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“You too,” she replies.
We watch him walk away as Saylor sits in his vacated chair.
The silence expands until I can’t take it anymore. “How much did you hear?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. With our ears, it’s difficult not to listen,” she reminds me. “I didn’t hear much. Just the past couple minutes.”
“I didn't want to talk about myself. Not for a while yet, anyway.” I sigh, “I want you to stay.”
“Why would you think I wouldn’t?”
“I’m not proud of my life.” I cringe. “That sounds bad. There are parts I love. Parts I am proud of.”
“Elijah, you know how I lived. Do you think I am proud of that?” She reaches over and puts her hand over my joined ones. “If you aren’t ready to tell me, that’s okay. I don’t want to pressure you. I know what it feels like to want to keep some things inside.”
“I haven’t told anyone here about my past. Laken has guessed a few things but he doesn’t know any of the details.” I swear I’m going to give him endless shit about setting me up. “I’m ashamed.”
“This is very sudden,” she starts. I look at her hesitant face. “All this is new to us. We are thrust together and the bond is pushing us to be together. Honestly, it feels right. I want to see where this goes. I want to give us a shot. I think it’s only fair, for both of us, to be honest with each other about everything.”
“I agree,” I concede. “I can’t give you up.” I squeeze her hand between mine, lacing them. She moves her chair closer so she doesn’t have to strain. “I grew up in a cheetah pack. We went to a normal high school, had normal friends, went to parties, and worried about grades.
“I had to worry about more than that though, because my father was grooming me to be the Alpha of the pack someday. I had two younger brothers he ignored because they weren’t next in line. Even though they were both bigger than me, he felt I had the qualities an Alpha needed. He was all about tradition, even if those traditions were outdated and sometime cruel. He pushedme to be better than anyone else. We would have weekly pack fights. This is normal for all packs. Everyone is always tested. You can move up in the hierarchy of the pack if you win against the guy above you and you knock him down. Women can also be in the fights. There are also very strong females, although my Father didn’t exactly agree with that, he let them fight too. He had to walk the line—if he refused, he would take the chance of all the females leaving or causing unrest. He had his traditional rules but had to bend some of them to keep the control. He could pair them up with the men or women.
“Would they win against the men? Would they move up?” Saylor asks.
“Sometimes they would win, if the fight was fairly matched. They would move up, but they would have to always defend their position. The men were given some slack. It was never fair for them. If they used intimidation tactics outside the fight, no one would want to challenge them when the time came.”
“Your dad didn’t give you any slack,” she guesses.
“No. He took pleasure in pushing me to the breaking point. I have to admit, for a while I thrived on the challenge. I wanted to be the best. He drilled his lessons relentlessly.”
Her hand twitches in mine. “The older I got, the more things I noticed. The more I questioned the rules and traditions. The more I just wanted to be a teenager. When I was a senior in school, we gathered a bigger group of friends. Most of them were shifters of different kinds. But there were a few humans. It’s not like there were more shifters than humans anyway in the school. We agreed to never tell our human friends the truth. That is the rule and we stuck to it.
“My father hated that we had human friends. He believed we should stick to our kind. He conceded on the different shifters, but would lecture me constantly about the humans. We even went so far as to let a vampire into our group.”
“Vampire,” Saylor whispers. “You were friends.”
“I allowed him into the group more out of spite for my father, but he turned into a friend. He was genuinely a good guy, or I thought he was at the time. He stuck to the rules. He did everything with us. He didn’t have a family. He was bitten by a vampire who disappeared after changing him. He looked our age but he didn’t know exactly what age he really was.”
“Why was he in high school?”
“He got bored. He didn’t remember if or when he finished school. He said he lost all his memories and he didn’t feel that old. Who knows? We didn’t question him.
“There was a girl. She was human. She was picked on by the other humans. She was small and didn’t fit in anywhere, so we let her hang out with us. The humans left us alone. They were scared of us. They could feel we are different and a threat. She was very timid at first but she adjusted and became part of the crew.
“I thought of her as a little sister. My brothers teased me endlessly. They knew she had a crush on me. I didn’t feel anything but friendship. I tried to make that clear. One day, she was getting pushed around by a popular boy, and I got in his face. Threatened him. I thought it was the right thing to do. Everything changed after that.
“She would follow me everywhere, without the presence of the others. I would find her conveniently walking past my house at odd hours. I would find love letters in my locker. She would show up at my work and want to hang out. If I went to the movies with a friend, she would be there. I tried to be gentle with her but firm in were I stood, but it didn’t work.”
“She wanted to date you?” Saylor asks. “But it was more than that.”
“Yes, she wanted to be the center of my everything. I couldn’t tell her she wasn’t my mate. I didn’t reveal my shifter. I didn'tbreak the rules. It went to another level when I started finding things in my room. Notes. Underwear. Things started going missing. I confided in my brothers and they thought it was creepy. They thought I should distance myself from her. I tried but some of the others didn’t know why. The vampire was the bigger problem.
“He liked her. Genuinely liked her. He wanted to be with her, even though she wasn’t his mate either. He hated that she wanted me. It caused a strain. He became hostile towards me. He thought I was leading her on. He wanted me out of the way. He thought if I was, she would fall for him. She barely spoke to him. He would find ways to fuck with me. He hated everything about me then. He questioned everything. Rumors about me started circulating. People would whisper behind my back. I finally heard some of them from my friends. Stupid shit.”
“Tell me,” she urges.
I lean back, bringing our joined hands to rest on my stomach, and played with her fingers. “That I slept with anything with a pulse. I used women and threw them away. He mind-fucked one girl I had dated. She said I was too rough with her, that I hurt her. People believed it because he made her believe it. She would run out of the room when I entered. Before that, we were on good terms. We both agreed to end the relationship. He made her and many other women terrified of me.” I swallow the memories, bitter on my tongue.
