034
1123 Words
~ Alice
I hadn't planned on running into iris.
If I were honest, i hadn't planned on seeing anyone this morning.
I had gone to my father's estate for the simplest reason possible to grab a sealed envelope form his study. Old council documents he’d asked me to keep safe weeks ago. He’d already left by the time I arrived, guards saying he’d traveled before dawn, tight-lipped, unreadable as always.
That alone had put me on edge.
My father didn’t leave without warning unless something serious was happening.
Still, I told myself not to overthink it. I took the envelope, tucked it into my bag, and headed back toward campus, already mentally listing everything I had to do before class.
Then I saw her.
Iris walking out through the gates.
From my father's house.
I stopped so suddenly my breath caught.
For a second, my brain refused to make sense of the image. Iris, my Iris. standing there with that fragile, haunted look in her eyes, like she’d just come apart and barely stitched herself back together.
At my father's estate.
My heart started racing, sharp and instinctive, the same way it always did when someone threatened what was mine.
I called her name before I could stop myself.
It's not like we were fighting, it's just these days she has been on her own.
“Iris?”
The way she froze told me everything.
It's like she wish I was the last person she would see.
She turned slowly,and when our eyes met, something flicker across her face. Panic, guilt, fear. Too much emotion for a simple explanation.
And that's when the unease set in.
“ What are you doing here?” I asked, keeping my voice calm even though my chest felt tight.
She opened her mouth.
Nothing.
Not even a bad excuse.
I looked past her, then at the gates, the guards, the unmistakable mark of my family crest etched into stone.
My father's house.
A thousand ugly thought crashed into my minds all at once.
Had something happened?
Was she in trouble again?
Did my father summon her without telling me ?
“ Why were you here?” I asked quietly, watching her face.
She looked like she was about to break.
And then…
“She was looking for me.”
Thorne.
I hadn’t even noticed him at first. He stepped forward like he belonged there—which, annoyingly, he did. Calm. Controlled. Too smooth.
Relief and suspicion tangled in my chest.
“You?” I asked.
He nodded easily. “Paperwork issues. Iris wanted clarity.”
I glanced back at Iris. She nodded too quickly, eyes lowered, shoulders tense.
Something didn’t add up.
If it was paperwork, why hadn’t she told me? Why did she look like she’d been crying?
But the explanation slid into place just enough to keep me from pushing harder. And when Thorne spoke again, apologizing, deflecting, smoothing the moment. I felt my defenses drop despite myself.
I hated that.
I hated that I trusted him more than the silence between Iris and me.
Why did I trust him?
It's because my dad do.
“Come on,” I said finally. “We’re late.”
As we walked away together, my thoughts kept circling back to the same unsettling truth.
Iris had been hiding things from me for a while now.
This wasn’t the first time.
The late nights.
The way she flinched when I touched her sometimes.
The way she talked about Ky—too casual, too rehearsed.
And now this.
At the dorm entrance, I stopped her.
“You’ve been different,” I said, unable to hold it in anymore. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it feels like you’re slipping away from me.”
She looked at me like she wanted to confess something terrible. Like she was drowning in words she couldn’t say.
“I’m not trying to,” she whispered. “I’m just… lost.”
That answer hurt worse than denial.
I wanted to grab her, shake her, demand the truth.
Instead, I reached for her hand and stopped myself halfway. Something told me if I touched her then, she’d pull away,and I wasn’t ready for that yet.
“Just don’t shut me out,” I said. “Please.”
She nodded. But her eyes didn’t promise anything.
When she walked inside, I stood there longer than I meant to, watching her disappear down the hallway.
Something cold settled in my stomach.
Later that night, alone in my dorm, I replayed the scene again and again. Iris coming from my father’s house. Thorne’s perfectly timed lie. My father leaving before dawn without a word.
It didn’t feel random.
It felt connected.
I pulled out my phone, scrolling through old messages, stopping at the unanswered ones. Iris hadn’t ignored me forever,just long enough to make me doubt myself.
And I hated doubt.
I hated feeling like the fool in a story I didn’t understand.
I lay back on my bed, staring at the ceiling, heart pounding with a terrible realization.
Whatever Iris was hiding, it wasn’t small.
I lay on the bed for hours, staring up at the ceiling while thoughts chased each other in restless circles. Time slipped by unnoticed. At some point, my phone buzzed against the mattress.
Eunice.
I glanced at the screen, my jaw tightening. It was probably about the pack meeting. I ignored the call and turned the phone face down, exhaling slowly. I didn’t have the energy for her right now.
But a moment later, something shifted in my chest.
The meeting.
I sat up abruptly. I couldn’t skip it. I shouldn’t skip it. Not now. Not when everything already felt like it was hanging by a thread.
This wasn’t about Eunice. It wasn’t even about the pack.
It was about my dad.
Alpha Duncan was out of town, and he had trusted me, me to hold things together in his absence. To represent him. To show the council, the pack, everyone, that I wasn’t just his daughter by blood, but someone worthy of standing beside him someday. Someone who could be Luna.
If I stayed here, hiding in my dorm, licking my wounds, being hurt by iris,I’d be proving every doubt right. I’d be letting him down.
I swung my legs off the bed, resolve hardening where fear had been. Whatever mess my heart was in, whatever secrets I was carrying, I couldn’t afford to crumble now.
I picked up my phone, straightened my shoulders, and stood.
The pack meeting wasn’t optional anymore.
It was a test.
I called iris to tell her I had changed my mind and I was going for the meeting.
I took my coat and left.
- Writer
