Chapter 2 - Linnea

I blink, looking around and trying to figure out where I am. It's bright, with sunshine streaming through the windows and the sound of collective talking coming from the lunchroom at the end of the hall. Lockers line the walls. I'm in my old high school, except it's also my current high school.

Looking down, I can see I'm wearing the standard school uniform, but I'm in slacks instead of a skirt because I don't like how my legs look.

Dread rolls through me, making my stomach turn. To my right are two drinking fountains, so I lean over, drinking the water greedily to try and wet my dry mouth. I hold my hair back with one hand and close my eyes.

"Harper." It's Aris's voice, and it makes me tense up immediately.

Two boys are coming toward me—Aris and one of his goons. Before I have time to move, to think, Aris's friend has his hand on the back of my head, pushing it down so my face is drenched in the water from the fountain.

I let out a strangled sound and push away from the water fountain, wiping the water from my eyes and turning to try and see where they are, but the hallway is different now. Instead of being brightly lit in the middle of the day, it's dark outside the windows, and the red exit sign is the only light, casting the hall in a dim glow.

When I reach up to touch my face, it's still wet, but this time I know it's from tears. Looking down, I see I'm in the glittering blue dress I wore to prom, and I know instinctively that I'm hiding in the hallway from Tommy Fage, who felt me up on the dance floor and called me a bitch when I pushed his hands away.

The door slams open, and in typical Aris fashion, he comes pushing through. My insides twist, and I shrink back against the wall, expecting some of his meathead friends to follow after him, but he's alone.

It's almost worse for it to be just him.

His eyes lock on mine, then break away to roam over my features, taking in my tears, rumpled dress, and shaking hands desperately trying to push the hair from my face. As he comes toward me, I tell myself that Aris has never actually put his hands on me—only bullied me verbally, and I'm not sure there's much he can say to make me feel worse than I already do.

"Linnea," he says, and I jolt, realizing he only ever calls me by my last name. This is the first time I've ever heard him use my first. "What are you doing out here?"

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I could tell him what Tommy did, but Aris would probably just laugh and congratulate him for ruining my night.

Aris is suddenly much closer than I thought, leaning in, one hand braced on the wall above me. His deep brown eyes bore into mine with an intensity I've never seen anyone match. That's what separates Aris from the rest of the bullies—there"s a light behind his eyes the others don't have. It's what makes him so much more brutal—because I can't tell myself that he's just a mindless brute.

He knows what hurts, and he always goes for the kill.

Now, he's leaning down, dipping his chin, and I'm torn between dream me and real me. Dream me doesn't know what's about to happen. The real me knows and hates what comes next.

The second his lips touch my lips, it feels like I've left my body. It's more than a kiss. It's primal, a connection that goes deeper than our bodies. His hands roam, touching my hips, squeezing my sides, rubbing the small of my back, gently pinching inside my thighs.

I can't breathe. It's like he's sucking the air right out of my lungs. I can feel his chest heaving against mine and realize he's as caught up in this as I am.

There's a feeling similar to what I experience when I have a vision, but no image comes with it. Instead, it's just an absolute certainty. A fact branded inside my brain.

"You're my mate," I gasp, hands on Aris's shoulders, pushing him back away from me. In a moment, I realize he has me up against the wall, my Prom dress bunched around my hips, and his hand dangerously close to the lace panties I'd chosen for the special night.

Aris is still breathing hard, his lips swollen and red, his eyes glinting in the low light. In the look he's giving me, how completely our bodies took over just now, I know he knows it too. That first mating spark—I've learned about from other pack members—they always say you'll know it when you feel it.

At the end of the hall, a door opens and closes, letting in the sound of a loud pop song blaring in the gymnasium. Aris startles visibly, some of the cloudy look on his face dissipating.

"Are you kidding?" he laughs, looking me up and down with a scornful eye. He gives me a pitying look, shaking his head. "I just wanted to see if you would actually let me kiss you. You're so delusional, Harper. Why would you be my mate? You really think the son of the alpha is going to be with… You?" Aris gestures to me, and I know he's referencing my weight. The fact that I'm not twig-thin like the other girls in the school. It hits home like it always does.

A thought in the back of my head manages to wiggle through the self-doubt for just a moment. He didn't have a problem with that extra weight a moment ago when he had you off the ground and against the wall.

Aris steps back like he can hear what I'm thinking. He chuckles again, shaking his head and holding his hands up as he retreats, as if I might try and kiss him again. My body urges me to, but my pride holds me back.

"Whatever you felt, you were the only one feeling it, Harper."

With that, Aris turns on his heel and disappears down the hallway. I stand frozen, waiting for the dream to end. This is where it has always ended. And yet, I'm still standing in the hallway, the muted slow dance oozing out from under the gymnasium's doors.

