PRETTY GIRLS DO UGLY THINGS

Wren’s POV

Cold soup meant a more sticky hair

I could feel it soaking through to my bra strap, and a little trickle into my panties. I set my tray down on the nearest table, pulled my wet hair off my neck, and retwisted it into a knot. 

Whatever arrangement the Voss brothers had with the Thorne sisters was their business. None of that was my problem and none of it was my fault. The bond chose me. I didn't go looking for it. I had literally been alone in an equipment room on full moon night specifically to avoid things like this.

I was not rejecting anything. That was my chance for revenge. 

And I was not standing here covered in soup while people filmed me like 

I picked up a paper napkin from the tray and dabbed my collarbone with it. Useless, but it was something to do with my hands.

Eden Thorne rolled her shoulders back. Her signature move that fit her athletic build. She closed the distance between us without raising her voice first because Eden Thorne was not a words-first kind of person.

The. She said very quietly, "Reject the bond."

"No," I said.

She pushed me.

I pushed back, “Bitch!”

She pushed me again. I stumbled back into the table behind me, caught the edge with both hands, and straightened up. The cafeteria noise went up a notch. More phones out.

"Mate snatcher," she said, loud enough for the room. "That's what you are. You engineered this whole thing and you know it. Reject it, or I promise you, I will make every single day of your life here…"

"Oh I want to see you try…" I said. "In what world did you think the next thing you said was going to land after pouring hot soup on my head!?"

She came at me again. I got my hands up this time. 

Bam! She yanked my hair, loosening my bun. I wanted to do the same to her, but that blondie’s hair was damn too short. 

It didn't matter much. Eden was a fighter. Everyone knew the end from the beginning. She was definitely going to beat my ass up.

We went back and forth for about fifteen ugly seconds, the crowd forming a circle and they booed my name.  

She was winning. Both at the point, we were both locked in the fight 

Then Vera Thorne spoke.

"How unfortunate," she said, from somewhere behind me. "That it had to come to this."

I went still.

I locked eyes with her, and I saw how she shook her head, unbothered, her long blonde hair she kept in a high tight ponytail swinging left-right; the tighter the ponytail, the more upset she was. 

Her sea-green eyes melted into her white-porcelain skin as she spoke. 

"How unfortunate," she said again. I felt Eden’s grip loosen

Then she started talking.

She went through every secret I had ever told her in the eighth months we have been friends before now. She told the crowd about my grandmother's illness. The scholarship I'd applied for and hadn't told anyone about. The night I'd cried in the school bathroom after the third pack assembly where nobody had acknowledged I existed. 

Then she got to Kelvine.

Kelvine Hale. Two rows over in our Thursday afternoon class. Quiet, tall, dark-haired. I had told Vera about him exactly once.

Kelvine was standing in the cafeteria. I watched the moment he heard Vera talk about my crush on him. He went bread with embarrassment. Someone near him laughed. “The fatty likes you,” they said

“She will squeeze him with her belly when they smash!”

“Eww… she’ll eat him up too!”

I saw the disgust so much on Kelvine’s face that he threw up

 I bit my cheek.

“How unfortunate!” Vera screeched again and the next thing people were talking about my back rolls and stretch marks. Vera had just shared my semi nude pictures to the class group on Snapchat. I trusted her with those pictures.

I thought of my stretch marks that ran along my hips and the sides of my stomach like worms now filling every screen in a room full of people who were already laughing.

I bit my cheek so hard I tasted blood.

“She is so ugly….” I heard people say

“I’d kill myself if I was her…”

“My grandma is hotter…”

I was not going to cry. I bit harder. One, two, three, four …

“Woah… the Voss brothers…” someone chimed 

I hear buzzing and murmurs.

I looked up because everyone else looked up and for three full seconds I forgot every single thing that had just happened to me.

The Voss brothers walked into the cafeteria like the stars of the show. For a moment, I was envious; we had everything anyone would want.  

The crowd parted for them 

Three seconds. I gave myself exactly three seconds of forgetting before I caught myself and felt immediately furious. Not at them. At myself. For the three seconds I spent drooling.

I looked back at my tray.

The crowd swarmed the brothers instantly, everyone asking the same question in different ways. 

“Is it true? Are you really bonded to that pig?”

“ All three of you?”

The Thorne sister, we are already warming up to the Voss; as if rubbing it in my face 

I didn't wait to see what was happening or hear how they answered. I picked up my bag, left my tray on the table, and walked out of the cafeteria.

***

Eden drove a white SUV and she parked it in the same spot every day. It was not visible from the main building and not covered by any of the three cameras around

I worked fast. Slashed four tires, one cracked windscreen. I used the small emergency tool I kept in my bag because I was an omega at a school run by Alpha blood and I had stopped walking around unprepared in year one.

I wanted to do Vera's car too. I walked past it on the way back. Silver, clean, parked directly under the open lot camera like she had done it on purpose.

She probably had.

I kept walking.

Back in the equipment room I sat down on the floor with The Ledger open across my knees. I turned to Eden's page. Three entries, two observation notes, and one task pending from this morning.

I drew a red checkmark. Nice and slow.

The sound reached me through the window about four minutes later. Eden's voice, from somewhere in the direction of the car park, a sound that was both a scream and a lot of words at on e

I smiled at the page.

Then I heard Vera, “What the fuck, Eden!? Why are you yelling?”

“It has to be that fat bitch, Wren!” Eden was screaming 

I kept smiling.

I turned to Vera's page in The Ledger. Three entries. Six observation notes. One pending task, empty checkbox.

I hadn't done anything yet.

Vera is my next revenge plan. I will make her pay for humiliating me today