA

"A werewolf academy."

My mother turned from the hob and looked at me with the expression she used when she had already decided something and was waiting for me to catch up to the fact.

"It's the only school in Lunadora," she said simply. "It's where you'll complete your education."

I set the dishtowel down on the counter. "Mum. I am not going to a school full of werewolves."

"You don't have a choice, Violetta."

"I absolutely have a choice—"

"You don't." She turned back to the hob. "This is our life now and you are going to school and that is the end of it."

I stepped further into the kitchen. "What happens when one of them decides they don't like me? What happens when someone loses their temper and I'm the nearest person? I'm human, Mum. I don't have claws. I can't exactly defend myself against—"

"Nobody is going to eat you." She pointed the wooden spoon at me briefly. "You are being dramatic."

"I'm being practical!"

"Violetta." She set the spoon down and turned around properly. "I have made my decision. You are going to that school and you are going to be fine. Now stop arguing with me and go and find Jace. He goes to the same school and he'll help you through it."

I opened my mouth.

She picked the spoon back up and turned to the hob.

I hissed through my teeth and walked out.

****

Jace was in the sitting room with his legs stretched out and his phone in his hand looking like a man without a single concern in the world.

I stood in the doorway. "My mother says I'm going to your school."

He looked up. "I know."

"And you couldn't have mentioned this earlier?"

"Would it have helped?"

I stared at him. He had a point and I hated it. I dropped onto the sofa across from him. "Will you take me to get the uniform tomorrow?"

"Already planned on it," he said and went back to his phone.

****

The school building was large and old and made of the same dark stone as most of Lunadora, with wide steps leading up to the entrance and the kind of doors that were built to make you feel small walking through them. I stood on the pavement outside and looked up at it.

"You look like someone told you your dog died," Jace said beside me.

"I look like someone who is about to walk into a building full of werewolves voluntarily," I eyed him through the corner of my eyes. "Which is what's happening."

"Same thing, really." He was already walking up the steps.

Inside were all long corridors and high ceilings and notice boards covered in things I couldn't fully read yet.

We found the administrative office and a woman behind the desk took my details efficiently and disappeared into a back room and returned with a uniform folded in a neat pile.

I held it up and looked at it. It's dark grey and stiff and deeply unflattering.

"You look like you've been handed a prison sentence," Jace chuckled.

"That," I pointed at him whilst nodding my head, "is exactly what this is."

He laughed and steered me back out into the corridor.

*******

We went into town afterward to pick up a few things I needed. Jace walked beside me and pointed things out as we went, the pharmacy, the post office, the bakery that did the best pastries in the region, according to him personally.

I listened while pretending I wasn't listening and bought the things I needed and let the town settle into me slowly.

People still stared. I was getting better at the chin-up, eyes-forward response.

We were heading towards the stairs when Jace said, very casually, "There's a party tonight. You should come."

"No thank you," I said.

"Fair enough."

I was climbing the stairs to my room.

"Violetta." My mother's voice came from the sitting room. "Was that a party I heard mentioned?"

I stopped climbing and closed my eyes briefly. "Mum—"

"You should go."

"I don't want to go."

She appeared at the foot of the stairs with her arms folded and the look on her face meant that this was not a suggestion. "You need to start meeting people. You can't stay in this house every evening."

"I can absolutely stay in this house every evening, I've been doing that for twenty years—"

"Jace." She turned to the sitting room. "Make sure she goes."

Jace, leaning against the wall with his arms folded and the smirk fully deployed, said, "Happy to."

I turned and looked at him. "Wipe that off your face."

But instead the smirk got wider.

***

The party was in a house that was too full and too loud and smelled of alcohol and the particular warm animal scent that I was starting to recognize as the thing all the wolves in Lunadora carried underneath everything else.

Music was coming from somewhere and groups of people were everywhere and every single one of them registered me the moment I walked in.

I stayed near Jace for the first twenty minutes. Then I decided that standing next to him like I needed a bodyguard was worse than the alternative and I moved through the room on my own.

It was fine. People looked but nobody said anything terrible. I found the drinks table and poured myself something and stood on it and breathed and told myself I was managing.

Then a hand closed around my arm.

I looked up to a tall, broad, dark-eyed man that had too much drink in them. He leaned in close enough that I could smell the alcohol on his breath and smiled in a way that had nothing friendly in it.

"You're the human girl," he said. "Didn't think you'd actually show up to one of these."

I kept my face completely neutral. "Could you take your hand off my arm, please."

"Relax." He leaned closer. "Just being friendly."

"I'd like you to let go."

He didn't let go. His hand tightened slightly, and he said something low near my ear that made every muscle in my body go rigid.

"I think she asked you to let go."

Jace's voice came from directly behind me. The kind of quiet that was somehow louder than shouting.

