Chapter 23
1379 Words
NORA
I'm heading back from the office when Iris steps into the corridor.Her eyes were completely focused on me , seethed between it was a great hatred .
I paused when I got closer to her, she had bluntly refused to move or step out of the way .
There's nobody else here. No pack members passing through.
No Damon.
No Wren.
No buffer of any kind.
Just the two of us in a corridor that suddenly feels much smaller than it did a second ago.
The version of Iris that performs for audiences is gone.
Another version of her , is what I am currently glaring at right now.
A version of her that was extremely.
Colder than she was, when she visited the last time.
I don't know what must have transpired, but right now, I could tell freely that she definitely wants to eat me alive.
That's if given the chance to. She would probably devour me without any hesitation.
"I've been watching you," she started. "Since you arrived."She added and all I could do was just stare at her directions without responding.
"You came from nothing," she continues.
"You were thrown out of your own pack in handcuffs. You don't have a family. You don't have a history. You don't have anything except a baby whose father nobody can confirm and a mate you did nothing to earn."She stated, as anger courses through her .
I watched as she took one step closer to me and paused , to examine me like I was nothing but a piece of trash.
"Raphael deserves better than you. He has always deserved better. He waited fifteen years for a mate and the moon goddess gave him someone else's cast off. Someone who was used and discarded and left bleeding in a forest."She said , angrily.
Her tone and choice of words were vicious, they all indicate how angry she is and how unjust she thinks this is, especially given the fact that she was supposed to be his chosen mate .
"You think running his errands and sitting in his meetings makes you a Luna? You think the pack actually respects you? They're being polite. There's a difference. The moment Raphael makes his real choice you will go back to exactly what you were. Nothing."She spat out angrily at me .
When she finished talking, she inhaled deeply. Her words somehow cut deep through me.
I looked at her properly for the first time since she started talking. Not at the words. ,but the way she's standing.
The way her jaw is set and her hands are tight at her sides and her eyes that are extremely filled with cold and bitterness towards me.
I couldn't help but inhale deeply and then asked her one question.
"Why are you so afraid?"
Her mouth opens slightly.
She wants to speak ,but nothing comes out.
"I'm asking seriously," I say. "You've been in this pack. You know Raphael. You have history here. You have standing. So what is it about me specifically that has you standing in empty corridors rehearsing speeches."I couldn't help but ask. More than anyone, she has the upper hands , so why is she so agitated ?
Iris stares at me and says nothing.
"Nothing?" I say.
I turn and walk away.
I don't hurry.
I don't look back.
I just walk at a normal pace down the corridor and turn the corner and keep going.
*****
Iris stands in the corridor after Nora leaves.
The quiet after is worse than the conversation was.
She had prepared for anger.
For defensiveness.
For tears maybe.
For Nora to break under the specific pressure of hearing the truth of her own situation laid out plainly by someone with no reason to soften it.
She did not prepare for that question.
Why are you so afraid?
Four words.
Iris replays the moment in her head. The way Nora looked at her when she asked it. Not cruel.
Not smug.
Just direct.
Iris had not answered because she did not have an answer ready.
That's the part she cannot get past.
She has been in this pack for years. She knows Raphael in ways that a woman who arrived a few weeks ago cannot possibly know him yet.
She knows his habits and his moods and the specific way he goes cold when he's angry and the even more specific way he goes quiet when something actually matters to him.
She has been watching him go quiet about Nora for weeks.
That's why.
That's the answer she didn't give.
Because she has watched Raphael go quiet in a way she has never seen him go quiet before and she does not know what to do with that and it scares her more than she will admit to anyone including herself.
She walks back down the corridor alone.
*****
NORA
I find Wren in the kitchen.
She takes one look at my face and puts down whatever she's holding.
"What happened," she says.
"Nothing," I answered
"Nora."
"Iris," I say. "She found me in the corridor."
Wren's expression shifts. "What did she say?"
I give her the short version.
The cast off.
The nothing.
The handcuffs.
Raphael deserves better.
Wren looks furious by the end of it.
"I'm going to—"
"You're not going to do anything," I say.
"She can't just—"
"Wren." I look at her. "Leave it."
She closes her mouth. Open it again and close it.
"Are you okay?" she asked eventually.
"Yes," I say.
"Did she actually upset you?"
I think about it honestly.
"No," I say.
And that's the truth of it.
Iris stood in that corridor and said every sharp specific thing she could find and none of it landed the way she wanted it to land.
Not because the things she said weren't true.
Some of them were true.
I did come from nothing.
I was thrown out of my own pack.
I don't have a history or a family or anything that looks impressive on paper.
But I already knew all of that.
Iris didn't tell me anything I hadn't already told myself at three in the morning more times than I can count.
She didn't have new information.
She just had the same information delivered with more hostility.
That's not enough to break me.
It stopped being enough a long time ago.
"She's scared," I tell Wren.
"Scared," Wren repeats.
"Of me," I say. "Of what it means that I'm here. She's been here for years and she has history with Raphael and standing in this pack and she's still scared. That tells you everything."
Wren is quiet for a moment.
"You asked her that," Wren says. "Didn't you?"she added, I watched her examine my face for an answer.
"Yes," I finally replied.
"And she didn't answer."
"No," I say. "She didn't."
Wren looks at me for a long moment. Then a small smile formed at the corner of her mouth.
"Good," she says.
I pick up a cup and pour myself something warm and stand at the kitchen counter and drink it.
My son is napping.
The pack is moving around outside doing their afternoon duties.
The day is carrying on the way days carry on regardless of what happens in corridors.
'You alright,' Sera says quietly from somewhere in my head.
'Yes,' I told her.
'She hit some things,she's brutal to the core' Sera says.
‘Of course she is.,' I agree.
'And.'
'And I think she's just scared ,'
Sera is quiet for a moment after my response
'Okay,' she says.
'Okay,' I say back.
I finish my drink and rinse the cup and put it on the rack.
Wren is still watching me.
"Stop looking at me," I tell her.
"I'm not looking at you," she says.
"You are absolutely looking at me."
"I'm just standing here," she says. Which is almost word for word with what Sera says to me when she's being smug and I choose not to point that out.
I go back to work.
The corridor is just a corridor.
Iris is just a woman who is afraid of something she hasn't said out loud yet.
And I am still here.
- Writer
