Adversity by Claire Farrell

was off the
table.
    I spent at least three classes trying
to remember every detail of my dreams in case they were part of the
key to ending the curse. Okay, that scenario wasn’t likely. Not at
all. But if my family members’ dreams led to soul mates, then why
not curses? But I could find nothing. Nothing useful about curses,
anyway. All I remembered was Kali’s distraction, and the focus she
had on escaping her life.
    Sometimes I woke up wanting to slap
her. Her thought processes and the decisions she made confused me.
She was so dramatic. She barely knew Andriy, and she had convinced
herself she was hopelessly in love. She didn’t see that she was so
desperate for escape that she would have clung on to any option
that presented itself.
    One minute she was noble and moral, and
the next she was running after somebody else’s husband. And she was
barely older than me. Yeah, she lived in another time, but her
actions still grossed me out, though not during my dreams.
Everything seemed normal and right while I dreamt.
    The dreams had to mean something to me
or be relevant to my life somehow. I had been thinking hard, and
some of the hints she dropped added up. Kali would have werewolf
children. Did that mean she was a soul mate? Was Andriy one of us?
His surname was familiar. Ivaneska-Evans. Not a huge stretch. I
felt a little ill at the idea of being attracted to a possible
ancestor, but really, I was feeling the aftershocks of Kali’s
emotions. She loved the man, but there was no possibility of a
happy ending for her.
     
    ***
     
    Before lunch, Abbi approached me. I
tried to smile at her, but something about her triggered my
suspicions. She wasn’t evil or anything, but I couldn’t forget my
first impressions of her.
    “ Hey, Ams. Where’s your
brother hiding?” she said cheerily.
    “ Here. Somewhere.” I
gestured vaguely.
    “ No, seriously. I haven’t
seen him since this morning. He ran out of class after I told him
about Perdy.” She frowned.
    “ What? What happened to
Perdy?” My lungs seemed to constrict, and dark spots flew in front
of my eyes. What had happened now?
    “ Those wild dogs again,” she
said slowly, but I was already gone, looking for Joey. I sprinted
and found him in the first classroom in which I looked. “Where…
what happened?” I blurted, flustered beyond belief.
    He looked up from his conversation with
Tammie and shook his head. “I should have known you’d be next. A
wolf tried to attack us at the hospital; another wolf protected
us.”
    “ Another—oh. Is she
okay?”
    “ She’s fine. I’ve talked
about this with your brother already, and he ran out of the school
as though the hounds of hell were after him.”
    “ Oh.” I turned to leave,
then hesitated. Oh, crap. I glanced back at him. “Did you say
wolf?”
    A smile twitched on his lips. “I
did.”
    “ Did Perdita… say something
to you?”
    His expression was blank. “Like
what?”
    I bit my knuckle to cover my gasp of
fear. Could she have told him the truth about us? Would she really
betray us? I shook my head and left. “Like nothing,” I said over my
shoulder.
    I made up my mind. I was going home.
Screw staying in school while the rest of my family was busy
dealing with… whatever. I was part of the family, too, and I
deserved to know what was going on. I snuck from school grounds
without telling anyone. I’d only miss a couple of classes, but I
didn’t want to deal with any questions. What could I tell them? I
needed to deal with werewolf business?
    I made it home, still shaking from the
worry of another attack and the idea that people might know the
truth about us. Nobody was around except for Opa.
    “ What’s happening?” I asked
him.
    He refused to look at me. “Nothing.”
But his voice was strained, and I knew something had
happened.
    “ Then, where is everyone?” I
demanded.
    “ Jeremy’s following orders.
Your uncle left to find your brother.”
    “ Why? Where’s Nathan? What’s
going