I secure a heavy towel around my body then peek through a slit in the doorway. The bedroom is empty, but I hear David's voice coming from the living room. He must be on the phone with Tarlo; maybe David is updating him.
Tonight Jeremy planned for me to wear the emerald green dress. It's long with a sophisticated cut, not too young or too old. He calls them my dresses, but I feel as if I'm borrowing costumes for a ballet performance. I smile, twirl about the room, and put all my recently-learned knowledge on our politics to use. David says that shape-shifting, people-pleasing person is me. If he's right, then I have never been so fractured in my life. Funnily enough, I have never felt so whole.
I leave the bedroom in the dress so David can zipper me in. My hair tumbles down my shoulders, still partially damp, and I g
"I'm not leaving," I protest. "Get your things together. We're flying back tonight." "I'm not leaving, David. I mean it. I'm not done." "I don't care," he says, looking from our bags for a moment between his frantic packing. "I knew this would happen. I knew I shouldn't have let you come." I sigh and sit on the edge of the bed, watching him. "They're making Nicodra leave—you saw what happened. He's probably already gone." "I don't care." "I'm not leaving." "Yes," he says louder and shoots upright, "you are. Look what he did." He motions to my neck. "What he could ha
David's fingers dance around my bruise as light as feathers tickling my skin-a skater spinning around a frozen pond. His other hand is in my grasp, massaged and felt by my own mindless fingers and anxious movement. The results of my speech sit on my chest, and I know the weight won't budge until the majority opinion is heard tomorrow. "You did very well," David tells me for the seventh time since I finished this morning. I spoke the final, improvised word, stepped off of the podium, returned to him, and it's the first thing he said in a proud hush. "I think I'm ready to go home." I rest against him on the loveseat in our living room, my back to his chest, my head just under his chin. "Well, I'm sure Jeremy can arrange something in a week or two," he says, sighing.
David speaks to me about our return trip home as we wait for the meeting to begin. We sit in the same seats as we have the past two days: bottom row, nearly center, important-feeling. He rambles to distract me and calm my leg as it relentlessly bobs, but no matter how hard I try to pay attention to him, his details of our travels do not compete with the looming results of my last-minute plan. Alpha Leloup-Nicodra's replacement-takes center stage at the podium. He nods to the crowd before beginning. "First, I will announce the surveyed results of the first issue: Luna Amin's and Luna Godoy's call for females of Alpha blood to be eligible for the Alpha position. I clench my fists. This is it-whether or not Nicodra's crushing grip came to good use. "At this time, we are willing to cons
"Let's go through things, alright? You need to get back into routine after being gone and taking a...break," Jeremy says, and I nearly forgot how quickly he speaks. "It was only two days," I drawl. "First, most importantly, Alpha Nicodra will be coming at the end of the month-" "David called? Nicodra said yes?" Jeremy insists, "It's what I received. I receive the information, and I structure your schedule, that's all." "I thought you knew everything?" He holds my gaze for a moment before he takes a breath and sets down his papers on the dining room table. "Yes, Nicodra agreed to come and speak with you. The Alph
The first thing she says to me when I open the door is, "So it's true," as her cat-like eyes survey my bruise. "I didn't get to see it. I was escorted out so quickly." I glance at Tarlo behind her. He doesn't look like he wants to step further than this. In the few seconds we have, Tarlo and I communicate through stares. He seems to ask:Will you be alright?And I say:Yes, you don't have to stay. "Please, come in," I tell Aurora. "I'll be close by," Tarlo insists then turns the other way, being a good Beta and friend to David. I know he wouldn't let anything bad happen-the same promise David makes to me. Aurora walks inside but we don't spend a moment too long in the foyer. I take her to the first living room; the one with a grand window that overse
I can't sleep without him, not with Aurora's request stuck in my head like a song on repeat. I do as she asks, I think it over without the choice not to. I imagine the look of Nicodra's face without any life behind it. There would have to be a plan-a way to keep David out of it. Enough in his drink to make him sick. Aurora would excuse the both of them because of it and walk back to their guest house under the cover of night. She'd forget something, maybe a bag, and I'd run it out to her while David remained safe inside. We would do it then, I think. He'd be too sick, too weak by then, to fight back. The second day without David, I spend in bed. Jeremy comes to see me and apologizes for his absence the day before. I tell him I'm sick. He knows it's an illness caused by my empty bed,
I push off the bed and shed David's shirt, my mind blank as I wander to the bathroom. I listen-prey-like-for the sounds of people in the house, but I catch no footsteps or closing doors or knocks from upstairs. My body is naked from the waist up, and from the waist down, a pair of panties keep me as decent as an ancient woman, but I don't feel fearful that someone will barge in-that David will visit his own bedroom and see me like this. He never comes upstairs during the day. The kitchen, his office; it's all downstairs. This is my domain for me to saunter about the room as naked and as dejected as I please. Knowing that I will meet his father today, I dress nicely, summery. I tie my hair up off of my shoulders and step into a fitted, button-up dress with the most feminine feel and dearest buttons. When I button each one, I see David and his cuffs, striding into the room then placing my
Air surges into my lungs so deeply and suddenly that I cough it up like water. I kick the covers off of me and thrash my body away from my mate. He wakes just as suddenly as I do. My hair sticks to my face and neck, and I scratch it all off of me, feeling sick with a cold-hot, dizzy, and disoriented. David turns on the lamp beside him, saying, "Brigette? Brigette?" The urgency in his voice-he must think I'm dying. He grabs me only to release a sob from my chest. I jerk away and hold up my hand, fighting with myself, trying to convince myself thatthisis real life, and whatever that was-that pure hell-was nothing but a night terror. I cry into my hands and David begs me to tell him what's wrong. I let him take me into his arms where I can say nothing but "I'm sorry."