by E. M. Moore
Jonah blinks. His lips part, and instant embarrassment hits my cheeks. For a split second, sorrow bleeds from the green specks in his eyes until they harden up again. “It shouldn’t have happened. We can’t control ourselves in our wolf form.”
“Shouldn’t have happened?” It comes out far more hurt than I want. “Our wolves are our truest form.”
“Says the girl who only shifted for the first time a couple of days ago.”
“You only shifted for the first time a couple of days ago, too, asshole,” I snap. His eyes flash. But I’m not backing down from him. I did enough hiding and retreating at Lunar, I’m not going to do it here, too. And especially not in front of my mate. I take a step toward him. “Besides, you think I’m beautiful.”
He eyes me warily. “She told you that?”
Everything in me tells me to go to him, but I restrain myself much better in my human form. “I’m sure she’ll share my answers with you.”
“She already has. Does ‘don’t be a dick’ ring a bell?”
I chuckle. “Looks like you didn’t take my advice.”
His brows furrow as he takes me in. “I’m not a dick.”
“Really? You just told your mate, that her first kiss shouldn’t have happened. That doesn’t ring dickish to you?”
He bridges the gap between us. “What should I have said? That I wanted to take it further? That I wanted to sink my cock into your wet heat so badly that I’m still fucking hard as a rock?” Breath whooshes from my lungs, but he ruins it in the next second. “To get your hopes up when it’s a real possibility that nothing like that can ever happen between us?”
My wolf howls inside my chest. It’s so loud that it shakes me to my core. My legs almost give out from underneath me, but I don’t let it show. Instead, I incline my head. “You know what that will do to me.”
He doesn’t answer for the longest time. We stare at each other, unsaid words tangling between us. When he doesn’t respond, I shake my head. Everything he does only solidifies that I was right to avoid my pack like the plague. Spinning, I let my wolf take over. She obliges, singing out her own slew of growling barks that echo behind her as she tears back through the forest. She runs as if she can somehow out-race the pain slicing through her drumbeat heart.
My wolf gets us to Greystone Academy safely. Behind us, a familiar scent trails, staying in the tree line as we break through the grass and continue toward the small changing hut. She nudges the swinging door open with her muzzle and then shifts, letting me take control. I collapse onto the ground, staying there with my chest heaving, feeling as if I’m bleeding out onto the worn grass.
Neither one of us wants to be in control right now. The hurt is too damn much.
I’m just going to say it. Fuck fate. It dealt me the wrong hand. Screwed me, actually. Feral is looking like it might be my future.
As I’ve been doing all my life, I pick myself up, dress, and beckon strength to me. A wolf howls in the distance, and a shiver makes its way up my spine. It could’ve been any wolf, but something in me knows it was Jonah. And that howl was for me.
The school has helpfully supplied a full-length mirror to the right of the door. I get all the tangles out of my hair and grimace at the dried dirt coating parts of my exposed skin.
A nice hot bath or shower might help wash away all this emotion. I step outside the hut, peering toward the bushes where I left Jonah, and a shadow moves. My sight is better than a regular human’s, but I still can’t confirm if it was the wind or a big, beautiful, brown wolf who passed in front of the tree.
Turning away, I march back toward the stone building. Instead of admiring it for its architectural qualities, I appraise it as the fortress that it is. It looks standoffish, secluded. Inside, it hides away the same type of unwanted creatures.
To think that I’ll have to sit through more meetings like the one I just had with Jonah again and again until he makes his final decision…. I might tell him to put me out of my misery now. If he never plans on building our supposed fated relationship, he might as well let me go. I don’t want to be like Mia and Nathan—having to deal with this shit for a year.
I’d rather take my chances as Feral.
The walk back to my room seems to take forever. When I finally get there, I gorge on Mia’s chocolate while I finish reading the manual to keep my mind off what transpired. There’s a map of the grounds, and judging by this, yeah, I was totally outside the perimeter of the school. There is no mention of Brixton anywhere on the sketch, and I can’t help but think that omission is on purpose. For those of us who have a mate that close, it could break us.
