WRONG LOVE 2: CHOICES

Chapter Sixteen: Explanations

She found him at his locker.

Friday morning. Before first period. The corridor still filling up around them with the specific noise of a school day beginning that Elara had stopped hearing weeks ago because background noise required a level of presence she was currently allocating elsewhere.

She had been allocating it, this particular morning, to what she was going to say to Aaron Calloway when she found him.

She found him.

She said nothing for a full three seconds.

Just stood behind him.

Waiting for him to feel her there — and he did, she saw the moment he felt it, the slight shift in his shoulders, the specific stillness of a wolf who has just registered a presence behind them and has identified it and is now doing a rapid internal assessment of what that presence's current emotional state might be.

He turned slowly.

Looked at her.

Storm grey eyes moving over her face with the careful attention of someone reading a situation they want to fully understand before they respond to it.

What he read apparently told him something significant because he closed his locker with a measured click and straightened and said —

"Before you say anything—"

"You left me," Elara said.

Quiet.

The specific quiet that lived right next to its opposite.

"I know—"

"In a forest," she said.

"Elara—"

"At night," she said. "Alone. After telling me we were going for a walk for fresh air and exercise which I knew was suspicious from the beginning and went along with anyway which is frankly on me—"

"If you'd just let me—"

"Five wolves, Aaron," she said. "Five. In the dark. In a forest I didn't know. With no exit route I'd scoped and no backup and no—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "I could have been killed."

"I know," he said.

"You left me."

"I know."

"You said two minutes."

"I know, Elara—"

"It was not two minutes."

"I know." He held her gaze. Steady. Not flinching. Not retreating. The specific quality of someone who has prepared for this and is standing in it without looking for an exit. "I know. And I'm sorry."

She looked at him.

At the storm grey eyes that were doing that careful reading thing — present and honest and carrying something underneath both of those things that she hadn't fully categorised yet.

"Explain," she said.

"Can we—" He glanced at the corridor. The filling corridor. The people moving past them with their morning obliviousness. "Not here."

She looked at the corridor.

Looked at him.

"You have until the bell," she said.

He nodded.

They moved.

The empty classroom two doors down from his locker received them without complaint.

She closed the door.

Turned.

Crossed her arms.

Looked at him with the expression she had developed over three centuries for situations that required absolute clarity from the person in front of her — not aggressive, not warm, simply the focused attention of something that was going to hear every word and remember all of them.

Aaron stood in the middle of the empty classroom and looked back at her and began.

"I went to find somewhere to—" He paused. "You know."

"You went to wee," she said.

"Yes," he said. With the dignity of someone declining to repeat the word. "And I found somewhere. And then—" He stopped again.

She waited.

"Then something else happened," he said carefully.

"Something else," she repeated.

"Yes."

"What something else."

He looked at her.

"I picked up a scent," he said. "While I was—" He stopped again.

"While you were weeing," she said.

His jaw tightened slightly.

"While I was occupied," he said. "I picked up a scent that required immediate investigation."

"A scent," she said.

"Yes."

"More important than coming back for me."

"At the time it seemed—" He stopped. Started again. "Yes. At the time."

She looked at him.

"What scent," she said.

Something moved in his expression.

"Hunters," he said quietly. "Pearce's men. Moving through that sector of the forest. Two of them. Heading in a direction that would have brought them past our position within minutes."

She went still.

"I needed to redirect them," he said. "If I'd come back to get you first we'd have lost the window. So I—" He made a gesture. "I handled it. And then I came back."

"And I wasn't there," she said.

"And you weren't there," he confirmed.

"Because five wolves had appeared," she said.

"Yes."

"While you were handling hunters," she said.

"Yes."

"Conveniently," she said.

He looked at her.

"I know how it sounds," he said.

"It sounds," she said carefully, "like you left me alone in a forest and two separate threats appeared simultaneously from two separate directions which is either the worst coincidence in the history of bad timing or—"

"Or someone knew we'd be there," he said.

She stopped.

Looked at him.

"You think you were followed," she said.

"I think," he said carefully, "that the hunters and the wolves appearing in the same forest at the same time as us was not accidental. Yes."

"Which means someone knew our route."

"Yes."

"Which means someone has been watching—"

"Us," he said. "Probably for a while."

She absorbed this.

Turned the ring on her finger.

The empty classroom held the information between them for a moment — all its implications spreading outward from the center of it the way things spread when they're significant enough.

"The wolves," she said. "The five who came for me. Were they Pearce's?"

"No," he said. "Different. Older. Not hunter-affiliated."

"Malachar's order," she said quietly.

"Most likely."

She nodded slowly.

Processed.

Then —

"Who redirected them," she said.

Aaron looked at her.

"What," she said.

"What do you mean—"

"The five wolves," she said. "They left. They were coming for me and then they left. Something redirected them." She held his gaze. "Or someone."

Aaron said nothing.

"Aaron."

"I wasn't there," he said. "I told you. I came back and you were gone."

"I know," she said. "Someone else was there."

He looked at her steadily.

"Was there," he said. Not a question.

"A wolf," she said. "I don't know him. He shifted back — denim shorts, no shirt, dark curly hair—" She watched Aaron's face carefully. "Storm grey eyes. Said two words and sent five wolves home."

The classroom was very quiet.

Aaron's expression didn't change.

Not significantly.

But something moved in it — brief, there and gone, the specific micro-adjustment of someone receiving information they already had and are now recalibrating how much of their prior knowledge they want to reveal.

She catalogued it.

Filed it.

"You know who he is," she said.

"I don't know who you're describing," Aaron said.

"Aaron."

"Lots of wolves have dark curly hair," he said.

"Lots of wolves can send five others home with two words?" she said. "In an uncontested territory? With that kind of—" She paused. "He had authority. Not earned-last-week authority. Old authority. The kind that lives in the voice."

Aaron looked at her.

She looked at him.

The bell rang somewhere down the corridor.

Neither of them moved.

"I want to know who he is," she said quietly.

"Elara—"

"I want to know who was in that forest," she said. "Who he is. Why he was there. Why he helped me." She held Aaron's gaze. "And I want to know if you sent him."

Aaron held her gaze for a long moment.

"I wasn't there," he said again.

"That's not what I asked," she said.

The corridor outside was filling — the between-period rush of feet and voices pressing against the door of the empty classroom.

Aaron picked up his bag.

"You should get to class," he said.

"Aaron—"

"You should get to class," he said again. Steady. Decided. The storm grey eyes carrying something that was not going to move regardless of how long she stood here. "And Elara—" He paused at the door. "Next time I say two minutes."

"There won't be a next time," she said.

"Next time I say two minutes," he said again, "stay where I put you."

He opened the door.

Walked out into the corridor.

She stood in the empty classroom.

Turned the ring.

Thought about dark curly hair and storm grey eyes and stand down and Aaron's face when she described him — that micro-adjustment, that brief recalibration of someone managing information.

She thought about I wasn't there being a very specific answer to a very specific question that was not the question she had asked.

She picked up her bag.

Walked out into the corridor.

First period.

But the question was still there.

Did you send him.

And Aaron's non-answer was still there too.

Sitting in the space where a real answer would have been.

She turned the ring.

Walked to class.