He stomped towards me and I instinctively crumbled in on myself. I kept my gaze on the man with black hair. The guy he was spotting had just stood up and was looking towards us as well. He had black hair as well and seemed to be of Eastern Asian descent.
“Yo,” he called out to the man steaming in front of me. “This the bitch, Max?”
“Excuse me?” I bristled. “I don’t even know you!”
“He knows all he needs to know,” The taller man, Max, hissed. “That you’re a weak little wolfless girl who somehow managed to swindle her way into the Academy.”
“And I know everything I need to know about you,” I threw back at him.
“You’re a big bully,” I continued. “Who, clearly, is insecure in his own place so much so that he has to put other people down.” I curved my lips into a smirk. “And not someone I’d like to spend my time giving a shit about.”
“Oh shit,” Someone whispered behind me. I looked back at the crowd that had formed around me. All of the surrounding wolves looked scared shitless. I turned back around and looked at my bully.
“So you scare everyone here?” I stood up straight. “What are you some sort of prince?”
The Max guy glared down at me. His body seemed to dwarf mine entirely. “I’m Maximus Wolfham. The heir to the Wolfham line,” he spat.
Wolfham. Wolfham. Wolfham.
Why was that name so familiar to me?
“Oh,” I said under my breath. Add it to my tally of “oh”s. This man was one of the potential suitors my mom had picked for me. He was the heir to the next greatest wolf house.
And he was looking at me like I pissed in his cheerios.
“Oh,” he mocked me. He pushed past me, banging his shoulder against mine. I felt the same shiver of electricity surge through me as it did when he ran me over yesterday.
“I meant what I said yesterday, human,” Maximus threw over his shoulder. There was that word again. “Stay out of my fucking way.”
I followed him across the gym. He stopped in a group of people and turned around to face me. His friends were chatting besides him, but he was too busy staring daggers at me. I groaned.
So much for staying under the radar, I thought.
“Quiet, quiet, quiet!” A voice boomed across the gym. A man, clearly the coach from the way he was dressed, emerged from the office besides the gym. “That’s enough chit chat. We’re timing the run today. Give me a warmup lap then Maximus and Petyr will lead the stretches.”
Without a second command, the entire group took off down the track. I followed them, lingering towards the back of the group. Petyr must’ve been the Eastern Asian man being spotted by Maximus as the two took the lead. I struggled to keep up.
My breath was catching in my throat as I looked across the track and saw Maximus and Petyr looking back at me with stone cold gazes. Great, I thought to myself. Another enemy.
Peytr was handsome as well. But he was no Maximus. Even with how rude he was to me, I couldn’t help but find him incredibly attractive.
We rounded out the warmup lap towards the end of the group then broke into lines for stretching. I wound up being the woman with long black hair whom I’d run into earlier in the day.
She made sure to remind me that she didn’t like me by almost body checking me every time we turned around.
