Golden: A Paranormal Romance

by Ellis Marie

  Firstly, there are no modern features anywhere bar the computer that sits on one side of the room. Everything else seems to be made of dark wood with glossy finishes up to the ceiling. It seems he’s a fan of the aesthetic. One wall does have windows, but the dark curtain over them blocks out most of the light until he pulls it back as he ushers me to sit down.

  Secondly, the place is a bit of a mess. Every surface seems to be covered in post-it notes or pieces of paper that have lines drawn between them with red circles surrounding bold words that stand out. It’s safe to say that Trent is investigating something, and it looks pretty complicated.

  What catches my eye the most is that the other walls are lined with books upon books. As far as I can see, these aren’t any ordinary books and some of them look to be pretty old up on the high shelves.

  Words catch my eye as I survey them—shifting, witch hexes, healing for werewolves.

  I could probably do with spending some time reading these.

  As Trent comes off his phone, he clears his throat, pulling my attention away from his personal library and to his stressed features instead, which are skimming across the scattered papers in front of him.

  So far, no one has actually told me anything of what is going on. I’ve sat pretty patiently waiting to be brought into the circle of knowledge.

  And yet, nothing.

  I reach across to try and bring his attention to me, maybe to stop him from stressing out so much.

  “Trent—”

  The door behind us swings open without him even looking at me, his figure immediately rising as people walk into the room and come round to his side.

  I huff and sink back in my chair as they greet each other, giving a little wave to Robbie and Dean who just nod at me briefly before turning to their alpha.

  “I need you guys to go and scope out these trails,” Trent orders, making a pattern on the map with his fingers. “Get a team of at least ten to go either way. I want this guy found, now.”

  “Yes, Alpha,” they respond, bowing their heads. “We’ll let the other scouting teams know.”

  Their feet spin, and soon, they’re gone again, their orders seeming to be all they came for.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I ask sweetly, trying to calm the ball of anger that’s building in me as I’m ignored by yet more people coming into the room and talking to Trent. “No? Great.”

  They disappear a minute later, and I feel my foot start to tap at the blatant refusal to tell me anything or involve me.

  Why am I even sitting here?

  Trent picks up his phone again just as it rings, his words clipped and short.

  “Can you guys not just speak with your . . .” I motion to my head, trying to think of the word to describe it. “Telepathy thingy?”

  Whether he even hears me is debatable as he just talks over me, his words a mile a minute. I give up trying to follow them.

  This is becoming a joke. I’m the one who had spoken to Andy. I’m the one who apparently needs to be protected, so why the hell am I the only one not getting spoken to?

  The door opens again. “Professor Richardson is here, Alpha.”

  I look over my shoulder to see Scarlette in the doorway. She shoots me a quick smile when she sees me. I return it, but I know that she can see it’s fake.

  In response to the announcement, Trent quickly hangs up. A tight grin takes over his face as he moves around to greet the person entering, passing me as he does.

  It must be important. He doesn’t do that for anyone else.

  “Professor Richardson,” he greets. I turn back around to see an older man entering the room. He pushes his glasses up his sharp nose as he holds his hand out to Trent, the bundle of papers almost falling from his arms as he does.

  “Alpha Night, always a pleasure. Although I do wish it was under different circumstances.”

  He doesn’t seem to be a werewolf. His figure looks smaller and frailer, although maybe that just happens with age.

  Do werewolves age the same?

  Scarlette’s figure sitting down on the chair next to me stops me from thinking about it too much. The muttering of men behind us are too hushed for me to properly hear.

  “How are you feeling?” she asks with a small smirk on her lips as she puts her feet onto the desk. “You worried?”

  “I mean, I’m sure I would be,” I respond, crossing my arms over my chest as I roll my eyes. “But I haven’t been told anything so I couldn’t comment.”

  Scarlette scoffs under her breath as she leans into me. Her thumb points back at the two conversing men. Briefly, I hear Trent say my name.