Not me though. I know my place now.
When I finally lay my head down to sleep, Jonah is all I think about.
His bruising lips against mine.
The head of his cock nudging my entrance.
He was ready to take what he wanted, and I would’ve given it to him willingly.
It would’ve been a big mistake, of course. If we’d gone that far, Jonah still could’ve spoken those words to me. If that had happened, I probably would’ve gone Feral myself.
Hey, that’s an idea. Why wait for him to make the decision? I could escape this place any time I wanted. Guarantee no one would come after me.
9
The next morning, Mia’s knocking rouses me from sleep. My head hurts, my limbs are tired—my first real run with my wolf has taken everything out of me.
“You in there?” she calls, knocking again.
I groan an unintelligible sound. A few moments later, though, I drag my ass out of bed and stomp toward the door, whipping it open.
Mia’s already half-turned away from me when she glances over her shoulder. Her eyes widen. “Girl, that’s some wolf hair if I’ve ever seen it.”
Wonderful. I lock eyes with her. “I’m late. Obviously. You want me to meet you down there?”
She pushes past me. “No, I’m sensing a story and I want in.”
I close the door behind her and lock it, then move into my bathroom, still wearing the same outfit from yesterday. I frown at my hair in the mirror.
Taking a deep breath, I tell her the whole story, not leaving anything out. In opposition of where my thoughts had headed yesterday, I can’t go Feral. I can’t willingly leave this place. Even though I’m not happy, I won’t do that to my parents. It would devastate them. Plus, I’ve adjusted well to having a friend. It really does become like second nature.
By the time I get the knots out of my hair, I’ve finished the tale. I peer at her through the mirror. “I’m taking a quick shower.”
She spins, giving me some privacy, but continues to talk to me as I disrobe. “You met up with him in wolf form? Holy shit.”
“Yeah, holy shit,” I mimic as I turn on the faucet, standing just out of the spray while I wait for the water to heat up. I can’t believe I fell asleep with all this gross shit on me. Those bedsheets need to be cleaned and sterilized as do the clothes I wore. My literal bare ass was in the dirt last night, and I didn’t mind because Jonah was on top of me. Not remotely how I pictured my first kiss, but somehow, I can’t complain. About the kiss, anyway. I have a long list of complaints about the kisser. Mainly the fact that he’s an asshole.
“What are the odds that he would be out for a run the same time you were out for a run?”
Now that she mentions it, what are the damn odds? And how come we didn’t stumble across anyone else in our romp around the forest?
“I bet it was fate,” Mia yells.
I laugh as I run shampoo through my hair. “Isn’t it all fate? That’s what got us in this predicament anyway.”
“No, what got us in this predicament is dumbass wolves who think they know better than fate.”
I shrug even though she can’t see me. I agree with her sentiment on the dumbass part, but I don’t know, I feel like people should have their own thoughts. If he doesn’t want to be with me, fine. The messed-up part of that scenario is that if he does
n’t, I have to leave the pack for good. But that’s a stupid Pack rule, not from the divine.
Then again, the argument would be: If fate made it so, it should be so.
Tou-fucking-ché.
Now that I’ve had a whole argument with myself in the shower, while my very first friend waits outside, I groan.
“What was it like?” she asks.
I stare at the clear water now running between my toes as I wash the conditioner out of my hair. I almost don’t want to answer. I finish the shower without uttering a word in response. When I shut the faucet off, she hands me a towel around the shower curtain. Taking a deep breath, I steel my shoulders. My wolf is already on board with my answer. I can feel her contentment. “Amazing,” I whisper.
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
I wring my hair out and tie the towel around me. Mia turns her back again as I get out. I swallow. “Have you ever....” I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence. If she hasn’t, I don’t want to hurt her.
