CHAPTER 2
943 Words
The word came out and I immediately wanted to take it back.
Caius Drake did not move. He sat behind his desk and looked at me like I was a problem that had just walked through the door and he was already deciding how to handle it.
Then slowly, he stood.
He buttoned his jacket as he came around the desk. He checked his cuffs. He glanced at his own reflection in the glass front of the cabinet against the wall, making sure his hair was where it was supposed to be.
He stopped a few feet in front of me.
"You already knew," I said.
"I'm twenty-four. Of course I already knew." His voice was flat. Completely flat. No surprise. No warmth. Nothing.
"Since when?"
"Since I was eighteen. You were twelve." He adjusted his lapel. "I was not going to tell a twelve-year-old that she was mated to the future Alpha. And looking at how things turned out, I'm glad I didn't."
I stared at him.
"You're glad," I said.
"I can't have people know about this, Zara." He said my name the way you say a word you are cataloguing. Not like it meant anything. "You rank below omega. The pack will not accept that. I will not accept it."
"Whose fault is that?" I said. "Your father took everything from us after mine died. My father who died protecting this pack."
"Don't." His voice dropped half a temperature.
"Don't what? Say it out loud?"
"Sit down," he said, and pulled the chair I was gripping toward me.
I sat because my ankle was aching from the walk and not because he told me to.
He went back around his desk and settled into his chair.
"Here is how this works," he said, like he was running a meeting. "I will not reject you. Rejecting a fated mate brings problems to the pack that I don't need. But you are not moving into this house. You are not my Luna. Nobody will know about this." He picked up a pen. "If I need anything from you on pack matters, Ronan will contact you. Otherwise we have no contact."
"And you keep your girlfriend," I said.
"Yes."
"While I do what. Wait in that trailer."
"You graduate in a few months. We revisit after."
I looked at him.
This man had worked all of this out before I walked through the door. He was presenting it to me like it was reasonable.
"What if I tell someone?" I said.
He didn't flinch.
"Who would believe you?" He leaned back. "And if they did, I would deny it. The pack would hate you for lying about their Alpha." He paused. "You can go."
I stood.
I walked to the door and opened it.
Serena Voss was standing directly outside. White dress so tight it could have been painted on, heels I would have broken my ankles in, dark curls over one shoulder. Her eyes went from me to Caius and back to me with something sharp behind the smile.
"Sweetheart," she said. "You're not still dealing with this?"
"School matter," Caius said from behind me. "We're still on for lunch."
"We're already late." She put her hand on his arm. "Come on."
I walked down the hall without looking back.
Outside the Manor I stood on the front steps and breathed. Storm was quiet, not calm, just quiet, the way she went when something hurt too much to put a sound to.
I started walking back toward town.
I was not going back to school today.
I cut through the alley behind Thornfield's main strip because it was shorter. Metal bins, brick walls, wet cardboard flat on the ground.
I was halfway through when I heard steps behind me.
I turned.
Derek Vaughn stepped out from between two bins. His nose was taped. His eyes had gone somewhere past embarrassment and into something colder.
Behind me, the sound of two more sets of feet cut off the exit I had come from.
Two more appeared at the far end.
Five. One of me. Dead ends in both directions.
"Been waiting," Derek said.
He was holding something in his right hand. The light caught it and I saw it before I could process it.
My father's watch. Silver casing, worn leather strap, the small c***k across the face I had stared at for years. He had taken it from my locker when I was in Hadley's office.
"Give that back," I said. My voice was level.
"Come get it," he said.
They started moving in from both sides.
Storm threw herself against my chest. I pushed her down and kept my hands up, tracking all five at once. I could handle two. Maybe three. I had before.
Derek came from the right. His fist caught my jaw and the alley went sideways.
I hit the ground on my hands and knees.
I got back up.
Someone grabbed my arms from behind. I threw my head back and connected but then two came from the front at the same time and I went down again. My hands couldn't get out in time and my head hit the concrete.
Everything went grey and distant.
Through the ringing I heard Derek crouch down beside me.
"Now we're even," he said.
I tried to push up.
I couldn't.
My vision was closing at the edges and the cold of the concrete was against my cheek and I could feel blood running across the bridge of my nose.
And then, running footsteps. A voice I didn't recognize, sharp and close, shouting at them to get back.
Then nothing.
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