  “You’re the luna,” Scarlette whispers as if it’s obvious, her green eyes sparkling. “Make him tell you.”

  She’s right. I’ve sat for far too long just listening while other men control my life—Matt, my father. Trent isn’t about to become one of them, even if it’s for the right reasons. He promised me he wouldn’t.

  I’m rising before I can think things through, the bolt of courage in me being fueled by the simmering anger that has been boiling the moment since I sat in the chair. Why the heck am I not being told anything when it clearly has something to do with me?

  I don’t miss the squeal of excitement Scarlette releases as I walk up to the men, ignoring their tense conversation as I stick my hand in between them with a megawatt smile plastered onto my face.

  “Hi,” I butt in, cutting off their words. “I’m Elle Williams, a pleasure to meet you.”

  Professor Richardson looks at Trent before hesitantly taking my hand, the shake lasting notably shorter than his previous one. I grip his hand with a little more force than necessary.

  “Professor Richardson,” he replies, pulling his hand back as he glances between Trent and I. “We should maybe go somewhere else, we were just discussing—”

  “Me?” I offer, making his mouth shut. “I thought I heard my name?”

  The poor old man looks panicked at what to do, his eyes widening as he waits for the man beside me to say something.

  “Elle,” Trent says softly with an edge to his tone as his arm comes around my waist. “I don’t want you—”

  “Frankly, I don’t care what you want,” I interrupt, my anger seething as I put a step between us so that he can’t touch me. “I’m sick of being ignored. I’m the person that Andy came to. I’m the person who was almost killed by a bomb, yet I seem to be the only person not getting told what the f*ck is going on.” I take a breath and ruffle my shoulders, letting the honey-like smile slip onto my lips again.

  “So if you’d like to stop keeping me in the dark, then I’d be eternally grateful.” I face Trent. “I am luna after all, am I not?”

  I would say that there’s silence throughout the room but that would be a lie. Scarlette’s muffled laughter makes that impossible. Trent, on the other hand, hasn’t reacted yet. He just watches me. Instead of stepping back like I’ve been taught to my entire life, I square up to him, hardening my glare.

  After a few seconds, the tense moment ends and his lip curves up slightly at one corner, glancing behind me before settling on my face again.

  “Scarlette, could you please show Professor Richardson to the kitchen and make sure he’s looked after?”

  “Oh, that’s really not—”

  The ageing man’s words are cut off with one look from Trent. He stops his argument, clearing resigned to following his orders.

  “Of course.” Scarlette grins, popping up beside me. “I knew you had it in you.”

  I smile at the wink that she throws, her voice growing in volume as she opens the door from the office, ushering the professor outside with a whistle and a wave back to us. As the door slams, my confidence dwindles.

  Okay, now, it’s silent.

  Trent stays quiet for another moment before shaking his head, a deep sigh resonating from him as he moves over to me. He curls his hand around my chin softly. I hold my breath as he brings his face to min
e, pressing his lips against my forehead.

  “I should have known that I couldn’t keep you from this.”

  It’s not the words that I expect to come out of his mouth, but relief washes over me. Had I expected him to at least try and argue? Probably, but I also know that the two of us are growing together, and I’m not getting left behind.

  “I’m sorry for disrespecting you in front of someone,” I mumble as he pulls back from me. “But we’re meant to be a team, and it’s frustrating sitting there and not being told anything.”

  “I know,” he says, moving his fingers down to my hand where he lifts them to his lips. “I’m sorry. I should be treating you as my equal, my luna. I’m not your bodyguard.”

  The rest of my argument dies on my lips as he kisses my hand, his words lingering like his lips. I let both of them fill my heart and settle my anger.

  Equal. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.

  “But there’s a reason that I felt like I couldn’t tell you.” He sighs with a sharp edge to his voice as he pulls me around to the other side of his desk, his hands beginning to rifle through the clutter.

