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“Because people might die.” I was so angry I could barely breathe. “And I don’t want to be the person who could have helped them but didn’t! Back off about it.”
“So, what?” His face flushed with annoyance. “I don’t get any say? I don’t get an opinion?”
“You can have all the opinions you want, but when I want to hear them, I’ll ask!”
“Great. Cool. It’s nice to know you value my point of view,” he said sarcastically. “Even though I’m just a werewolf or a boy or whatever. Is this the part where I wag my tail?”
I saw red. “Oh, I’m sorry I don’t bow down and obey your every command. Must be why I’m not soulmate material. Good for me.”
His expression smoothed over into a cold, harsh mask. “Are you seriously mocking Perdita right now?”
That hadn’t been my intention. Adam had set me off; Dorian had only pushed me further. I rubbed my temples, suddenly exhausted from everything. “No, I just… all I see are werewolves. I only wanted to be normal for a change. Give me some space, please.”
“Gladly.”
I felt his eyes on me as I rejoined Chloe and Emma, but when I glanced over my shoulder, he was already gone. The wind had gone out of me by then. I felt smaller, shrunken somehow. None of the conversation sat right with me. I wasn’t completely sure what I was mad about.
Emma made a face. “Is Dorian not coming with us?”
“Oh, give it a rest,” Chloe said wearily.
“Pity,” Emma said in a wistful tone. “He’s about the only boy around here who isn’t a creep.” She plastered on a fake smile then dashed after the others to link arms with two of the boys.
“She’s so damaged,” Chloe scoffed, keeping pace with me as the others walked ahead of us.
After a few minutes of silence, she glanced at me. “Everything all right?”
“I had a stupid fight with Dorian,” I said. “He was being… bossy.”
“Was he?” She asked. “Or were you mad because Emma likes to throw herself at him?”
I sighed. I couldn’t say for sure anymore. “I don’t know. Maybe both.”
“He has zero interest in her. She’s not interested in him that way either. She just trusts him. That’s hard for her.”
Deep down, I knew there was nothing between them. But knowing something and believing it all of the time were two different things.
“Wanna talk about it?”
I shrugged. “He’s a lot to deal with sometimes. There are so many people in his life that I kind of feel like I have to be connected to all of them to be with Dorian. Sometimes I want some time for me, for other stuff.”
“You want to keep your own identity,” she said. “You don’t want to change for some boy. I like that. But he seems like the type to follow your lead anyway.”
I rubbed my hands over my face. “I might have overreacted a bit, but in the moment, I felt hard done by or something, even though I know he means well. I don’t know what I’m thinking sometimes. My mind has been all over the place lately.”
“Maybe seeing the crash affected you more than you think,” Chloe said. “Stuff like that is traumatic.”
She didn’t know the half of it. “I’m destined for therapy,” I joked, trying to shrug the heavy feeling of regret off my shoulders.
“There’s no shame in that. Everybody should get therapy, in my opinion.” She frowned. “You look exhausted though. Are you due or something?”
I hadn’t slept well in a while. Dorian seemed to think that I didn’t consider the same things he did about my power or Amelia or any of it. All I did was think about it at night. I was scared, too, but the idea of his pack getting together to discuss me rubbed me the wrong way. He had confronted me about Amelia because of that meeting, which meant that despite everything I had done for the pack, they still didn’t trust me. Why did that hurt so much?
Maybe I had gotten the wrong idea. Either way, I didn’t feel good about the row, especially my stupid bitchy comments about soulmates. I had taken a ton of stuff I was feeling out on Dorian, and that wasn’t fair. I had a lot to figure out on my own before I even tried to fix things with him. That was if he ever wanted to see me again.
