Alma

Chapter Fifteen: Dante

Dante:

I wake up in the morning and Alma is shuffling around, looking for something. “What’s up?” I ask as my eyes adjust.

She gasps and looks at me with surprise. “Nothing, nothing.. I’m just… discombobulated.”

“Yeah? How can I help?”

“I don’t know! I just… I can’t.” She sounds close to tears, and I look closely at her.

She is hunched in on herself, arms across her stomach and she looks ready to cry. I sit up and cross the room to her. “Are you alright?”

“Don’t ask me that,” she says with a thick voice.

I pull her into a hug and feel her breath shudder. “It’s okay, Alma.”

“I’m sorry. Just give me a couple of days, and I’ll be fine, ‘kay?”

I half-smile, suspecting as much. “Take as long as you need.”

“Don’t say that either.” Her words are muffled, but she sounds a little better.

“Medications are weird with you, right?” I ask, thinking of the medications they gave her in the infirmary. Dr. Geaga said it would make her moody. I toss the bottle to her.

She reads the bottle, nods, and I curse. “Potty mouth,” she says, still not moving.

“You’re one to talk,” I tease back as I search the pack bonds, still not finding her.

“I’m sorry I can’t take away the pain,” I tell her softly.

“It’s fine. The bigger issue lies with my wolf anyhow. She’s distressed. Angry. And she won’t stop letting me know.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“No.”

I pull back from her a little so I can look her in the eye. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t understand it yet. I will when I understand what her fuss is about, deal?”

I can live with that, I guess. My wolf softly growls in the back of my head, telling me he already knows. I tell him to shut up. “Well, we don’t have any class today because it’s Saturday, so if you want to stay here all day, I can get some food from the cafeteria and some movies.”

She stops moving except to look at me, lighting up. “Really? Can we? Just us? I don’t want to see the others right now.”

If it made her look like that, of course. With a smile and a promise to return, I make my way out. As soon as I exit the room, I feel a little lost, but remind myself I would be back soon. That didn’t help when I saw Heather and Bet outside of her door, waiting to barge in. “No.”

That is all I say as I hurry to fetch snacks from the cafeteria.

***

I come back with candy, popcorn, and pizza. I also grabbed my laptop to hook up to the television to play whatever movie she wants, and find the door open. Entering the room, I find Alma on her bed, curled up and sound asleep, but a myriad of scents throughout the room. I try to sort them out, but only was able to define that most of them were unknown males. Worry fills me as I set everything down and crouch next to Alma, gently waking her up. “Hey, you okay?”

Looking closely, I see dried tears on her cheeks. In response she threw her arms around my neck and buried her face in my neck. “A bunch of them came in and just destroyed the place… they took everything personal, everything important to me. I couldn’t do anything. It was under my uncle’s orders… they left a guard, he’s in the corner. A chameleon, literally, shifter. His hearing is shite, but his vision is spectacular.”

Her words are hushed, and quick. “Go across the hall. My room. I’ll see you there in a minute, okay?”

She nods against my jaw and neck, before pulling away, grabbing some stuff, including her school and overnight bag, and leaves. “I can see you, so you might as well come out.”

The chameleon comes out and stares me down. “You shouldn’t be here,” he tells me.

“Why not?”

“Her mate is arriving soon. We were clearing out the old so the new could come in.”

I look around the room. All of Alma’s photos and memorabilia about her parents and grandparents were gone. “You are trying to erase her reputation.”

It wasn’t a question, but the guard, a small stocky man, young, probably around my age at twenty to twenty two years old, nods his head in response. “Where is it?”

“In storage. She will get it back after the ceremony.”

I study the chameleon’s platinum hair and onyx eyes, his pale face. “When?”

“Next full moon.”

When wolves find their mates, the bonding ceremony takes place on the closest full moon. Otherwise, the male becomes a possessive nightmare, though if dominant enough, females do too. This announcement, that Alma had found a mate, didn’t sit right with me, and I wanted to tear him limb from limb. I shake my head, refusing to accept what this chameleon said. Without another word, I leave, my laptop in hand.

I find Alma waiting in my room, standing still, seeming out of place. “I heard. I… I don’t... “ her breathing grows quicker, shorter. “I don’t know… Dante.” She loses the ability to speak for a moment. I look at her, waiting for her to process what she is trying to say. “I don’t know what’s going on anymore, and it scares me.” She sinks to the floor where she had been standing as she whispers this.

I believed her completely. “That’s okay. We’ll figure it out. Later though, okay? For now, let’s just relax and forget the world.”

She smiles, although sadly, and I think for a second that we are going to be okay.