  “Trent, you can tell me anything, I promise.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want you to know,” he explains, pulling his brows together. “I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

  I look from his concerned face to the piece of paper that his hands hover above. Clearly, he’s found what he’s looking for. A creep of unease begins to crawl up my legs, digging into my muscles and making them clench.

  “What?” I ask, my throat tightening. “What’s happened?”

  He doesn’t say another word. Instead, he just holds out his hand to me, the thin piece of paper crinkling as I take it from him. From the uneasy way he looks at it, I think it might bite me for a second, but when I finally have it in my hands and he sits down in his chair, I turn it over and see why he’s been so hesitant.

  “Oh.” My blood runs cold, and all happiness I feel at being included quickly dies, my spine stiffening as my stomach recoils. It’s a profile of a person, their information dotted alongside it as well as some handwritten notes that look just like Trent’s from English. The face makes horrible memories flood back, pains breaking out over my body at their smug grin.

  Even in black and white, I know exactly what colour his eyes are.

  Trent’s hands are covering his mouth, resting his elbows on his knees that keep steadily bouncing. I know he’s watching me—to see how I react, to see if I crumble. I refuse to.

  “Why do you have this?”

  I know that this is it—the moment where he decides if I’m strong enough to know the truth or not. He’s waiting to see if I’m still afraid of him, of the things he’s done to me and the control he had over my life, but I’m not.

  “Matthew Daley is a member of a group of hunters that are living in East Bay.” He slaps another three sheets down on top of it. “Carter Gacy, Luke Brawnfield, and Andrew Lutten are also suspected hunters. Although we think how much they know changes between them.”

  An uneasy laugh leaves my lips. “Very funny. Now what would you really like to tell me?”

  He can’t be serious. He just can’t be. Can he?

  By the look on Trent’s face, I know I’m wrong.

  “But how—” I shuffle through the pages, my heart beginning to race as I see all their faces. “How would they even know?”

  “We think they’ve been recruited,” he informs me darkly. “We just don’t know by who.”

  No. This had to be a mistake. How could Matt and all his friends be a part of this world, let alone be hunting this world? They don’t even know that it exists.

  “It just doesn’t make sense, it just doesn’t—”

  My mind flashes back to the day before our schools merged. Matt warned me to not even look at the new school; he warned me to stay away. I thought he was just being his usual controlling self, but did he do it because he knew what they were?

  Every time Trent tried to speak to me, every time he had so much as looked at me, Matt seemed to freak out. He never said anything about them though, he never—

  “When you guys argued,” I whisper, realisation dawning. “They called you lower species.”

  Trent laughs, his head tilting to one side. “They’re hunters. Being prejudiced kind of comes with the job.”

  Could I believe it? Out of all the people in the world, I happened to be dating a hunter when I met Trent? Is that possible? How have I been so blind?

  “But how . . ” I trail off, my head exploding with new information and the revelations now just make me numb, my mouth barely even able to form words.

  Fear. I feel fear.

  If Matt is a hunter, then he’s much more dangerous than I had thought. I always knew he had darkness in him, but killing people? How can I possibly imagine the boy I fell in love with when I was sixteen as a murderer?

  Flashes of Matt’s angry face and snarling mouth stop my thoughts of innocence as the truth behind them becomes clear.

  He’s definitely capable of murder.

  Trent seems to sense my thoughts and pulls me into him, spreading his legs so that I can settle onto his lap. He curves his arm around my back, acting like a chair. I lean into him, feeling like a child afraid of the boogeyman. Trent’s touch keeps some of the bad feelings away, his warmth melting the shards of agony hitting my chest.

  “How did you find out that he was a hunter?” I mumble, my fingers skimming over their faces.

  Trent sighs, his fingers on my waist tightening in anger. “They’re the ones who burnt down our school. They left their scents all over it.”

