He's right behind her.

A puff of his hot breath curls around her neck ghosting over the baby hairs on the nape of her neck. Gritting her teeth she opened the door to the empty classroom. She is doing the very thing she made Walter promise not to do. She is about to confront the wolf alone. 

Stepping into the classroom she knows how stupid it is to drag this wolf to a secluded part of the school by herself, no one around to her screams. But she knows in her gut, has faith in her wolf, if it came to it she could beat him.

"Close the door." She snapped. A hint of a growl came out. The door clicked shut.

"You're a wolf." His words are soft and not at all what she expected. They are accompanied by a head tilt and sniff of the air. Cinnamon hair falls into his murky green eyes and he doesn't look like the sort of wolf to try and steal another pack's territory. He just looks...lost. But then again her pack looks normal, no one would know about the wolf lurking beneath their pretty smiles. Tessa can see it in him though. The wolf sits in the corner of his eyes in little gold flakes watching her. Waiting. "You're like me."

"No I am not." How dare he say they are the same? She is not some low life wolf who would go sniffing around some other wolf's territory. An insult to Tessa's alpha thinking they can steal her territory. She chuckled - if they thought they could steal Sally Fletcher's territory then they were dead wrong. "What are you doing here?"

"Going to school."

"Don't be smart with me. You are so lucky I found you before my brother did, he would have ripped you limb from limb." Shaking her head, Tessa ignores Rye's pinched features and begins pacing. Never taking her eyes off the new wolf.

"Brother? Is that who else I can smell in 'ere?" His voice rises at the end of the sentence and he looks around, she hears his deep inhale. Tessa's chest has been electrified and she can't keep still and she doesn't understand why he isn't doing anything. Either fight or flight. It's basic and primal and he should have picked one of the two already. Even if he chose flight though, she would run after him until they reached Cornwall if that's what it took to keep him off the pack's territory. Why wasn't he making a decision? "You're not alone?"

"Of course I'm not alone, I've got my pack." She snorted out a laugh. Her veins rose in her arm to the surface, with each pump of her heart they went from a blue hue to dark mustard the colour of the devil's eye. In the window's reflection she could see her face streaked in these veins and a pair of yellow eyes blinked at her. "Where's the rest of your pack?"

"I don't have one."

"Don't lie to me," Her nails thickened, cracking, sharpening themselves into claws. "Every wolf has a pack and if you don't have yours off our territory by the full moon tonight, our pack will have your tails quicker than you can bay at the moon."

"But-"

The bell rang. A bursting scream which rattled around her heightened earring. They winced in unison cradling their ears. She growled, this wolf should not be similar to her, she should not be similar to this wolf.

"There's no buts. Find your pack and bugger off. Or we'll make sure you do."

~ 

"He's cute." Simone rests her hand on her bronze cheek bones like a sculpture of a greek goddess she holds a copy of the Handmaid's Tale in the other staring at Rye over the pages. "In a kind wild, lone wolf sort of way."

Head ducked, curls blocking his eyes, Rye scribbles furiously in the back of his book, free hand clenched into a fist. Tessa bit her lip doubting he was writing about Margaret Atwood's use of pathetic fallacy. She glanced at the clock, three minutes left, not enough time to do anything actually productive on their worksheet, but still a painstakingly boring amount of time to waste away.

"The forecast says it's going to tip it down this afternoon, so we are going to go looking for the camera at lunch. I am not losing my proof of the monster now."

"If you don't find my camera you are going to be losing a lot more than your proof." Said Simone.

There's an itch on the side of her face, the type of itch you get from someone watching you too intently for too long. Rye is staring at her with sharp eyes. She stares back. He jerks his chin towards Keri, anyway wolf would know what he is silently asking - is she talking about us? 

Gritting her teeth Tessa forced herself not to react. Not to snap at him about how it was none of his business, that this was her pack's territory and they could control it, that this wasn't an excuse for his pack to take over. Instead she shook her head, a movement so minute if he had not been studying her he would have missed it. She would not give them a justification to invade her territory.

"Do you think I should invite him to the chip shop with us? It must be hard being in a new place all alone."

It was not often Simone was wrong, but Tessa knew this boy could not be alone.

"No way," Snapped Keri, lifting her head with a highlighter clenched in each hand. "He's not part of our group. Besides, chips are only a reward for those who help with monster hunting."

"Maybe that's a good thing. It's about time we got some fresh blood around here." Simone smiled, a wicked thing, if this were a cartoon they would call it her scheming face. "Anyway, I can invite him to come monster hunting, it would be a good way for him to get to know the local area."

"No!" The word slips out rushed and harsh and it makes Tessa blink at the force of her own voice. The other two stare at her, Keri dropping one of her highlighters with a raised eyebrow. "I-I mean you don't want to scare him off on the first day, do ya? I'm pretty sure dragging him through the hills on monster hunt will do just that. He'd probably turn tail and go back to wherever he came from."

She says it knowing that if he is not gone by the time the moon rises her pack will make sure there is none of him left.