Mina tapped her pencil with the beat of the music, it was the same song she had heard for the past two years, it was supposed to help her with her speech pattern but after she turned ten it became just noise, and after she turned eleven it became an annoyance. Now she was a wolf she just wanted to get the song over with. Meanwhile her teacher sat across from her in the tiny room, Daniel, she could smell him, he was scribbling notes in his book, but she wanted him to pay attention to her. He didn't mention how much she had grown in the past two weeks, he didn't mention how much longer her hair was, how much taller she was, how she was now wearing a bra. It was like nothing had changed. She wanted him to see her.
Daniel for his part did his best to focus on his notepad, when the song ran it's course he quickly turned off the tape recorder and gulped, touching the brown goatee he had grown across his face. He had known Mina since her parents had brought her to him on the first day of school, and now she was clearly starting to grow up. As a speech teacher he was usually the closest confident to the students when they were younger, yet as they grew up he hoped they would find friends their own age to hang out with, making the transition to another teacher in Junior High School easier, for Mina that did not seem to be the case. "So I wanted to talk to you about the attack last week," He looked over at the cast on Mina's hand. The school councilor had insisted that he tried to get her to open up about it. "Did the wolves bite you too?"
"The wolves protected me." She said, drawing inward.
"Protected you? From Principal Steelson?" Daniel took in a breath before regaining his composure. "Mina, you know you can talk to me about it." He slowly moved his chair around the table so that he was sitting next to her, trying to put on his best comforting voice.
"Can we talk about something else?" Mina shifted in her seat, her ears twitched, and Daniel could have sworn her eyes changed color for a moment but it could have just been a trick of the light. "Like maybe how your application is going for Junior High School speech teacher!"
Daniel's heart dropped and he shook his head. "We have been over this," He placed a hand on Mina's shoulder. "I have a contract with this school, I have responsibilities, Mrs. Mary is a very talented speech teach.."
Mina spun around, a fury in her eyes he had never seen before, they were not the soft hazel eyes he was not used to seeing, they were golden, predatory, they were filled with fire and anger, filled with tears. "I don't want Mrs. Mary! I want you!" She grabbed his hand, and he felt a sharp pain, like five tiny needles digging into his skin. He pulled his hand away from her suddenly sharp nails to find that she had drawn blood. "Oh! Oh Daniel I am so sorry!" She began to sob making little puppy whimpering sounds as she took his bleeding hand into both of her's and licked the blood off the wounds.
"It's okay, it's okay." He jerked his hand away, his hand felt warm, a warmth that seemed to pulse up his arm with every heart beat. When he looked at the hand again the bleeding seemed to have stopped, he couldn't even feel the pain from the wound anymore, he grabbed a tissue and cleaned the wound before turning back to Mina. "Listen I am not going anywhere, just because you wont be my student doesn't mean you can't come and visit me at work." He tilted her head up with a finger and used a thumb to brush a tear from her cheek, to his relief her eyes were the normal color again, maybe it was just a trick of the light.
"Everything is going to be okay."