FOUR

I loved Lucien once. Along with Celeste, he’d been my best friend. His parents always quarrelled with him to stay away from me but he never listened to them. Things started to change when we entered high school six years ago. As we are older than Celeste by a year, it left the two of us as high school friends and Celeste still in middle school.

It was around that time his infatuation with Skylar began. She’d been the hottest girl in our high school. I didn’t blame him for abandoning our friendship and choosing her. They made a golden couple – the Beta’s son with his mop of curly black hair, lean muscular build, and long legs and the Alpha’s daughter with the perfect figure eight and shiny long hair.

Lucien couldn’t be friends with me while dating Skylar who hated me from childhood. She abhorred me even before she had a reason to. I let him choose his girlfriend before me but he wouldn’t let me go. He gave me false hopes that ruined what little reputation I had amongst my peers.

“Are you okay?” I could only nod at Celeste’s question while her brother cleaned my wounds. I assumed Skylar sucked out all the niceness in him through one of their many public kisses but he proved me wrong by coming to my aide and patching me up.

“These will scar.” He sounded disturbed.

Scars were nothing new to me. Scars decorated my back in their numbers, a map of whips, belts, canes, and everything else I’d been beaten with. The scars on my back were nothing; the scars on my mind were a telling of the pain that would never fade. I could cover my back and pretend I had nothing but smooth skin behind me but my mind lay bare to me, a constant agonizing torture.

“It doesn’t matter.” I pulled away from his lingering touch.

“Careful.” He stopped my sudden movement. “I don’t want the wounds reopening. You should stay still so Artemis heals you in time.” He threw out my wolf’s name as if we were friends, as if he knew her and liked her – my wolf, the omega that he couldn’t stand being associated with when he became the king of our high school, becoming even more popular than the future Alpha in the pack.

He cleaned my wounds with the care of a friend, applied cream to my stinging back, and bandaged the wound then he got ice for the slight bump on my head from where Skylar kicked me yesterday.

He may be feeling deserving of appreciation after all he did but I couldn’t find it in me to thank him. He started this. He held me down yesterday with brute force yet he wanted to act as my saviour today.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked, turning to face him while ignoring the bite of pain from my movements.

“Can you give us a minute?” He turned to his sister who stood with her hands folded, her upper back leaning against a wall with her legs crossed at the ankle.

“I’d rather not be alone with him.” Turning to my best friend, I made sure she saw that I didn’t want to be left alone with my bully. I would have no interactions with Lucien if I had my way.

“If you do anything funny, I will castrate you.” She wagged a finger at her brother, pushing off the wall.

“Celeste –“ I didn’t have the strength to glare but I managed one.

“Hear him out, Ay.” The traitor left me alone in a room with the bully.

Celeste always wanted me to give people second chances. Even when it was obvious they only approached me to have a laugh, she wanted me to see the good in people and give them as many chances as necessary for them to show me a side that didn’t get me kicked or verbally abused.

I’d given Lucien the most chances in life. He used to be my best friend but he chose Skylar, my arch-nemesis over me. He humiliated me in front of the entire school, set my diploma ablaze when I managed to graduate, and joined his friends in bullying me. He didn’t join in at first but after a while, he started to enjoy it. He had a wicked look in his eyes when he looked at me, and derived a sick pleasure from shoving me and pulling me down every time I found my balance.

I’d first trust a venomous snake before I trusted Lucien again.

“I’m breaking up with Skylar.” I burst into laughter at that. I laughed so hard that I feared my closed injuries would start bleeding again.

“Can you break up with her?” I asked, still gasping from all the laughter.

Play me once, shame on you. Play me twice, shame on me.

He’d used this same line against me a few years ago. He became nice to me all of a sudden, out of nowhere, sparking gossip in school then he told me he was breaking up with Skylar. I’d been so happy, so naïve, so foolish. I foolishly thought I was getting my friend back but if I knew the humiliation waiting for me after that, I would have known from then that I didn’t have a friend in Lucien. Not anymore.

“I’m doing it. I can’t be with her anymore.” I saw the sincerity in his hazel eyes, marvelling at how one man could be so deceptive. No trace of insincerity lingered in his eyes. He held my gaze like a man with nothing to hide but behind his sincere eyes lay a wicked heart that could contrive the most wicked of thoughts. Lucien could smile while stabbing you to death and looking like he didn’t want to hurt you at the same time.

Another girl would be fooled but like I said, I would be a big fool to be played a second time by the same words from the same mouth that deceived me all those years ago. Skylar made sure to corrupt the smallest atoms in his body, leaving behind nothing of the boy I used to know

“Why can’t you be with her?” I played his game. The more he spoke, the less likely I was to fall asleep in his room.

Skylar would flay the skin off my back if she found out I’d been with her boyfriend, alone and in his room, no matter the circumstances. She’d hurt me more if she found out I slept here.

“I like someone else.” A wry smile pulled up the side of my lips.

“It’s none of my business if you like someone or if you break up with Skylar,” I snapped.

Wicked. The lot of them. Evil, heartless people without a drop of kindness in their blood. He and Skylar and the Alpha’s son.

“Don’t you want to know who I like?” The hopeful light in his eyes died when I brushed off his attempt at cordiality. Too late. I hated the lot of them. I wished them all the evil in the world, cursed the ground they walked on and the air they took into their lungs.

“I don’t care.” He slumped forward. His new acting skills made me laugh. “Remember when you held my neck yesterday and tried to strangle me to death? Fun times.” I smiled at him.

If he knew the magnitude of pain I endured from his hands and how it damage me, it would make him smile – make him happy. I wanted him and his gang to be miserable till the day they died.

“You don’t know how hard it is watching you suffer. If Skylar knows I’m starting to like you again, she’d come after you. I don’t want that. I’m trying to protect you in the little way I can even if you hate me for it.”

As an omega, I connected to people’s emotions. The emotions leaking off him were negative – sad and anxious. I paid no mind to them. They could be faked.

“You don’t have to watch me suffer.” I smiled at him. He returned my smile with a pained one of his. “You can turn your back and pretend it isn’t happening as you did all those years ago.” His shoulders fell at my harsh words.

Now and then, Lucien had the bright idea of repentance but it never lasted long. I wouldn’t be made a fool again.

“It’s not –“

“And you never liked me, Lucien. You rejected me and I accepted your rejection.” If tears filled his eyes then, I didn’t care. I didn’t look and it wouldn’t have bothered me if he fell on his knees and rolled around in pain.

I might even laugh.

I hated Lucien and wished him the most rotten luck anyone on earth could have.

Not wanting to stay in his room with him for even a second more, I kicked my legs out of his bed, soldering through the pain as I walked out.

The next day was the last day of the Feast of the Moon. The day all hell broke loose in Redville.