Reunion with the Bully

It had been five years since Nora Stirling had last seen her High School bully, Alpha Heir Otto Forest of Silver Moon High.

The high reunion was to be held at the Moon’s Shadow Club. Although Nora was just the school’s nerd girl, of that year group, and was the youngest daughter of the Moonlit Falls pack’s Alpha, she kept it quiet, as she wasn’t in line for much, and well she knew knowing who she was meant that others would just treat her kindly to win favour with her father the Alpha Apollo and her eldest brother and heir to the pack Alpha Heir Noah.

It was easier for her to stay in the shadows, a reprieve from being one of seven Alpha pups of her father’s line; her being the youngest only made it worse.

“Nose in a book again, my lady,” the driver said, with a smirk.

“Fred, you know me too well, actually, to research for my next novel. Being the youngest daughter has some perks. No one really takes much notice of you and what you do in your spare time.”

“Must be lonely sometimes, miss even with such a large family.”

“Sometimes,” she agreed, “but my characters are all there when I need them.”

Fred nodded, “Of course, miss, that makes sense, we’re almost there, about three minutes out, looking forward to seeing anyone tonight?”

“Not really,” she sighed, “but Noah said that I had to go, at least to the first one.”

“What happens if you meet your mate tonight?”

“Well, considering who these people were before, I’d say I would be looking at a rejection. Which I would accept.”

Fred nodded, knowing that she meant every word. He had watched her grow up after picking her up and dropping her off at school each day, but she would make him pick her up a street away from the school, as she didn’t want anyone to know who she really was.

Then Nora had always been a more private person, even back at her family’s pack house. Her nose was either in a book, head down, with a pen and a notebook.

Meanwhile, Alpha Heir Otto was with his friends in the packs SVU…

“Dude, who are you looking forward to seeing the most?”

No one spoke for a moment, then. Luke broke the silence, “I know who Otto’s looking forward to seeing…”

“Linda?”

“No.”

“Lucy?”

“Wait, wait, I’ve got it, Nora Stirling, the year nerd.”

The car broke into laughter. All but Otto, who made more of a strangled sound.

He remembered the last time he saw her; she spoke to a handful of people at the presentation, then disappeared after it had finished. He never found her, even tried to find her years later, and even sent letters to her pack’s Alpha requesting to speak with her. But nothing did she just disappear from the face of the planet.

“Nah, man, I’ve spoken to a lot of people from our time at the school, no one has heard from her, since the presentation,” one of the others said, once he had stopped laughing.

‘No one had heard from her in all that time. What have I done? Did she hurt herself after what I used to…’ Otto’s thoughts rolled around his mind.

“Earth to Otto, you ok, man? You look like you saw a ghost.”

“Yeah, I…I just,” he stuttered, “I was just thinking that’s all.”

“Thinking about how you scored the nerd to do the class work for you when you were forced together, and since you were being nice to her, she thought it made you both friends, but you just…”

“Dude, honestly, I never picked her as my project partner; the teacher did, and she did the work to get a good grade because I backed out at the last minute when we were meant to work together. I didn’t really use her; I just wasn’t worried about my grades. She just made sure we passed, probably needed good grades. Although I was an ass to her.”

“Man, your arranged mating with the Lady Stirling of the Alpha line of the Moonlit Falls pack has gone to your head, you know, the chances that they're the same person, right?”

“Who said I thought they were? Just that it's weird, and father is only doing it because he says I need to settle down, even though I’ve never found my fated mate, nothing more.”

The guys crack into laughter once more, “Actually, if it is her, we should bet how long it takes him to win her over.”

“Oh my Goddess, yes, we so should.”

Otto wanted to run his hand down his face, as his friends would. He doubted that he would be the last wolf to have wondered what had happened to Nora since no one had heard from her. He had a tattoo on his right shoulder, a Moon Lotus flower. He had it done two years after he couldn’t find her; he had noticed she used to draw them in the margin of her notebooks. He asked her once what it was for she told him it was a pack tradtion it was to allow the Goddess to see that these who marked their work with is to see that they had learned her teachings. He had it done to show the Goddess he had learned from his mistakes and the pain that he had caused.

Instead, he turned away from his friends and spoke to the driver, " How long?”

“I’d say three minutes out, Alpha Heir.” The driver stated, and Otto could tell that he, too, had wished that he was anywhere but where he currently was.