The Hidden Hunter (GXG) *HIATUS*

2. Graduation

One week. Seven days. 168 hours. Nina was so excited she couldn't contain it in. Not only would she finally be acknowledged, she was pretty sure she had above a 4.0 GPA considering all the university level classes she had passed. Her grades were perfect. This was the most excited she had been feeling in quite some time.

Even though the bullying and tormenting didn't stop, Nina tried her hardest to make it not get to her. She kept reminding herself it would all be over in a week. She could attend graduation, hopefully make her parents proud of her for once when she was declared student of the year.

Another thing Nina would do is finally get the courage to talk to her mate. Oh yeah. Nina had a mate. She didn't know if her mate knew about her but she definitely knew about her mate. What didn't come as shocking to Nina was that her mate was a girl. Unfortunately, Nina had to keep this a secret from her family since she didn't want to add any fuel to the already sky high fire. If it got any higher it would surely burn her alive. Nina's homosexuality had to be kept a secret. For how long, she didn't know. As long as it needed to be. Not even James knew about Nina's mate. Even though she loved James to the bone, and trusted him with her life, she had never found the perfect moment to tell him.

Biting her lips, Nina stood in front of the girls bathroom. She studied her features. She looked so worn down from all the constant threats and beatings. She had bags under her eyes. Her mouth was in a constant frown. Nina almost never laughed. She had once, a long long time ago. When James had told her a very funny joke and Nina had broken into laughter. That was the only time she could remember laughing.

Another saddening thing Nina had realized was that she had never made any contact with her wolf before. She always overheard other students and adults talking about how their wolves were either super disturbing and annoyed them to no end, or how amazing they were. Unfortunately, Nina still had yet to come in contact with her wolf. Because of this, she was at a disadvantage. She couldn't talk to the pack through mind link...not that she wanted to. She couldn't transform into her wolf either. The issue with the latter was that people saw Nina as abnormally weak. In the pack, the younger you transformed, the more skilled of a fighter you were. Since Nina was 17 and she still hadn't experienced a full transformation, they didn't even bother acknowledging her as a werewolf. They simply saw her as a human. One that they could publicly beat and abuse and no one would give a care in the world. The average age people experienced transformations was 10. Nina was 17. It was almost naive of her to imagine ever transforming, nonetheless becoming a skilled fighter.

With a sigh, Nina left the bathroom, hoping to god that no one would call her out.

still hoping she thought. As she continued walking down the hallways, she heard a yell and then felt a sharp pain in her head. Looking up she saw a of couple jocks fist bumping each other. As she got up, she saw the jocks running towards her. Thinking they wanted the ball they threw at her back, she picked it up and held it out to one of the boys approaching her. Instead of him grabbing the ball, he grabbed Ninas wrists and threw her to the floor. Three other boys than proceeded in kicking her, all of them smiling while they did so. One boy even stomped on her ankle with his foot, and Nina had to bite back a scream. She was biting her lip so hard she could taste the blood.

Slowly a crowd started to form around the boys, who by the way were still beating her. In the crowd, Nina saw Jade and Jamie smirking like they were witnessing something amusing. She could see a couple of students who were filming the whole ordeal.

With a final kick to her face, the boys grabbed their ball and the crowd started clapping. Yes. clapping. the crowd had begun to clap like they had just watched the boys win a football game or something. Some students even started whistling.

Nina just lay there. Her eyelids were halfway open. Her body was breaking. She was pretty sure the ankle one of the jocks had crushed was broken. Slowly Nina counted down the seconds it would take for the crowd to disperse.

One second turned into a minute.

one minute turned into two.

two turned into three.

three turned into four before the last remaining people had gone off to their classes. With a groan, Nina pulled herself up with whatever remaining strength she had, and cried out in pain when she couldn't stand on her ankle. Holding on to a nearby locker, Nina grabbed her fallen backpack and limped as best as she could out of the school. She only got across the parking lot before the pain became too unbearable and she slid down the trunk of a random tree. As involuntary tears started to slide down her cheeks, Nina simply wished graduation would come sooner than later. She had no more assignments to hand in to class. She had done all of her exams already. Everything was prepared, all she had to do was get her diploma and she could finally leave this dreaded high school. With a final sigh, Nina got up, and started her painful trek home.