The man looked up and something shifted in his expression. "Calloway. She's just—"

"I heard what she was." Jace reached past me and removed the man's hand from my arm with two fingers like he was lifting something unpleasant off a surface. "Don't do it again."

The man's jaw tightened. He was drunk and embarrassed and those two things together made him stupid. He shoved Jace's shoulder.

Jace hit him once. Clean and fast and completely without drama.

The man went down hard and the music seemed to get quieter by itself and the room went still.

And then the murmuring started.

Low at first, moving through the room in a wave. I caught pieces of it from every direction.

"Did Jace just—"

"—for the human girl—"

"He fought Gregor for a human?"

"Calloway doesn't do that. He doesn't get involved for—"

"—over a human, are you serious?"

The words hit me from every direction and I felt the heat climb up my neck and into my face and every eye in the room was on me now, not on Jace, on me, with expressions that ranged from shock to something colder and I couldn't breathe properly and the walls of the room felt very close.

I turned and walked out.

Not running but walking quickly and directly through the bodies that parted without me having to ask them to, out through the front door and down the steps and onto the dark street outside where the air was cool and I could hear myself think again.

I stood on the pavement and pressed both hands over my face and breathed.

Footsteps on the steps behind me.

"Violetta."

I dropped my hands. "You didn't have to do that."

Jace came to stand beside me. He wasn't breathing hard. He looked exactly the same as he always looked. "He had his hand on you."

"I know, but now the entire room is going to—" I stopped and pressed my lips together. "They were all looking at me like I was the problem. Like I had made you do something embarrassing."

"Let them look."

"Easy for you to say." I turned to face him. "You're one of them. I'm a human girl. That's all I am to any of them in there and now it's worse because you fought someone over the human girl, and they're all going to—"

"Violetta." His voice was calm, and it cut through mine cleanly. "I don't care what they think. You shouldn't either."

I looked at him for a moment. "I'm sorry you had to leave your party."

"I was bored anyway."

I laughed at myself. Short and surprised. He smiled at it, properly, not the smirk but an actual smile that did something completely different to his face.

We started walking. The street was quiet and warm and dark except for the low lights along the old stone buildings and neither of us said anything for a little while and it was uncomfortable.

"Thank you," I said finally. "For what you did there."

"You already apologized."

"I know. I'm saying thank you now. They're different things."

He glanced at me sideways. "You're very strange."

"You turn into a wolf," I scoffed. "I don't think you get to call anyone strange."

He stopped walking.

I took one more step before I realized and turned back and he was right there, closer than I expected, looking at me with an expression I didn't have a name for yet.

"What's wrong, Jace?" I asked slowly, my heart racing wildly.

"Nothing princess. I'm sorry."

His apology took me by surprise and before I could register what he meant, he completed the gap between us and his lips crashed on mine.

It's soft and unhurried and warm and over before I had fully processed that it was happening. He pulled back just far enough to look at my face.

I looked back at him and said nothing because there was nothing immediate that came to mind.

He nodded once, like something had been confirmed, and started walking again.

I stood there for a second.

Then I followed him.

******

Jace stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back at me once. The smirk was back, and then he turned and disappeared down the corridor.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs and let out a slow breath.

Right.

I went to my room and sat on the edge of my bed and stared at nothing for a while before I remembered the water bottle on my desk was empty. I had finished it before the party and hadn't replaced it. I got up and went back downstairs.

The kitchen was dark except for the light above the counter. I went to the fridge and pulled it open and reached for a bottle and when I turned around, Jason was standing in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded watching me.

I startled slightly. "Do you just appear in kitchens or is that a wolf thing?"

He didn't smile. "Did you have a wonderful day pupping around my brother?"

I stared at him. "Excuse me?"

He pushed off the door frame and went further into the kitchen, his dark eyes level on my face. "I heard Jace got into a fight tonight because of you."

I tightened my grip on the water bottle. "That wasn't my doing."

"Wasn't it." It wasn't a question.

"No," I said clearly. "It wasn't."

He looked at me for a moment and then moved and before I had fully registered it, his hand was around my wrist, not hard but firm, and he was looking down at me with an expression that had no warmth in it at all.

"I don't want you frolicking around Jace," he said quietly. "Stay away from him."

I looked down at his hand on my wrist and then back up at his face. "You're not Jace. You don't get to give me orders."

Something moved behind his eyes. He let go of my wrist slowly and stepped back and the look on his face shifted into something that was almost worse than the coldness because I couldn't read it at all.

He smiled devilishly.

"Sleep well, Violetta." His voice was soft. "Tomorrow's going to be a very interesting day for you."

He turned and walked out.

I stood in the dark kitchen holding my water bottle and listening to his footsteps disappear up the stairs and thought that whatever tomorrow was going to bring, I was fairly certain I wasn't going to enjoy it.