Page 12 of Legacy Wolf: Semester One (Legacy Wolf #1)

RAWLING

“Aren’t you supposed to be at practice already?” Jack dropped her backpack on the floor with a thud.

“No.” I didn’t even look up from the essay I was working on. I had finally gotten to the point where things were beginning to flow, and I didn’t want to jinx it. “Not until four thirty today.”

“I probably shouldn’t tell you that it’s four forty-three then, huh?”

My head snapped in the direction of the clock. Fuck. She was right.

“Shit,” I mumbled and pushed the school work I was dealing with to the side and bounded off my bed. “Coach is gonna kill me.”

It took me longer than I wanted to dig out my gym bag, and I bolted out of the building, barely saying good-bye and thank you to my roommate. She responded by telling me I owed her one, which was fair enough. I probably owed her more than that, if we were keeping track.

After the shortest stop at the locker room of all time, I joined my teammates who were already in the middle of practice. I tried to sneak in, just join in without anyone noticing. That wasn’t happening, and Coach bellowed out my name.

I raced over to her as she was tapping her foot with impatience. “Why are you late?”

“I was working on an assignment and lost track of time.” It sounded like the dumbest excuse ever as it spilled from my lips, but it was the truth. “I’ll be more careful in future.”

“You know what happens to people who don’t take practice seriously, don’t you?”

I had no idea. Sure, I’d seen Coach kick Atticus out the day he got out of control, but I had a feeling that didn’t fall under the same category as being late. Who punished people for not getting to practice on time by not letting them practice?

“Laps?” In high school, my gym teacher loved to assign running laps as a consequence, and it was all I could come up with on the fly.

“Don’t be fresh. You think that I won’t pull you from the next tournament simply because you’re the best here?” Shit. My skill was not something I wanted her highlighting. It already had a target on my back from some of the team members.

“I don’t think that, Coach.” I looked to the ground, hoping she would take it as me being contrite.

“You have a lot of practice to catch up on.” She dismissed me with a stomp of her foot.

It shouldn’t have been a shock that when I looked up, everyone’s eyes were on me and yet somehow it was. A few pairs were filled with pity, but most of them were amused. Jerks.

I grabbed my gear and got at the end of the shortest line.

Coach liked to have us shoot an arrow, go to the end of the line, then repeat to see who in each line did the best. From there she would regroup us, until we were separated by “skill.” It wasn’t my favorite part of practice, but it wasn’t my worst either.

At least it wasn’t Coach nitpicking every single thing we did wrong, from our stance to our elbow position.

I swore, one day she was going to tell me my hair was not at the right angle.

A few minutes later, Coach blew her whistle and walked to the targets to decide who would be on which “team” next.

The first few times, I assumed she was looking at the location of the arrows—if you were in the center, you were the best, and the further you were from that location, the less well you did.

Apparently there was more to it than that, and we never knew who she was going to be pleased with until she returned.

“I don’t think we’re taking any new pledges this semester.” Atticus’s voice boomed, the way it did when he wanted to be sure I heard what he was saying.

And maybe I was being self-centered assuming it was always me he wanted to hear his words. It could easily be someone else he intended to feel bad, but it was always his way of sideways bullying, and that said far more about him than it did about me or any of his other victims.

I was never going to understand what Jack saw in him other than a huge cock. And honestly, there was no cock magical enough to have me interested in that jackass.

“Too much riffraff transferred this term,” he continued.

There was no denying who the riffraff was. From what I could piece together, it was only Jack and me that were new in our house.

What confused me was that I didn’t think there were any fraternities on campus. My old school was all about Greek life and pledging and hazing. If you weren’t Greek, you weren’t anyone in the social hierarchy. But I saw none of that here. At least not yet.

“Although, maybe we could overlook that for Rawling, given he is the new Archery King.” Atticus crossed over to me. “What do you think? Do you want to pledge Sable Hounds?”

“Not everyone is into that crap.” Phelan grabbed the back of his neck.

“I think I’m good.” Riffraff paired with pledging sounded like a good way to jump into hazing hell. Not that I was interested in joining, but even a hint of desire was extinguished thanks to Atticus being part of it.

“Shh, Coach is coming back.” Phelan shoulder-checked Atticus. “Don’t get us in trouble.”

Coach came back and put us in our new groups, the conversation all but forgotten by the others, but not by me. I kept playing his words over and over again. Atticus had 100% been doing that to get to me, and I was letting him.

Once practice was over, Coach decided it would be a great idea for me to learn my lesson by putting away all of the equipment myself. At the time I was irked, but walking into an empty locker room made it worth it. I didn’t need more time with Atticus and his bully club.

I was half surprised to see Jack still in our room when I got back. It was getting near the end of dinner time, and if I hadn’t needed to grab my meal card, I’d have headed right over there.

“Did you already eat?”

She shook her head.

“Waiting on you. Thought you’d be back already.” She put the book down.

“Yeah, well, I had to do some extra cleaning up thanks to being late.” I put my bag on my bed and went to my satchel to grab my card. “It was probably for the best. The team was being kind of asshatty today.”

I tried not to put down Atticus too much in front of Jack. Not because he deserved it or because I didn’t want her to see his horrid ways. No, I just liked to avoid the fight I knew would ensue.

“Because you were late?”

“Naw. They were talking about Sable Hounds and Unicorn Stallions. I didn’t even know you had a Greek system here.”

“It’s not like that. They are more like secret societies.” She rolled her eyes, clearly unimpressed. “They don’t do the beer keg parties you see in movies.”

I didn’t want to get into it that, that wasn’t how real fraternities were. I was getting too hungry to spend the time, and really, it didn’t matter.

“Keg parties are overrated.” Cheap beer, drunk college kids, and bad music did not a good time make.

“Yeah, pretty sure these are too.” She let out a soft sigh. “Want to hear something dumb?”

“Sure?” Was there a correct answer for that?

“When I was a kid, I used to want to be a Sable Hound like my dad.” She started toward the door. “Silly me didn’t realize they wouldn’t be open to me.”

“Why wouldn’t they? Because you’re a girl?” That sounded pretty shitty, but nothing about them sounded good so far.

“Same reason they wouldn’t let you.” She grabbed the door handle. “You coming?”

“But Atticus said I should pledge.”

Her jaw dropped.

“Listen, I don’t want you to think I’m putting you down. I promise you, I’m not, but Atticus knows as well as I do that our kind,” she indicated the two of us with her fingers, “are not permitted to join. He just wanted to haze your ass.”

I still didn’t get it.

“Our kind?”

Jack growled… like full-on animal growled and then opened the door. “Dinner.”

I slid my card into my back pocket and joined her. There was no reason to continue with this conversation, not when my questions only brought her to the point of acting like a freaking animal. Our conversation did clarify one thing; Atticus still hated me—hated me enough to try and haze me for fun.

What an asshat.