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Selena
The human’s wide gray-silver eyes were filled with confusion but, most of all, irritation. I chuckled.
“I see you’re looking rather colorful lately.”
I walked, leaning on the armchair not so far from the bed.
“What do you want?” she asked slowly, as though she were measuring her words.
Her voice sounded slightly softer than what I remembered. Was she perhaps speaking softer because she didn’t want the guards outside to hear? I smiled. “Walls have ears, human, and besides, the room is mostly padded.”
“Padded,” she mumbled.
Her eyes glazed over, as though she were deep in thought. She shrugged the thought off, perhaps forgotten in her little mind.
“So what do you want? Tease me again? Well, too bad for you. I’m leaving very soon.” She smiled.
“No, you’re not,” I said, “but you can if you want to. You just have to reject him formally in front of the pack, with a few words said in the specific emotional cadence—then the magic will break between the both of you.”
“I already did,” she said. “I don’t want to stay here. I can obviously bet you don’t want me here either. You think I’m going to steal your stupid boyfriend—mate,” she said with a growl in her voice. “The things we feel, the things we do, our lives, our magic are way beyond your puny little human mind to cope with.”
She gave a rather deadpan expression; it didn’t even bother her at all. “Yeah, well, this puny little human wants to go home and your larger-than-life pack isn’t going to let her go. You people are just wicked—literally wolves hiding in human flesh. You’re predators. You’re wicked,” she said again, her lips barely moving. She spoke with the strange calm that gripped her somehow. I hated her. I truly did hate her.
“You can leave. Surely you would have heard of what happened by now.”
I leaned back in the chair, crossing one leg over the other and keeping my expression neutral.
“You mean the thing about both of us?”
“Yeah. Thank you. I’d rather be anywhere else than belong to the same man as you. I don’t even like him,” she said, probably hoping she could push out the same conviction she did with the rest of her statements, but her voice quivered just a little bit. Her heartbeat quickened and the blood rushed faster; her face flushed slightly, and a faint floral scent tingled my nose.
I smiled.
“You don’t like him? You know, I have been told that I have a rather keen sense of smell—even to the point where I smell emotion. I smell everything. I know what hatred smells like: it smells bitter. It smells as though there’s ash inside—hate burns, you see.”
Her face turned pinker still; she jutted her chin outwards, nearly pouting her little lips. Her nose was upturned and her eyes blazed with acute denial.
“Humor smells happy. Anyway, think of yellow as a smell—the sun, your face, joy, lovely. And love, well, it’s the opposite of hate. It smells like grass; it smells like nature. It smells of times when a mother is with her child, when mates who love each other genuinely are around—it tingles my nose. Friendship too. But yours has a strange mixture of floral notes and, of course, the burning scent of lust and wantonness left behind in my nose.”
She opened her mouth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“You like him,” I said slowly, dismissing her. “I smell it now—even the scent of your arousal.”
She closed her eyes slowly. “Yes, my body responds in a certain way,” she said. “I cannot deny that. I’m not a fool. It’s true—my body wants him in so many different ways. But that’s just about it. I hold no emotion of joy being around him. You people are beasts in human flesh—literally. You want to kill me; he wants to kill me. He has shown me nothing but hatred and disdain.” Her lips quivered slightly.
“Even sometimes humans treat me badly. Did my kind do this to me? And you somehow expect me to be part of your society in a stupid twist of fate—even though I don’t believe in that crap—and somehow expect me to love you and love him? The way he treated me—he threw me in a fucking cell, in a cage, as though I were the dog—even though I’m not.”
I growled again, unable to help myself. And there she goes, proving my point.
She raised her hands and gave me a small applaud. “Dig holes for yourself constantly, please do.” I stopped smiling.
“Leave,” I said. “You don’t want to be here.” I smiled. “And I’m not the one who dug a hole—you did. You have said that you don’t like him.”
I pulled out my phone and paused the recording. Her eyes widened with recognition and perhaps a strange hint of happiness.
“So you’ll play that for him, right? Tell him I don’t want to be here and that I want to leave? Will he let me leave? He said he’s going to kill me.” She smiled slightly. “The council will make you stay. If you don’t want to, you just have to reject him with specific words said in a certain way and it will be final.”
She inverted her gaze only slightly. “I don’t want to stay here,” she said. “You people have nothing for me.”
“Do we?” I wanted to ask. As Luna, she could live her life with everything she had never experienced. She was human, but more so any human looking in this case—she seemed desperate. She had nothing, perhaps no property to her name, and she wasn’t exactly behaving as though she was missed. She wasn’t fidgeting; she wasn’t constantly looking for a means to contact someone. She was alone in this world, quite literally.
“You’re an orphan,” I said. Her gaze met mine and suddenly she became so guarded I thought I was staring at an injured beast.
“What do you think you know about me?” Her tone changed—stronger, edged. “You haven’t been looking for anyone,” I said slowly. “You haven’t been trying to reach out to someone. You haven’t been saying that surely someone will look for you and someone will find you. So you’re alone. You came here looking for help and found none. And besides, I know the smell of an orphaned mutt when I smell it.”
She stood up as if to protest, then regretted it and fell back down onto the bed. “I swear to God I will kill you one day.”
“Try,” I said. “You’re human. Before you can do it, I’d snap your neck in a heartbeat. I’ll deal with the outcome later. But I don’t want to kill you—I need you to reject him that way his wolf will heal easier, and I will pick up the pieces. If I kill you now, that would be an entirely different story; I’d be punished, but I’m sure you know that. And I don’t think you want that. Or, of course, if you would, then you would probably give him another kind of trauma.”
She opened her mouth. “You really didn’t just suggest that I kill myself, did you? You really are wicked,” she said slowly, in a low, soft voice.
I leaned forward in the chair and slowly stood up. “I am,” I said. “And I will get what I want. Reject him and leave.”
“I’m injured right now,” she waivered. “I don’t have insurance so I can’t exactly go to the hospital. A wound could easily open up again and who knows—if I leave maybe I’ll get attacked by those crazy people that did it last time. This place is a freaking death trap and I don’t want to die, so I’ll leave but on my own terms, not yours.”
She had nothing more to say. She turned away, and so did I. I balled my hands into little fists. Her words—she said, “I’ll show her terms,” I thought to myself as I stormed out of the room, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and made a phone call that would cost me a lot.
“Hello?” A soft female voice answered on the other side.
“It’s me, Selena,” I said.
“Oh—hello, Bethany.” My eyes widened and I stopped dead in my tracks. I heard a quiet place. I hung up quickly, pulled off my shoes, and ran as fast as I could to a secluded area far from the alpha’s residence, deeper in the woods on the outskirts of the city.
“Are you alone now?” I said into the phone when I called her again. “This is going to cost you a lot, Selena.” I chuckled. “I have nothing to lose and everything to gain,” I said softly. “I need you to book a meeting with Damon. I think he will be glad to listen to what I have to say.”