I can’t see her face, read her expression, and it makes the silence that grows between us stretch. Finally, she states, “No, we never got that far. I asked him if we should once. I thought that if he’d felt it with me, maybe he’d see how right it was. But you know, part of me is glad he said no.”
My throat constricts. I know exactly what she means. I’ll never forget that kiss. Ever. “Yeah,” I rasp, moving to the sink to brush my teeth. “I think you’re right.”
The pain is so fresh and new, I don’t know what to do with it. I stand in front of the sink for who knows how long until Mia plops my academy outfit on the closed toilet lid. “Here. Picked out your outfit for you.”
I meet her stare in the mirror and smirk.
She smiles back. “Hurry up. I have some calories to eat.”
Exiting, she closes the door and gives me some space to change. Thankfully, at some point last night, I put my new makeup in the bathroom, so after running my hands through my damp hair, I decide to let it dry naturally and spend what little time I have doing my makeup like Grace showed me. When I’m done, I can’t say it looks as good as yesterday, but it’s not bad for my first time solo.
As soon as I swing the door open, Mia rises from my desk chair and hikes her bag up on her shoulder. “Hurry. Nathan’s texting me every few minutes.”
I grab my own bag, and we both head out, traveling down the Daybreak and Lunar corridor until we hit the stairs. Once on the first floor, we make our way to the glassed-in cafeteria. The food choices have changed today. French Toast instead of pancakes, scrambled eggs, bagels, sausage, and more fruit. I scoop whatever looks good onto my plate and follow Mia to where Nathan is sitting with Nadia, who surprisingly, doesn’t have red-rimmed eyes this morning.
She holds a cup of orange juice in her hands and gestures with it. Immediately, I can tell that a smile does her justice better than a frown. It lights up her whole face.
I sit next to her while Mia takes her place next to Nathan. “Blame me,” I tell him. “I wasn’t up when Mia knocked on my door.”
“Late night?” Nathan inquires.
Mia acts as if she’s not paying attention, so I decide to keep what happened between me and Jonah private. Well, private between me, Jonah, and Mia. I don’t feel like getting into another big discussion. Especially after seeing Mia’s reaction to the kissing part. Whatever I say is going to make them think of their own mates, and we already do enough of that.
Instead, Mia and Nathan start discussing something about an upcoming project in one of their classes, and Nadia breaks out a notebook and begins to write in it. The date is written on the first line, and she begins to freehand, scribbling down sentences on the paper. I glance away in case it’s private and not something like a list of how to get revenge against her best friend who completely abandoned her. If it’s a revenge list, I’m on board with helping her.
Mia’s gaze travels over my shoulder. “Incoming,” she singsongs under her breath.
This time, I’m shocked to find Ms. Ebon towering above our table. I almost come to attention in front of her. It’s the aura she gives, making me want to obey her right away. “Miss Walker, I need to see you directly, please.”
I stare back at my plate. I was done a while ago and just moving food around to pass the time, so I stand. “Of course, Ms. Ebon.”
I grab my bag and start to follow her out of the room when I peer over my shoulder. Mia grimaces at me, and Nathan wears a furrowed brow as he watches us walk away. I shrug. At this point, I don’t know what’s going on, and I can think of like three things that I’ve done wrong and could possibly be getting in trouble for, so there’s no sense in worrying about it yet.
Her heels click ahead of me as we march down the corridor to her office. She stops at her room, gesturing for me to go inside first. I don’t know if this is a social meeting like our first or more of a school meeting, so I refrain from sitting until she moves around her huge desk after shutting the door behind us.
She sits, placing her forearms on the wood top in front of her. Leaning closer, she stares at me straight in the eye. “I was alerted to some unfortunate news this morning.”
My heart pings painfully in my chest. My first thoughts are of my parents. I forgot to look at my cell this morning to see if anything had been said since yesterday, but her next words erase all those worries. She swivels her monitor until it faces me and presses play. The clear image of a forest appears. Not three seconds into the video, a copper wolf barrels through the frame and exits it. It happens so fast, I’m pretty damn impressed with myself, but when I glance at Ms. Ebon, I can tell she’s not about to commend me for my superior speed.
