at me. As our eyes met for a brief moment, I saw the sweet, kind girl I had cared for in my youth. She was still in there, and for that one perfect moment, I had been given the chance to look upon her again. But it didn’t last.
Closing her eyes briefly and taking a deep breath, she climbed out of the car before turning to look at me, her eyes once again full of anger. “Next time, don’t bother stopping.” Then she slammed the door, causing the whole car to shake before storming off up the drive and disappearing from my life… again.
~
Finally pulling into the garage almost four hours after I had dropped Frankie off, I made my way through the silent manor hoping to avoid any questions as to where I had been. That’s if Frankie hadn’t spilt his guts on the way up to his room. Passing my father’s office on the first floor, I heard him speaking with his Beta, Ryan. “So they have all selected a gift?”
“Yes, Alpha, and I have taken note of all the gifts they have chosen. Though I don’t have anything written down for Ethan yet,” Ryan informed him.
“What?”
“I know that he went down there to select one and Isaac told me himself that your son did indeed chose a gift, but as of yet, Ethan has not come forward to tell me what his choice was.”
And I wasn’t planning too. Picking up speed, I made my way as silently as I could pass his office, sure that my father had sensed me but had decided to let me be for the time being at least. No doubt I would be called to his office bright and early, though. It was crazy not to tell my father what I had selected, but somehow, with the reminder it gave me of Kaia, I didn’t want anyone to see it. I didn’t want to give anyone the chance of figuring out my true feelings.
I remember the last time we were truly friends, the day of her thirteenth birthday. I had gone to the cave to meet her, tightly clutching the white gold ring that had once belonged to my mother in my hand. Before she had died she had given it to me, telling me that I was to give it to someone special, my one true friend. That had been Kaia. Her face lit up when I presented her with it. Her eyes had shined with unshed tears. Lifting up on her tiptoes, she had placed a kiss to my cheek, the first and only time she had kissed me, and my wolf had demanded that I grab her and claim her as my own then and there. Thankfully, I’d had a good hold on my wolf even at that young age. Kaia was far too young to be mated, and so was I.
We had sat and talked for hours, hands twined together as I watched the ring catch in the moonlight above us at the entrance to the cave. A week later, when we were supposed to meet again, I had planned to ask her out, to tell her I no longer wanted to hide our friendship. But she wasn’t there. I waited for hours but she never came. She was absent from school also, though no one seemed to know why. Every night I would sneak off to the caves and wait, hoping that she might show up. Then I turned up one night two weeks later, to find an envelope, a note and the ring inside. The note wasn’t very long and I hadn’t believed she really meant the words she wrote at first, not until she came back to school and proved them.
Ethan, I don’t want to see you anymore. Wolves and Wiccans should not mix. I am just so much better than you.
She broke my heart. I spent the next year trying to avoid her while she spent it throwing insults and getting into fights with everyone she could. I think half the coven wanted to abandon her in the end.
Finally making it back to my room, I was relieved when I found my bed empty. Quickly stripped down, I climbed under the covers, closing my eyes, desperate to see something, anything but those beautiful green eyes that I knew would haunt my dreams forever. But as I knew would happen, they were all I could see.
Chapter Six
~
Kaia
Mad wouldn’t even begin to describe the look on Grace’s face when I turned to face the woman
Learning to Kill: Stories