School

RORY

“Where have you been?” Freya asks me, wide-eyed and curious. Before I can answer, Bethany cuts in.

“Better question, who is that hottie?”

Oliver nudges his girlfriend, showing his pissed-off expression, but she just shrugs and brings her attention back to me.

“That’s Everett. He’s my…boyfriend.” If I can call us that. I guess that’s the closest word to describe a mate.

Although, he’s my soulmate, the one that completes me. Yet we’re not even quite boyfriend and girlfriend either.

We haven’t been on a date, but he monitors everything I do. We haven’t had sex, but I sleep next to him in bed every night.

We haven’t worked each other out fully and we’re living together. It’s a complicated situation—for now, to my friends, best described as boyfriend and girlfriend. Particularly because I just kissed him.

I glance over at Eddie and notice him fidgeting, with a distraught expression on his face. I don’t quite know what that text said, but I had known I needed to tell him it was over.

I wouldn’t have chosen to do it by text, but if I couldn’t have resurrected, I’d be dead and unable to dump anyone. I thought I’d never see him again, and at least he would have some closure.

Now, it’s awkward. Especially with introducing Everett as my boyfriend a couple of months after the text. I wonder if he’s moved on. I hope he has, but from his expression, I get the feeling he’s still hung up on me.

“That was a cool car. He looks older than college,” Oliver comments, narrowing his eyes at me as the other football guys exchange smirks and glances.

“He is. He owns a business that pays for the car,” I state curtly. After what I told Orion yesterday, I’ve decided to actually grow a pair and not take shit from Oliver or any of the other footballers.

Sure, they formerly bullied me and Freya in an obvious way, but over the past couple years, it has felt more passive, more cunning, subtler.

They try and get us to attend their parties and answer inappropriate questions so they can laugh about it.

Their tactics, I think, changed because Bethany is friends with us, and bullying us outright would mean no dating Bethany. And she is one of the prettiest girls in school, plus she’s a cheerleader.

Everyone is just following the high school stereotypes—with me, formerly the nerdy clumsy girl, who’s now a sort of anomaly.

Do they have a stereotype based on a clumsy bookworm human girl who’s mated to an Alpha and can resurrect? I’m thinking not.

I gesture for Freya and Skye to walk in beside me as the others follow behind, talking with some other students, athletes and popular people, and those in between.

“Seriously, where were you? And who is that Everett guy?” Freya questions, genuinely concerned.

“We moved…near where Everett lives…and…it’s far away but Everett offered to drive me because he knows I have friends here so I get to go here again,” I explain and lie, terribly, again.

I really should start learning. I need a teacher, an actual live being rather than a book. Freya’s much like me, she has never had to lie before. She doesn’t even believe in lying.

She’s absorbed the teachings of hypocritical parents who say “lying is bad” or “there’s no need to lie. If you lie, it will only make the truth worse when it comes out.”

But the truth is, I’m up to my eyeballs in lies at this point, and there’s no way to tell the truth at any point without sounding completely ludicrous or something much worse happening.

Someone could force me to cure a bad person or somehow use my gifts as a weapon. It’s safer for everyone if it all stays secret.

“Right,” she replies sarcastically, clearly not believing a word I said, but she’s taking it for now, seeing as I’ve only been back two seconds.

We reach our lockers, and I decide to look through the bag Everett gave me. To my surprise, he’s bought completely new textbooks for my courses, new stationery, and a notepad.

And he even packed a reading book in there, with a note sticking out the top: ~I hope you like this book. It’s my favorite.~

The title is ~Promise Kept~.

It looks like it’s been read over fifty times by the state of the spine, bent back in several places. And, as I flick through, there are notes in pencil on the pages, underlining parts he thinks are important or powerful.

He’s like me. I put notes in my books, although I’ve refrained from doing so in Everett’s books. So he wouldn’t know that. So that is really something he does.

I believe that when a book is in a state much like this one, it has been loved. Books are meant to be read, not left untouched on some dusty bookshelf.

But I admit, I underestimated Everett. I had thought he didn’t understand the way I view books, that he thought it was just a strange obsession. But he’s showing me again that he is my soulmate.

Twice in one day. Plus the kiss. The perfect kiss. The earth-shattering kiss we shared passionately.

“~Promise Kept~? I haven’t read that book,” Freya comments, peering over my shoulder to see. I glance over and smile before I stuff everything back into my bag. “Everett give it to you? The note’s cute.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know he could like a book this much,” I say, dazed in my state of euphoria.

I have been since the kiss. I still remember his lips against mine, attacking me, devouring me. His taste of mint and the way he grabbed every part of me, wanting more.

We begin to walk to class together, my feet secure in my shoes, keeping me from tripping. Thank the goddess Everett bought me these trainers, or else I’d be back to causing unintentional havoc in the halls.

“Eddie looked pretty heartbroken back there,” Skye tells me with a wincing expression. “I mean, you broke up with him by text.

“That has got to sting. And you completely drop off the face of the earth. Then you come back a couple of months later with a boyfriend. A rich older boyfriend.”

“He’s not that rich and not that much older. And I know it must be hard on him. I didn’t know I was coming back to school until we arrived here this morning.”

My morning classes fly by, although I’m unable to concentrate with everything on my mind.

Everett. Eddie. School. Achlys and “she.” The fact that I can heal people and bring myself back to life. But at least I’ve already covered the content of my classes today.

“Hey, Rory, you okay?” Freya asks as I appear to have zoned out during the conversation at lunch.

Sitting at our table are Skye, Bethany, and Oliver, with a couple of other jocks who follow Oliver around. Bethany just wants to find out more about my boyfriend.

Eddie doesn’t sit with us though, like he used to, I suppose because he feels awkward too. He eats lunch a few tables over, constantly glancing in my direction.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I mutter with a small smile. But that doesn’t reassure her.

“I thought, with the new boyfriend, you wouldn’t be so goody-goody anymore,” Oliver comments, chuckling with his jock friends. “A guy like that, you definitely are as nerdy as I thought you were.”

“Are you...a virgin?” Bethany questions, and my brows pinch together at the very personal question.

They think just because I have an older “boyfriend” that we’ve slept with each other. I’ve slept next to him, not with him.

“Of course she is,” one of the jocks, Matt, says with a smirk in my direction. “What are those dumb shoes you’re wearing?”

“Everett bought them for me, to stop me from falling so much,” I reply.

Freya smiles, looking underneath the table at my footwear. “That’s adorable,” she comments. “He Rory-proofed shoes for you.”

“Yeah, it is,” I mumble, hiding my wide smile.

I wanted some sign that he cared about me more than just a burden or responsibility. And this is it. All of it. The shoes, school, the book. He’s even made up with Ace, as he told me Ace would be picking me up today.

“How did you get him? It’s quite a step up from weak high school senior to rich muscled businessman,” Oliver states, glancing over his shoulder at Eddie.

“Hey,” Bethany exclaims, scolding her boyfriend. “Eddie’s not weak. But he does have a point, Rory. How did you meet him? Is he the reason you’ve been away?”

“No, I just met him around where we live.” True.

Rogue territory is around where the old pack was. It separates Red Moon’s territory from Shadow Blood’s, along with many other packs on either side. “I know his aunt, too, so we got to talking.” True.

“He’s really hot, Rory. You’ve got a catch there.”