As soon as I got to my blue locker to take out the rest of my stuff, Melina suddenly, without any warning, pinched my side, giving me a severe shock that I had to recover from and take a deep breath while watching her, wide-eyed looked at.
"Are you crazy?" I breathed and held my hand to my heart, but her thoughts seemed to be somewhere else. Grinning stupidly, she leaned her back against one of the lockers right next to me, twisting a strand of her hair around her finger.
"Tomorrow is the day! We absolutely have to go shopping!", she explained beaming with joy and wagged her eyebrows up and down like she always did when she spotted any cute boys.
"What do you mean?" I wanted to know, overwhelmed and held my breath a moment later when I suddenly realized what she meant and what she seemed to be looking forward to.
I had totally forgotten about it, but maybe also consciously suppressed it. The next evening the alphas of the other packs would come to our small town, hoping to find their mate here, which of course was a spectacle for the young women from our town.
But not for me.
With a large pack in every direction, all hell would break loose in our otherwise quiet town. I could do without that, especially when I thought of the black pack from the hot south.
It was bad enough when the white pack from the east visited us, all of whom looked haughty and downright vain. Or the motley pack from the north, among which there were supposed to be many half-breeds, whom I was always afraid of recognizing me. But no pack was comparable to the one from the south, which fortunately preferred to live among themselves and only came up with the idea of stopping by our event once a year.
I didn't know any of them, but my father's stories were enough for me to get an idea of them. Arrogant wolves who sought nothing more than power and influence. In addition, they were the only pack in the world to have an upper alpha. They probably needed him so that they could keep themselves under control at all. According to my father, he was a horrible man who had no feelings for anyone or anything. Just the thought of someone like that sent a chill down my spine.
As I slowly found my way back to reality, absorbed by my thoughts, I suddenly noticed that Melina was still waiting for my reaction and eyebrows raised at me.
I laughed heartily at the sight of her despite my discomfort because she looked somewhat like a dog panting and staring at her master just before she was about to be given a treat.
"Why are you so looking forward to this stupid event? You won't find a mate anyway," I replied with a grin, while again starting to carry my things from the locker into my black backpack to calm my anxiety to be noted.
"Alicia! I'm not all about men like you are," she snorted ironically, and when she finally finished laughing at her own joke, she continued, amused.
"Girl! It's all about shopping and partying! We don't care about the men. The fact of getting you out of your boring jeans and into a diamond studded dress has had me jumping for days," she beamed along a glint in her eyes that almost frightened me, it was so intense.
The thought of standing among so many men in a slinky dress made me even more nervous than I already was about the party ahead, and she knew it full well. It was time to provoke her back a bit.
"I think diamonds are a bit too much. A denim dress would do, too," I said as seriously as I could, slamming my locker while meanwhile more and more classmates gathered around us in the hallway in front of the classrooms.
I ignored the others as always and tried to look her seriously in the eyes after my sentence. She shouldn't realize it was a joke and I crossed my arms defiantly, eagerly awaiting her reaction.
"It will come to that. Only over my dead body," she warned theadrally, pinching my side again as I passed, which made me wince slightly.
"You'll get that back!" I called after her, but without even noticing me again, she tossed her long hair gracefully over her shoulders and disappeared between the other students, waving.
When I noticed how some students were looking at me, I immediately turned back to my backpack and disappeared into the crowd so as not to attract attention.
I felt really uncomfortable at times, but I would also miss being here, no matter how weird that dichotomy seemed. But if I had known at that point what was still to come, I probably would never have left this school again...