ARI
Standing 6’5 foot of perfection is looking at me with … hate and murder in his eyes that I forget how to breathe.
Dressed in all black, his hands are tucked in his pickets, his perfect body so evidently godly sculpted despite the layers, a sharp jaw, chiselled cheeks, and piercing blue eyes. His hair cropped short leaving the front a little longer, he is so magnificent, insanely beautiful it should be a crime.
“If you are done ogling-“
“I am just wondering why you have declared war on me. I just got here.”
The lanky guy who is behind me chokes and I wonder what his deal is.
“Don’t ever interrupt me when I am speaking again.”
I have imagined my first time meeting the prince so many times and it always involved us wearing formal clothes, and acting cordial even though the only thing that connects us is our parents. I never thought it would be this harsh and unwelcoming.
He comes near me, his alpha energy palpable that the lanky guy starts to choke. I try to hold my own but I feel it constricting me, making me unable to even breathe.
He is doing it on purpose. The sudden urge to bear my neck to him in submission is so overwhelming that I hate my body when it cowers and backs away from him as he advances me.
“you made the worst mistake of your life by coming here, homewrecker,” the hatred in his voice, gods!
“it wasn’t my first choce either,” I choke out, the alpha energy still suppressing me.
“I am going to kill you. because you and your whore of a mother decided to come to territories that you don’t belong in. Now that you are here in mine, I will show you just how insignificant and a walking dead body you are.”
The venom in his voice mixed with the alpha energy he is pushing in those words all clang to me and I feel it through my body. He means every single one of it and I finally know why. I realize that his hate is so deep that any chance of being a wallflower, unnoticed flies through the door when he looks at me with a murderous look in his blue eyes.
“I- I am – I am sorry, I-“
“It’s too late for that, trash. I want you dead, and that gives everyone a pass to kill you. I will enjoy watching you get crushed before I take the final blow. Because I will cherish to see the light end in your eyes,” he sneers, his face so close to mine I have to pull away, getting shivers down my body.
I have never been so scared in my whole life.
I think the only way to get out before I am killed is to leave … I need to-
“No one is coming to save you,” he snatches the phone in my hand and crushes it with a squeeze in his palm.
I finally understand his words. I am dead meat. No one can save me and my mom or mr. parker cannot do anything because they won't know.
What have I done?
How could I be so naïve to think the prince will look the other way when I come uninvited on his turf?
Running in my dorm is the only thing I know and do because the administrator didn’t bat an eyelash as I was being harassed and given death threats at the office. She didn’t even look up, and I know who the law and alpha of the whole damn school is.
Zade Parkers, the prince and the future king alpha.
And he has declared war on me.
***
The blood moon is tonight, and there is a ball being thrown in honour of getting mated. I am not invited, but I have decided that if I am going to be killed, then I will not go down without a fight.
Or at least trying my luck in mating.
That’s why as I stand in the full-length mirror, smoothing the gown I am dressed in, I know that I could be digging my own grave tonight.
Zade threatening me and telling me that there was no way out of it made me realize that my plan to stay unnoticed and finish my senior year quietly was gone with the wind. All my life, I have been a miss two goody shoes until tragedy took my family away from me, made me homeless and a runaway.
Now my mom is happy, and I am here, still picking up the broken pieces and I will be damned if I am forced into the box I broke a long time ago simply because he doesn’t like me.
The worst that can happen is if he kills me tonight. I wonder how he is going to explain that to his father.
It's so late and no one is in the hallways by the time I get out of my dorm, but music is playing and can be heard from afar from the ongoing celebrations.
A countdown starts when I am halfway to the party and I wonder if I should run or just leave be, since it's seconds away from the full moon breaking.
The beautiful moon finally breaks and unveils itself from the clouds and cheers ring across the property. I smile a little and pray to the moon goddess to protect me in the oncoming future, as my luck already is shitty.
Deciding to sit on the bench instead of going all the way to the hall, I watch the moon and mourn my childhood best friend Dante, who I believe would have been my mate. Dying so early and leaving me alone was so unfair, but I know he is looking after me, together with Dad on the other side.
I sniffle, feeling the tears down my face. I don’t know why I am crying, damn the emotions for being at all-time high today.
I am fidgeting with the clutch in my lap when a sharp tug in my heart leaves me breathless.
What's going on?
I exhale as I straighten but the tug comes again, this time stronger that I let out a cry and fall on the ground, on my knees. It tugs me so strongly and pulls at me. I look up and I feel the urge to go to the hall so badly that I stagger and start running towards it.
No! It’s a mating call. How?
I try to stop my feet from walking and moving but the pain becomes stronger that I fall again, the tug so strong it is painful when I stop moving in the direction it is leading me to.
I find myself at the doors of the ballroom and just as I am reaching for the knob, the double doors open suddenly and I fall back, looking at the person infront of me.
The tug seems to pulse towards him, wanting me to be closer to him, be with him, and claim him.
Mine.
Oh no! No, no, no!
Zade’s eyes are glowing as he looks at me with confusion and anger as I stand up.
“Mate,” the word slips out before I can stop it.
The whole world pauses as the word leaves my mouth and the whole world hears it all.
“No!” zade bellows so hard that I wince, covering my eardrums. “You!? You are not my mate!”
The command washes over me like oil on my skin. The tug pulls me towards him and I start walking towards him, mindless but he pushes me down and I fall. I don’t feel pain, as my insides all seem to be twisting and bleeding because Zade is my true mate and he is rejecting me.