  I want to be shocked. I want to say, ‘That can’t be!’ and feel horrified by the idea, but all I taste is bile rising in my mouth and the pit in my stomach drops further. My arms begin to wind around Trent as I realise that Matt had been intent on killing him this entire time.

  “Does Matt know?” I ask as I rub my head into his chest. “That you know what they did?”

  Trent leans back in his chair, his other hand leaving the documents to curl around my own instead, our intertwined hands feeling like the only thing anchoring me down right now.

  “Not at first,” he says slowly, as we both watch his finger draw figures of eight on my palm. “But I told them when the time was right. You should have seen their—”

  “What do you mean ‘when the time was right’?”

  I know he’s trying to make me laugh or smile, but right now, I just want to know every bit of information that he knows. I can’t keep living so naively and distracting myself with good things when this has been happening under my nose.

  Trent and Matt were trying to kill each other while I was deciding who to date? What else have I been completely blind to?

  Trent takes a glimpse at my face, noting how stern and stubborn I look before he breathes, wincing before he opens his mouth.

  “I kind of waited until you left him.” He catches the flash in my eyes and quickly explains. “I knew that if he knew that we were onto him, then he’d run, they all would. I couldn’t let there be a risk of you disappearing with them, so I waited until I knew you were done with him, until I knew there was even a small part of you that wanted to be with me . . . and then I went and saw him. I waited for him outside his house.”

  “That was suicide!” I cry, sitting up to look at the stupid boy underneath me. “Why would you go there on your own? How did you know they weren’t waiting or—”

  “It was fine,” he promises, his soothing voice stopping my rambling. “We’d been watching them for days, and it was clear that wherever they all met, it wasn’t in their houses. He was alone and I was completely safe.”

  Can I be annoyed at him for the possibility that he could’ve gotten hurt? Probably not.

  “Anyway, his family definitely aren’t involved,” Trent continues. “If anything, his mother is far too good for him. I’m unsure how he even came out of her.”

  That ge
ts a slight laugh from me. It’s definitely true; his mother has a heart of gold.

  “So how come he got so scared? Didn’t he know that you could smell him?”

  This is when I see Trent’s figure change, his eyes darkening and the lines of confusion etching across his forehead. This is what has been troubling him.

  “He pretty much sh*t himself,” he mulls like he’s trying to explain it to himself as well as to me. “I told him that we knew it was them and that if they valued their life, they should run. Not because we’d kill them, but because we had enough evidence to go to the police. That seemed to scare him a lot more than death, but then he asked how we knew, and it was almost like he had no idea of our actual abilities. I think whoever told them to attack our school didn’t tell them everything.”

  He pulls out a folder that has no name on it and the picture in the box on the left is blank—anonymous.

  “I think they were set up. Someone wanted us to know it was them.”

  Now, I know why he didn’t want me to know.

  “Someone is trying to start a war, Elle.”

  I don’t know exactly how long I sit and stare at the papers in front of me. My head is trying to wrap itself around the idea that this is real life and not a prank television show.

  Trent doesn’t say anything. He just let his fingers gently rub up and down my arm as I have my internal breakdown, his patience neverending.

  Eventually, however, my fingers stop shaking. I can actually breathe again as reality settles into my core.

  “Do you know who it is?” I ask, surprising him as he sits up straighter and wraps his arms around me a little tighter.

  “No, mon coeur, not really,” he winces slightly, his eyes downcast. “We have a couple of leads but nothing solid.”

  I can feel the worry filling me, whether it’s from him or myself, I don’t know but my fingers quickly wrap around the necklace like they have done so many times before. I suppose it is a little silly considering Trent is sitting beneath me, but it has become almost like a comfort blanket. I can’t help but hold onto it. I also can’t help but stare at Matt’s stoic yet smug face glaring at me from the desk.

  Is it just coincidence that my ex-boyfriend has been recruited, or is someone playing a sick game with me? God, I hope it’s the former.