"Things are going to start changing around here," Bianca announced to the teenage wolves who had gathered in the gymnasium. "You'll all be treating me the way I deserve to be treated." She hopped down from the stage and took a step forward. Instantly, the students cleared a path for her, but not out of respect- More out of fear of the crazy girl they'd heard so much about yet had never seen up close. The crazy girl who had...
And I'll call you the lunatic who pushed her best friend off a cliff.
Bianca pushed that memory down as deep as it would go. "Starting tomorrow, I'm no longer the loner kid, understand?" Her voice came out more forcefully than she'd been meaning it to. "With your help, by tomorrow, I'll be the queen of the school. Hopefully, you're all smart enough to know I'm more than willing to start implying threats to those who aren't enthusiastic participants."
They wanted to think of her as mad? Let them think of her as mad. What did she have to lose, anyway?
"A bit dramatic, don't you think?" Henry asked, once everyone had left.
Bianca grinned at her best friend. "Dramatics are a given part of being queen."
"Are you planning on telling me what brought forth this wave of ambition, your majesty?"
"Come on, I'll drive you home," Bianca said. She skipped up to her car: A vicious black Porsche she had bought using the check her father had tossed to her on her sixteenth birthday last year.
"I have my own car, thanks," Henry muttered.
"Scared, Oake?"
"My parents get nervous whenever they see me with you." Nevertheless, he reluctantly got into the passenger seat.
"It's been five years. Tell them they need to get used to it."
Bianca had just entered middle school when she'd met Henry Oake for the first time. Within a week of them becoming friends, Jackson, her bodyguard, had told her that her father wanted Bianca to have nothing to do with Henry. Of course, this had only made Bianca want to hang out with Henry even more, and he'd become one of her closest friends ever since.
It wasn't that Henry was a bad kid. If anything, it was Bianca who was always influencing him in the wrong direction. And to the humans, the Oakes were a respected family who were rolling in gold.
But gold carried no meaning in the Blackburn Pack, and to them, the Oakes were just a bare hair's width above the rank of the Omega wolves. This had something to do with history involving the generation of wolves that had come before Henry and Bianca, one that was unknown to Bianca and the kids her age.
"See you tomorrow, your majesty," Henry gave a dramatic bow, exiting the car once Bianca had pulled up to his house.
It was a bit past eleven when Bianca arrived home, and apart from her father's guards, the entire place was empty. As usual.
Feeling rebellious for some reason, Bianca broke the lock on her father's office and marched right inside. Knowing she would pay for this later, she invaded his secret stash of Irish scotch and poured herself a glass. She didn't even like the stuff, but it was always fun to take what wasn't hers- Even more so when what she was taking belonged to her father.
She must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes, the clock told her it was a quarter past midnight. Bianca stood from her father's chair, stretched her hands over her head, and moved to place the bottle of scotch back in the cupboard beside the desk. The moon's rays shone down from the window behind her, illuminating the contents of the cupboard. And there, glinting in the corner, was a small mirror.
Frowning, Bianca took it in her hand. She'd never seen it before. There was a small latch on the side of the mirror, and when she undid it, it swung open to reveal... A picture of her mother.
Grace Quinn was young in this photograph, only a couple years older than Bianca's current age. Her long golden locks, which she hadn't passed onto her dark haired daughter, shone brightly. She was laughing, smiling directly at the camera. Her hand was resting on her pregnant belly-
Footsteps. Footsteps, in the house, right now- "Shit," Bianca muttered under her breath. She tried to get the mirror to close, but the stupid latch wouldn't work. Then she paused, wondering just why on earth she was in such a frightened hurry.
Her father entered the room, not at all surprised to find her here. But then his eyes moved to what Bianca was clutching in her hand.
"Put it down." His entire demeanor had changed. He'd gone from irritated to infuriated in a split second.
"No," Bianca heard herself answer.
"Put it down, now."
Her heart wouldn't stop its insane pounding on her chest. "Why do you have a picture of mom?"
He approached her, and Bianca found herself instinctively stepping back. "You tore the only photos I had of her to pieces, then threw them in the fire," she laughed. "You said you were helping me, that forgetting was the only way to get over the grief-" A strangled sort of yelp escaped her as her father wrapped his fist tightly around her own.
"Give it to me."
"You hypocrite!" Bianca shouted, trying to pull herself away from him. "I actually believed you when you said you were destroying all my mementos of her for my own good! But all this time-"
Bianca turned ninety degrees on the spot, then fell to the floor, clutching her stinging cheek. Tears flooded her eyes against her own volition, and she tried her best to blink them away. There was no way she was going to let him see that he'd made her cry.
"Get out."
Her survival instincts screamed at her to listen to him.
She didn't listen to him.
"You think you're the only one who's capable of missing someone?" Bianca shouted. "When she died, I needed you. But you chose to ignore me for years, to make me feel like a stranger in my own home!"
Her father stormed out of the room, apparently deciding that if Bianca wasn't going to leave, he was. Bianca chased after him, hurling one insult after the other, not knowing why the years of pent up anger was choosing to come bursting out of her now- Not that she cared.
"Every problem I've ever had in my life, it all comes down to you!" she screamed. "You're the reason everyone at school thinks I'm a freak, the reason why I have to threaten people to make friends-"
"I couldn't care less about your petty teenage troubles," her father snapped, finally speaking for the first time since they'd come out of his office.
"Fine!" Bianca shouted. "Then what about the whole 'getting abducted and pumped full of aconite because Lorenzo Blackburn is my father' thing, then?"
"I took care of it," he growled.
"I'm sure you did," Bianca scoffed. "The same way you 'take care' of my birthdays or the calls from the police station about me or the messages from my teachers about the fights I get into- By throwing money around and hoping whatever you have to deal with disappears!"
She threw a punch at him at the end of her sentence, but her father caught her fist in midair and turned her around so that her arm was twisted behind her back. A pathetic sound which was a mix of a yelp and a whimper escaped her mouth, and she wanted to kick herself for letting it out.
"Get out of my house," her father spat. "And if I ever catch you looking through my things again, I will kill you."
Yet another death threat. That line is getting old now, Bianca was tempted to say, but the painful pull on her arm muscles convinced her to stay quiet.
Humiliated, confused, and furious, Bianca got in her car and drove off, unsure of where she was going. Maybe she would go to Henry's house, or find a comfortable bench in the park to sleep on.
I took care of it.
He'd told her he'd taken care of it... Was there a chance he'd actually dealt with her problems for once?
A single scroll through her phone told her everything there was to know: A gas explosion had occurred at the Hawkins Manor at noon, the very same place Bianca had run from last night. 'No casualties have been detected so far,' an article read.
No casualties. This meant Grayson Briare was still out there- But Bianca was too busy being surprised at what her father had done for her to care.
Not for me, she quickly corrected herself. For the family name. After all, the mighty Lorenzo Blackburn couldn't possibly have idiots kidnapping his daughter without making those idiots suffer repercussions in return- It would be bad for his reputation.
Bianca parked her car in town square, then adjusted the angle of her seat so she could get into a good sleeping position. Being out so late at night might have been dangerous for a teenage girl such as herself, were it not for the fact that Bianca had a tendency to transform into a 150 pound supernatural predator from time to time.
Also, this was Crescent Cliffs. Nothing bad ever happened here.
Not without her father knowing about it, anyway.