“I can never be mated to trash like you! I fucking hate your guts and want to kill you,” his rejection hits me like a brick and I feel as if my insides are being torn apart.
“No, I -,” I gasp touching my chest as if I can stop the pain inside of me from eating me alive.
“I zade Parkers reject you as my mate! You will never be my Luna or my anything! Do you understand?”
The slicing pain goes through me and I feel the tug as if it is being shredded, but by a blunt knife. I can't breathe, but he is expecting me to say if I accept or not.
To make it true and firm.
Everyone is watching, but all my attention is on him.
“I accept your rejection,” I whisper as the shredding goes on.
I feel as if the bond between us cut and the hollow feeling left inside of me is something I have never experienced or imagined before
EPILOGUE10 YEARS LATERARIHealing is never-ending. It’s not a straight line but sort of circular. You end a chapter, go to the next, and find yourself at the same steps you were before, and the thought has ended. And you start all over again. Again and again.That’s how my life has been. Zade rescued me on the day I had made peace to die, and from then on, he has proved to be my giant. He has helped me become a giant on my own, too, and to say it hasn’t been easy between us is an understatement.Reconnecting, building trust, and choosing each other instead of the things we chose before, coming together instead has taken effort, time, and lots of patience for the other. Our lives haven’t been easy. Tied to two ends of demanding responsibilities and all of that belongs to no one but us … yes, it has taken and it is still taking time to learn to live for ourselves.Forgiving him hasn’t been easy, but understanding that we were kids who didn’t know what else to do, living life for the fi
ARIGripping the paper in my palm, I raise my knuckles and knock on the red door.I look around me, keen on hearing if I will hear any movement. I should have come here earlier, perhaps morning or during the day, but after traveling the whole night and most of the day, I couldn't wait any other second.The numbers sent to me in form of an address led me to a cabin in the woods and I think it’s cleaver for such a shit of person to love away from people after all the horrible things he did. I knock again, the last of the daylight slowly fading away. Trying to peer inside the small stained windows, I see nothing and hear nothing.Perhaps I will find better luck if I go to the back.Just as I am walking at the back when I see him. He is coming uphill, and just as I notice him, he sees me too.“Well, well, well. What a nice surprise. I never thought you would bring yourself right to my doorstep.”…ZADEDad ends the call and looks at me with worry.“We have found her. But we might be too l
ZADEShe is gone.I have been running around the academy looking for her. Not a single person has seen her. No one knows where she went. All her things are still in the suite, and yet I can notice that she has taken all her important things. Her leather jacket, her backpack, her Doc Martens, she has left the academy just like she came, minus all her mother’s stuff.She has left without anyone noticing, leaving the room like she is going to be back, but I notice. Not one thing that represents eh girl I fell in love with remains, and that's enough to make me drop to my knees, despair tearing me anew.I was too late again. It took me long to have the damn video from Olivia. I came here to show it to her, tell her everything, but all I am left with is … emptiness.She is gone.Running outside again, I head to my car and drive like crazy to my family home.“Where is she?” I shout as I push the doors open. My father and my mother are having dinner.“Who son?”“Ari! Where is she? She is not
ARIToday is a good day.The skies are blue today, and the breeze is cool to the touch. A sigh escapes my lips as I lie on the bench, holding the white envelope up high.This is it.The final piece of the puzzle. Who would have thought that I could have received it today, on such a great day?But perhaps it’s almost like fate, for this journey to end on a high note, because it would feel depressing if I left and it was a gloomy, chilly day. No problem with gloomy days, they are my favourite, but the sunny days too are starting to grow on me.I am holding the final letter that has been sent to me to show where the person who killed my family is living. I started investigating this on my own after I realized that I needed to wrap this all up and then finally rest. Find peace, whatever that means in my case.Turns out money can truly help you out in so many ways, and finding private investigators to help me find out the rogues was the best decision I could make with the trust fund. I did
ARIHe can’t. I made sure to seal that completely. I don’t need him trying to manipulate my emotions by leaning on our bond to make himself feel better by his choice.He chose her over me. Just like he always does. Nothing has changed.Giant? Devotion? Loyalty?Zade Parker knows nothing of the sort. He isn't that kind of mate.At least not to me.Staying away from the cafeteria this time is easier, as I have made sure to sill my fridge and have everything I could po0sbly need in my suite. All I have to go out for is classes otherwise, I can sleep in all the time and exist, wait for my time.It’s all finally coming to an end.….ZADE“Can you at least pretend that you like me? It’s not like it’s hard for you to smile and look like I haven’t forced you to be by my side.”“I don’t like you, and you are blackmailing me; that’s why I am here next to you. Otherwise, I could snap your neck and step over your corpse,” I smile, feeling anything but joy inside me at the snake beside me.Olivia
ARIZade leaves in the middle of the night.Our summer, our escape, our haven, it breaks when he leaves while I am still hiding, locked away so that he will not get to see me breaking apart.I did know this is how it would end. Not exactly like this, where he leaves to go and see his ex-girlfriend, per se, but I knew it would end.I thought we had a few more weeks but no. all I had was hours before it all came crumbling down.There was nothing he could tell me or try to explain that would make me feel better about myself. Olivia wins again, and I wonder if I will ever get to see that girl on her knees in front of me.What did I do to her in a past life to deserve this?They belong together, even the world knows so that’s why zade is running to her across the world as I sit here, crying and feeling sorry for myself to reconnect, appease and fight the bloody war and win because they are strong together.I have had enough crying, enough motivating talk, but it's time I admitted that my l