Chapter 10 - Olivia

Byron doesn't want me.

He made that crystal clear, and has been, since that night in the pavilion. So, why do I feel like this? Why was I in his apartment with him, leaning closer and closer, thinking about what it would be like to feel his lips against mine again?

I shake my head, staring down at my slippers and trying to ignore the dizzy, lightheaded feeling. It could be from the interaction with Byron, from watching myself collapse in the video, or from the low blood pressure.

I'm about halfway back to the pack center when I feel a presence behind me. I glance in the windows of the shops I'm walking past and see a pair of headlights approaching from behind. I immediately think of how Veronica was kidnapped during the Halloween party.

Wrapping my arms tighter around myself, I walk a little faster, but the car picks up speed, coming up the road so the passenger's window is in line with me.

"Listen—" I say, turning and holding my hand up but stopping short when I see who's in the driver's seat.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Rosa says, leaning over and hanging out the window. Bigby sits in the driver's seat, his head forward, like this isn't any of his business. I appreciate him for that. "Get in this fucking car. You're going to be the death of me."

I roll my eyes at her, but hoist myself up into the backseat anyway. The first time I was ever in this car was when Bigby came to take us, but that feels like a million years ago.

Bigby clears his throat and starts to drive again, and I realize they're using their mating bond to communicate with one another. Rolling my eyes, I turn and look out the window.

For some reason, immediately after closing his apartment door, my mind flashed back to the moment I learned that my parents were dead. Living under Amon's rule meant that none of us were strangers to tragedy, but it didn't make the knowledge of my parents' deaths hurt any less.

When we lived in the little cottage next to the sea, Rosa would spend most of her time making these little perfumes, and I'd load them up, taking seashell jewelry and other little trinkets we'd make together to the farmers market.

In the beginning, things were really tight. We had to rely on our garden and what we were able to hunt near us. The cottage was paid for, but the utilities weren't. Kaila needed clothes, books, and medicine, and it added up.

Selling at the farmers market was a way to make a little extra money, but it was also a way to get news from the outside world. Rosa's mother would send someone to approach my stand and purchase something every Saturday. When they handed the money over, a note was always stacked there with the bills.

"How did we do?" Rosa had asked, the moment I pushed through the door. We'd done amazing—selling all the perfumes and almost all the necklaces.

But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. I'd pushed the money into her hand, numbly, then turned and sat on the couch, feeling outside of my body.

" Oh ," she'd said, and I realized I'd left the note tucked into the day's earnings. The note that gave good news and bad news. The good news was that Amon had no idea where we were —the scent cover was working. The bad news was that, in his fury over our escape, he'd gone on a rampage, killing several members of the pack, including my parents.

We had never gotten along like other families. My parents were traditional, and didn't understand why I wanted to go to college. Didn't like my pink hair. My mother constantly begged me to spend less time gaming and tinkering around on my computer, and more time attending tennis lessons with her at the country club.

They hated what I chose to do with my life. But they gave me the space to do it. They were stubborn, at times snobbish, and hovered over me for my entire childhood.

But they were my parents. And I loved them anyway.

The couch in that cottage was a scratchy green fabric with white flowers peppered over it, and I can still feel it under my bare thighs sometimes when I close my eyes. I feel the way that the knowledge of their deaths flowed through me, filling every gap between my organs, weighing me down, saturating me with grief.

Rosa had sat on the couch with me, cried a bit herself, hugged me, put a blanket over my shoulders. When she pushed me down onto the couch and told me to nap, I closed my eyes but never fell asleep.

She made dinner that night while I lay there on the couch, alternating between staring at the ceiling and staring at my hands. It took weeks for me to shake away the comatose feeling, and months for me to laugh or smile again.

And Rosa was there for every moment of it. Took some of the responsibility in her hands, apologized for involving me in her problems, sobbed, and grieved for my loss.

"Rosa," I'd said, one night when she was crying to herself quietly after we put Kaila to bed. "It's not your fault. It's Amon's fault. And someday, when we can get out of this cottage, we're going to stop him so he can never hurt anyone else like this again."

Now, as the Jeep turns into the Vandenberg driveway, I glance up at Bigby, whose face is illuminated in the faint yellow glow from the streetlights. He came and got us, brought us back here to Rosecreek, and reignited our lives.

Getting away from Amon felt like proof that we were supposed to make it. That someday, I would have the family I'd always dreamed of. I hated being an only child, wished I'd had siblings running around to fill the house with life.

