The Werewolf Girl (Camren)

Chapter 6: Prey

Camila's POV:

March 01, 2015

I smile at our teacher apologetically before I hurriedly make my way over to the same exit which Lauren used to dash out of the building just a few seconds ago. After I carefully sprinted down the staircase without slipping I look up from my dirty sneakers to scan my surroundings, Lauren is nowhere in sight. I hate the cold with a passion but I'm glad that it snowed last night, the white layer captured some big boot prints, no one usually uses this backdoor so I'm pretty confident that those are Lauren's footprints. I follow the prints and see with time that the scheme is changing, the distance between them begins to increase. She picked up her speed.

I keep on following the lead slowly, the next time I look up I realize that I'm no longer in the small park, there are way more trees around me and the small walkways are no longer there, it's all just frozen forest ground covered by a thick layer of snow. It's darker in here, the proud firs are covered in snow, blocking the daylight from fully reaching the ground. It immediately feels a few degrees colder. I wrap my arms tightly around my shivering frame before I relocate the foot prints.

Instead of the shape the heavy boot soles left behind, the outlines of the prints start to shift. They are becoming larger and rounder. Each step I take the prints look more and more like paws, enormous paws, for sure not the ones of a cat or dog. When I take a few more hurried steps over to a dark shade in the snow I find my brown leather bag laying there right beside a massive rock. I bend down and check if it still has all my things in it before I lift the heavy bookbag onto my shoulder.

Examining my surroundings further I see small strips of black fabric laying around the untouched layer of snow. Following the tiny pieces of clothing I see a dark jacket laying on the other side of the massive rocks. Lauren's jacket, she always wears it to school, it seems to be her favorite piece of clothing. 'Why would she leave it behind with my bag?' I drop my bag to the floor so I can put on the jacket in hopes of warming myself up before I put it back onto my shoulders. Her strong scent is stuck in the fabric of the comfortable piece of clothing and when her odor fully wraps around my shivering frame I feel my nerves calming down immediately. I really hope she's ok out here without a jacket on her, it's freezing cold. I push my concern aside and continue inspecting the scene, I need to find out what happened to her.

I keep on looking around the forest until I hear a deep voice speaking up right behind me. I flinch because I didn't hear anyone coming up to me, the snow must have dampened their footsteps.

"So you must be the famous Camila." The way he mispronounces my name is cringeworthy. I turn around slowly to see a tall man standing a few feet behind me. He seems young maybe in the middle of his twenties, he has slick platinum blond hair, pushed back with some hair wax and he's wearing a perfectly fitting tuxedo. His white clothes are perfectly matching his pale skin.

Something about him seems off, his eyes gave me chills when they met mine. They have such a cold to them and the shade looks unnaturally reddish, he's standing too far away from me though to observe them properly. I don't feel comfortable standing alone in the middle of the forest with this stranger. I shift slightly straightening up so I seem taller than I actually am even though it's a lost game, my one meter fifty-seven are not very impressive. Well what did my mother always tell me, 'You have to straighten up, stand tall, seem confident in yourself, this way people won't always pick on you. They just look for people who seem easy to pick on. Give them no reason to pick on you.'

"I'm an old friend of Lauren's."

His statement makes me immediately listen to his words a little closer. His knowing smirk shows me that he knows that he got me.