My hands are shaking as I smooth down the dress again. I take a deep breath, trying to break out of the dream. Usually, I have better control than this.

And then a scream ripples down the hall, deep and guttural, like a wounded animal. My body leaps into action before I can think, bursting toward the door the sound came from. When I reach the doorway, a massive man falls into my arms.

Over six feet and hulking with muscle, he nearly crushes me under his weight, and I have to lower him to the ground the best I can in my heels. My ankles wobble dangerously, my arms hooked under his armpits. He smells like pine, deodorant, and blood.

"Are you okay?" I ask frantically, his groans of pain echoing through my brain as though they're my own. The feeling is almost unbearable.

He can't answer. His body is seizing under my hands. A trickle of blood runs down the corner of his mouth.

A moment later, he goes still, and when I pull my hand back, I see a glinting silver liquid coating my fingers.

***

It's not the sun shining through the windows or birds chirping outside that wakes me up, but a searing, ripping pain through my head that has me sitting up in a cold sweat, groaning and covering my face with my eyes.

I haven't had regular visions since high school, since I started suppressing them, but it's harder to keep them out at night. Prom night with Aris comes back frequently as a dream, which is particularly vivid because of my brain and how it holds onto scenes like that. When I see visions, it's like I'm walking through a different world, experiencing the future as it happens. Dreaming about Aris, the same thing happens, except it's the past.

Each time I have this dream, I try to get out of it, to wake myself up. When that doesn't work, I try to change the sequence of events, but it's not like lucid dreaming. Ultimately, I have no control. Leave the hall, leave the school, go back to the dance floor, find Tommy. It doesn't matter what I do. The dream always ends with Aris telling me I'm not his mate.

This is the first time it's ever been different. I think back to the man, his screams of agony, how he'd fallen into me. I close my eyes, trying to remember what his face looked like, but it's too fuzzy. The feelings of grief and terror are far too powerful to picture his face well.

I have to sit on the edge of my bed for several minutes, breathing deeply, until I feel well enough to stand and shuffle to the kitchen. The morning sunshine is bright and orange and warm, and I want to bask in it after that terrible dream.

As my morning coffee brews, I open my laptop and click to get to the special email. After putting in the password and scanning my fingerprint, my laptop gives me access.

There's a single message waiting in the inbox. I click on it, and my stomach flips at the information there.

I can help you break your pack bonds, but once it's done, you won't have a pack scent. You'll never be able to bond in another pack. If you have a mate, the process will also break that bond, which can be incredibly painful and even result in total brain function loss. Look over the attached materials about the procedure and let me know if you're still interested.

The phrase "total brain function loss" isn't appealing, but I know it's what I have to do. After months of searching, I managed to find a contact who knew a doctor specializing in shifters and their ailments. He offers a bond-breaking procedure that would permanently sever me from the shifting community.

It's for the best. I re-read the part about the mating bond and that it "can be incredibly painful." What the doctor doesn't know is that my mating bond is already incredibly painful. After that first night at Prom, my body has continued to yearn for one person and reject everyone else year after year.

While Aris left and never came back, I was stuck seeing everything that made me think of him, his and his family's scent drenched all over this town. I've tried to work on myself since then, and I have, improving my confidence and starting my own business, but I haven't been able to shake the persistent urge my body has to be close to one man only.

Even without the mating problems, I might still be considering the procedure. Since Aris's dad died and Varun took over, things have gone from idyllic to barely functional. After I got my CPA and started providing accounting services online, Varun called to have me brought into the bar, which he'd modified to serve as the pack HQ.

When Aris's dad was the alpha, the HQ was a tasteful center in the town square with daycare and meeting spaces. Now, it's a run-down bar with low lighting and the ingrained smell of cigar smoke.

I showed up with my laptop in tow, prepared for the worst. The documents I got were hastily gathered and barely legible, and I had to help them fix their taxes to comply with the tax regulation code within the Maan Pact. I had four days.

Within those four days, I watched a long line of female shifters enter the bar and not leave. One day, I saw a bartender ushering one girl into a door behind the bar.

I finished the paperwork as quickly as I could and left, but not before Varun cornered me and made a show of rejecting me because my body wasn't fit enough for him.

What he doesn't know is that I run three miles every morning and can do so without breaking a sweat. Just because I have curves doesn't mean I don't take care of my body. Since that day, feeling so powerful in the corner with Varun, I've also been driving a town over to take a self-defense class. I know, logically, that there's no way I could take on the alpha, but taking the class does make me feel safer.

My coffee machine beeps, and I close my laptop, making my way over to it. I think of the fake I.D. and passport I have in my backpack, of the money I've been putting in a new account for months, living on as little as I could while creating a new life for myself.

With no family and no ability to shift, it doesn't make sense to stay in the pack. And I intend to leave the first chance I get.