I thought I could have that with Byron.

"Hey," Rosa says, after Bigby climbs out of the car. "Come inside. I'll take your blood pressure."

I follow her in. Bigby pays the babysitter, eagerly takes the cash before whispering good night. I watch as Bigby lays out some blankets on their bed for me. When he grabs his pillow and heads for the guest room, I shake my head, taking his elbow.

"No, shit, I'm sorry—" I say, "I'm not gonna kick you out of your own room—"

"My wife wants a sleepover," he says, grinning at me. "Besides, it will be nice to sleep without her snoring for once."

A pillow hurls at us from Rosa's side of the room, and she crosses her arms defiantly.

"My snoring?" she hisses. " You snore, you big oaf."

She's smiling, and he's smiling, and I want to throw myself off a bridge. Being around this much love and happiness when my future feels like a swirling black hole is almost too much to bear.

Bigby grins, kicking the throw pillow back up onto the bed before heading out into the hallway. When he closes the door softly behind him, I turn to Rosa, unaware I'm crying, until she folds me in her arms.

We crawl onto the bed together, and she holds me, petting my hair until I calm down enough to talk. But I don't want to talk about Byron. It feels like all I do is think about him.

"What were you and Bigby doing?" I ask, hearing how vulnerable my voice sounds.

"Just—we went for a run. Hunting. Up near Aris's house," she says, clearing her throat. "We try to shift together at least once a month. Bigby read somewhere that it helps to release intimacy hormones."

"Gross," I whisper, "like you guys need more of those."

Rosa smiles, then runs her hand over my hair again, tucking it away from my face.

"Talk to me," she says, clearing her throat. "I know that, when we first got here, there was so much going on with Bigby and me, and then we were in California, and I just—I feel like so much has happened with you, and I don't even know where to start. Will you just tell me about it?"

She wants me to tell her about Byron, and the thought of it is equally horrifying and humiliating. The truth about what happened between the two of us has been buried inside me for so long that it feels impossible to unearth, impossible to put into words.

Rosa got her happy ending. She has her man, her mate, the person who will have her and Kaila's backs no matter what, through thick and thin. I don't have that, and, apparently, I never will. It's mortifying and pathetic, which is part of the reason I've kept it to myself for so long.

But she's my best friend.

"I…" I start, twisting my hands together. "Byron is my mate."

"Yeah," she says, softly, and I wince. It's obvious to everyone—surely, they can smell it on us, and it's even more apparent after we started hating each other, and the scent remained. I close my eyes against the idea of that, of how obvious it's been to everyone that he didn't want me.

"Well, he's my mate," I continue, laughing sarcastically, "and he doesn't want me. And now we're blood-bound, and he doesn't want me. It's excruciating."

"Yeah," she says again, nodding and shifting down, cuddling into me. "I can relate to part of that—I remember how much it hurt when Bigby left. But the blood bonding thing—how does that feel?"

I close my eyes again. Most of the time, I'm actively trying to forget how it feels, to have our lives tied together like this. But now, I breathe, exploring the feeling.

"Have you heard about amputees?" I ask, softly, "And how, sometimes, they have these phantom limb pains—like, even though their arm is gone, they'll feel it hurting, and it's like—it can't hurt, because it's not there, but they still feel it?"

"Yeah," Rosa says, softly, brushing a tear away as it rolls down my cheek.

"Well," I say, laughing a bit at myself again, trying to lighten the mood. "That's what it feels like. Byron is my phantom limb. And it hurts ."

My voice breaks on that last word, and Rosa lets out a little sigh, the corners of her lips turning down.

"I told him that I loved him," I say, my voice raspy, "and he left. I told him he was my mate. He said that I was mistaken."

"Oh, honey," Rosa says, wrapping me up when I start crying again. "Everything is going to be okay."

When we wake up the next morning, it's to Kaila giggling, holding a tray of breakfast precariously while Bigby watches, his hands fluttering around, ready to catch it in case it falls. The orange juice sloshes over the edge of the glass and onto the tray, but she manages to set it on the bed, coming around the side to kiss me on the forehead.

"It's time to feel better, Auntie Olivia," she whispers. I reach out, running a hand over her hair, hugging her little body to mine, hating how much it hurts to see Rosa happy with her little family, knowing it's something I'll never have.

"You are so right," I whisper back, a tear escaping when she pulls back and steals a piece of bacon from the tray.