MY STEPBROTHERS, MY MATES

FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL

~CHAPTER FOUR~

~VIOLETTA~

The sunlight came through the gap in the curtains in one thin bright line and landed directly on my face.

I turned to the other side and it followed me.

My alarm went off, and I reached out and smacked it without opening my eyes. Then I lay there for another minute staring at the ceiling and reminding myself that today was happening whether I was ready for it or not.

First day of school. Werewolf school.

Isn't this brilliant?

I got up and showered quickly and went back to the room and looked at the uniform laid out on the chair. Dark grey, stiff, deeply unflattering. I put it on piece by piece and turned to the mirror when I was done.

I looked ridiculous.

I genuinely could not remember the last time I had worn a school uniform. It had been years. The tie was the worst part. I knotted it, looked at it, pulled it apart and started again. The third attempt was worse than the first. By the tenth attempt, it was sitting at an angle that was technically a knot and I decided that was good enough and left it.

~~~~~~~

Jace was in the kitchen when I came downstairs, sitting at the table with a full plate in front of him and the energy of someone who had been awake for hours and had no concerns whatsoever about the day ahead.

"We're going to be late," I told him, pulling out a chair.

He didn't look up. "We won't."

"How can you be so calm—"

"Sit down and eat, Violetta."

He was annoyingly right. We had more time than I thought. I sat down and filled a plate and looked around the kitchen for my mother, but she wasn't down yet. Probably still asleep.

The door swung open and Jason came in with his bag already on his shoulder. He looked at the two of us at the table, one sweeping glance, and then walked to the counter and picked up an apple and turned around and looked at me properly.

"You look good in the uniform," he said, and his voice had no warmth in it at all. "Still won't change the fact that you're a human." He tilted his head slightly and his eyes were flat and cold. "It's not too late, you know. Pack your things and crawl back to whatever hellhole you came from."

The words landed hard and mean and exactly the way they were meant to.

Jace put his fork down. "Jason. Stop."

Jason looked at him. Something crossed his face, quick and sharp. "You're no better than me, brother." He picked up his bag from the floor and walked out of the house without another word.

The kitchen was quiet.

I looked at my plate. "What did he mean by that?"

Jace picked his fork back up. "Don't pay attention to everything that comes out of his mouth."

"He said you're no better than him. What does that mean?"

"Violetta." He looked at me steadily. "Finish your breakfast."

I held his gaze for a moment and then looked back at my plate and ate and didn't push it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He drove, and I sat in the passenger seat and watched Lunadora pass outside the window. The morning light made the town look different. Somehow, the old stone buildings look warm and pale gold in the early sun. I watched it and said nothing, and he didn't push me to talk, and I was grateful for that.

The school building came into view and my stomach dropped.

It had seemed large when we came to collect the uniform. It seems considerably larger now with students streaming up the steps and through the wide front doors from every direction. Most of them clocked me the moment we pulled up. I could see it happening, the small pause, the second look, the nudge to the person beside them.

I got out of the car and kept my chin up.

Jace fell into step beside me and walked me to my first classroom without being asked. At the door he stopped and looked at me. "You know where I am if you need anything."

"I'll be fine," I flashed him a smile.

"I know you will." He said simply, not as reassurance but as a fact, and then he turned and walked back down the corridor.

I stood outside the classroom door for three seconds and then pushed it open and walked in.

Every head turned at once.

The man at the front of the room had grey-streaked hair and kind eyes, and he looked up at me and broke into a wide smile. "Ah, our new student." He waved me forward. "Come on, come in, don't be shy."

I walked to the front of the room.

He slung his arm around my shoulders with the casual ease of someone who had been doing this for thirty years and turned us both to face the class. "Everyone, I'd like you to welcome—" he glanced at his register, "—Violetta Calloway."

I turned my head and looked directly at him. "It's Moreau. Violetta Moreau. Not Calloway."

His eyes widened slightly. "My apologies, my dear. Violetta Moreau."

But the whispers had already started.

"Did he just say Calloway—"

"As in Rafael Calloway's—"

"She's living with the Calloway’s? Since when—"

"Is she one of them? She doesn't look like—"

"She's human, look at her, she's obviously—"

I found an empty seat at the back of the classroom next to a girl with round glasses and a neat ponytail who was the only person in the room who was not staring at me. She was looking at her notebook with the focused concentration of someone who had decided the board was the most interesting thing in the room.

I sat down beside her.

She glanced at me quickly. "I'm Petra."

"Violetta," I said.

"I know." She pushed her glasses up. "Everyone knows. Don't worry about the whispers, they'll find something else to talk about by next week."

I wasn't sure I believed her but I appreciated the effort.

~~~~~~~~~~

The class was unlike anything I had ever sat through in my life.

Pack law. Hierarchy structures. The history of the first Alpha bloodlines and how territory was established and the rules governing challenges and the consequences of breaking the code. The teacher wrote things on the board that I had no frame of reference for and the rest of the class copied them down with the easy familiarity of people who had grown up knowing all of this already.

I wrote everything down. Every single word. Not because I understood it but because having a pen moving in my hand kept the panic from settling in properly.

By the time the bell rang, I was exhausted and it had only been one period.

~~~~~~~~~~

I found the cafeteria by following the crowd and the smell of food and when I walked in and picked up a tray and joined the queue I felt my whole body ease by about ten percent. This part at least was familiar. Trays and food and long tables and the noise of a room full of people eating.

I got my food and found a seat at a table near the window that was mostly empty and sat down and ate and let myself have five minutes of almost normal.

I was halfway through when someone sat down directly across from me.

I looked up.

Jason.

He set his tray down and settled into the seat with the unhurried ease of someone who owned whatever room he walked into and looked at me with a smile on his face that had nothing easy or kind about it. The same smile from the kitchen last night. The one that knew something I didn't.

"Ready for your surprise?" he asked with a smirk dancing on his lips.

I put my fork down slowly. "What surprise."

His grin widened slowly and deliberately and deeply unpleasant.

"Watch," he winked at me.

He turned away from me and pushed back from the table slightly and straightened up and when he spoke his voice came out enormous, filling the entire cafeteria from wall to wall, cutting clean through every conversation and scraping chair and clinking piece of cutlery in the room.

"Can I have everyone's attention please."

The cafeteria went silent.

Every single head turned.

Jason let the quiet sit for a moment, long enough to make sure he had all of it, every pair of eyes in the room, and then he smiled.

"I just want to make sure everyone has had the chance to meet our newest student." He gestured toward me with one easy hand. "Violetta Moreau. Rafael Calloway's new human stepdaughter."

He paused.

"That's right." His voice dropped just slightly, just enough to make every person in that room lean in without realizing they were doing it. "Human. A real live human in our school sitting right there."