CHAPTER 10: THE QUIET ONE
1098 Words
Aurora’s POV
Lucas picked me up the next morning, which I think was supposed to feel normal, but did not.
He was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with his keys in his hand and the easy grin already in place, and I smiled back at him. He genuinely made me happy.
I had not seen Logan since breakfast.
Every time I heard his footsteps in the hall, I went the other way.
Every time my wolf sat up inside my chest, I shoved her back down so hard she went quiet for hours. I would catch her trying to listen for him through the walls, and I would snap at her, mentally.
She kept doing it anyway.
She wanted to kneel at his feet. Those were the words she put in my head, and I almost threw up when I felt them. Kneel. Like he was something to be worshiped.
Absolutely not.
I did not care how hot Mr. Grumpy thought he was. I did not care what kind of promise he thought he was making with his eyes across the dining room.
I did not like him. I did not even like liking him in general. He had spent two weeks looking at me like I had personally murdered his dog, and one shirtless walk into a kitchen was not enough to fix that.
It did not help that I was a virgin.
I am sure that was making everything worse. I had nothing to compare any of this to. I did not know if every girl’s wolf made noises like that around a half-naked Alpha or if mine was just being especially humiliating about it.
I had no way of telling if what was happening to me was normal or if I was the most pathetic Silver Wolf to ever exist.
Probably the second one.
Lucas drove me to campus and talked the whole way about something. A movie, maybe. I nodded in the right places and laughed when his voice went up, and he was kind enough not to ask me why I was a thousand miles away.
He walked me to my first class. He kissed me on the forehead before he left.
“Lunch?” he said.
“Lunch.”
“Wow,” I heard people murmur when he passed by, but I ignored them, walking into my class.
Before, people had looked at me like I was a stray that had wandered into the wrong pack. Now they were looking at me like I was something else.
I didn’t know what, and I didn’t know if I wanted to. The other half kept talking but pretended they were not watching me.
A boy I had never spoken to held a door open for me. A girl who had pushed past me three days ago moved out of my way in the hall.
It was Lucas, mostly. The fact that he had defended me publicly had something to do with the change.
It wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t used to being treated well. In this case, it was out of fear for the alphas, but I’ll take it, I guess.
“Abss,” my wolf whispered, and I mentally smacked her so hard she howled inside my chest as I had kicked her.
“Stop,” I muttered under my breath.
The girl next to me in the lecture hall gave me a sideways look. I pretended I was clearing my throat.
I sat through three classes in a row and did not get a single thing that was taught today.
I was smart. That was the strange part. I had always been smart. Top of my class even back home.
But I had also learned, very early, that people hated nothing more than a nobody who wanted to be special.
So I kept my hand down. I kept my answers short. I let smarter-sounding girls talk over me even when they were wrong.
It had been a habit for so long that I did not even notice I was doing it anymore.
By the time the third class ended, my head was pounding, and my bladder was about to burst.
I went to the bathroom.
It was empty when I walked in. I splashed cold water on my face and looked at myself in the mirror for a long minute.
The girl looking back was still paler than I was used to, still with that hair that did not feel like mine, and her eyes were tired in a way that no amount of sleep was going to fix.
The door opened behind me.
It was the quiet girl from my class who walked in. I had been noticing her for a week now. She sat two rows ahead of me in Political Science and one seat behind me in Lit.
She never raised her hand. She never spoke to anyone. The other students did not exactly bully her….they just acted like she was not there.
It was the same thing they had been doing to me, differently.
I turned around slowly.
“Hi.”
She did not answer.
I dried my hands on a paper towel because I did not know what else to do with them.
“Are you okay?”
She still did not answer. She just looked at me. Her hands were holding the strap of her bag with both fists, and she was so still she could have been a photograph of a girl in a doorway. Brown hair with soft, beautiful features.
Then she said, very quietly, “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“For what they did to you. The other day. Bianca and them.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “It wasn’t right. You didn’t deserve any of it.”
“Oh.”
I had not been expecting that.
“That’s — you don’t have to apologize. You didn’t do anything.”
“I know.” She nodded once, fast, like she was confirming it to herself. “I just wanted you to know.”
She started to turn.
“Wait.”
She paused.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She hesitated for half a second.
“Lucielle.”
“I’m Aurora.”
“I know.”
Then she was gone. The door swung shut behind her before I could think of anything else to say.
I stood there in the middle of the bathroom with my hands still damp and my mouth still half open, staring at the door.
Lucielle.
- Writer