“This is the video at the perimeter line. If you move out of the frame, you are no longer within Greystone Academy’s grounds.”
I close my eyes and breathe out.
“Are you going to deny that’s you?”
“No, that was me,” I tell her.
She straightens slightly as if she wasn’t expecting me to tell the truth. “Did you read the handbook or the signs in the changing huts to know that going outside the perimeter is in violation of our policies?”
“I did read that. I can’t say that I knew where the perimeter was when I did it, but I knew that crossing it was wrong.”
Ms. Ebon spins her monitor back to face her, then leans in her chair, steepling her fingers in front of her. “When anything triggers the motion cameras, they go right to our security which reports directly to the administrator.” She raises a brow as she appraises me, and it makes me wonder if she knows the tie between Lydia Greystone and my family. “Mrs. Greystone herself brought it to my attention.”
When I don’t respond, she moves her monitor back around. Opening a separate tab, she clicks play on a new video. This time, it’s of two different wolves who triggered the cameras. One copper and one brown. I frown hard. Seeing Jonah in that form pains me. My own wolf, who’s been sulking, whines because she feels the same way I do. The wolf we can tolerate. The human, we can’t.
“Who is this wolf?” She plays the video again, pointing him out like I wouldn’t know who she was talking about.
“That’s Jonah Livestrong,” I inform her.
She recoils. “Your mate?” She watches me for a long time before asking, “And how did it happen that you went for a run with your mate?”
I sigh. “I didn’t set out to go for a run with him. My wolf wanted out, so I shifted. As soon as she smelled him, I had no control over her.” My wolf sniffs, and I can feel her contempt but it’s true. “Trust me, if I had been in control, I wouldn’t have—” I break off because my first reaction is to say I wouldn’t have gone after him, which is completely and utterly true. But that’s not the reality I should speak in front of the woman whose job it is to get me and Jonah back together. Correction: Reform me so that Jonah will be content with me as a mate. I try to cover up the break as quickly as possible. “If I’d had control, I wouldn’t have bro
ken the rule,” I finish.
“We might be able to work with this,” Ms. Ebon states, turning her computer around and typing furiously on her keyboard. “You are a pup. You caught wind of your mate and couldn’t control yourself.” She stops typing and glances at me. “You do know those cameras are miles away from the south lawn. Upwards of ten miles in some areas. How on earth did you catch his scent from that far away?”
I shrug. “Is that weird?”
“It’s peculiar,” she answers. Returning to typing, her fingers banging against the keyboard until she right-clicks on the mouse with a final punch of power. “There,” she smiles. “You’ll still have to be punished, but let’s hope the penalty won’t be expelling you from the university and a mark on your record.
Fear slices through me. “Expelled?”
“We take our jobs very seriously here, Miss Walker. On first inspection, it was unclear what other wolf you were running with. Had it been another male, that would have been clear grounds for expulsion.”
“It was definitely Jonah,” I grind out. No matter how much I wish it was different, I can’t think of anyone but him.
Her computer pings, and Ms. Ebon returns her stare to the screen. She cocks her head before clicking several times, then her eyes scan. I almost come out of my skin waiting to hear what’s going on. I move to the edge of my seat to see if I can get a better view, but it’s no use. The computer is angled too much.
“Interesting,” she murmurs. Turning toward me, she says, “That was an email from Jonah. He was confirming your story. He and his father placed those cameras, so he knew they would’ve captured you both.” A light shines in her eyes, and I get the feeling she’s thinking way more into this than she should. She must believe he’s come to save the day.
She’s sorely mistaken if that’s the case.
“I’m sure his email will also help smooth things over with Lydia.”
Highly unlikely if Lydia has it out for my family, but I’m not going to burst her bubble. Especially if it lets me off the hook more easily.