Chapter 21 Daisy
Daisy
I hold onto Ash and Briar tightly as all those vipers’ heads turn our way. I’m like a lamb brought to slaughter.
I’m prey, nothing more, nothing less.
These people will eat me alive… Just like they used to every day back in high school. Their old taunts echo in my head, and I freeze.
“Freak!”
“Loser!”
And just like that, I am seventeen again. Insecure, terrified. Frazzled.
Coming here was a mistake.
“It’s okay, Bumblebee? You’ve got this. We’re here for you,” Ash reassures.
I inhale several times, meeting his green, green eyes. Then I glance across at Briar. He smiles, and a sparkle appears in his hazel irises.
I can do this. I am not that same teenager again. I am a woman now. Confident.
Finally, we walk through the venue.
We head to the refreshments table immediately as Briar hands me a flute of champagne. Most people resume their chatter, but I could swear in that moment that they were all whispering about me.
A susurration of murmured voices floats around the room, rising and rising until it overwhelms me like a tidal wave.
A knot forms in my chest, and the anxiety is taking hold.
This really was a mistake.
“It’s okay, Daisy-chain… We’ve got you. You look beautiful,” Briar whispers.
I close my eyes, breathing in then out. Then, I sip my champagne.
He’s right. But why do I feel like I am torn in two? I’m like a mouse that is about to be pounced on by a cat.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Daisy Rose.”
My body ceases all movement when I hear that familiar, mocking tone. Ash and Briar stand on my left and right at once, arms crossed as they flank me like bodyguards.
Teenage me would have dreamed of Pack Thorn protecting me like this, especially from this one…
Yet I still push them aside, facing the girl who tormented me for three years.
Damn, I feel sick the moment I find her beautiful face. Natalie was the best-looking girl at school, and hell, did she know it.
She was tall, tanned, athletic, and the head cheerleader.
However, some of that bloom has wilted slightly. She’s lost the cute, round cheeks. Now, her features are sharper, more pronounced. Perhaps her shitty personality finally manifested on the outside, who knows, but I have no idea why I was so afraid of her.
Natalie is nothing special in the end. She is and always will be just small-town pretty.
I heard she and Kyle got married straight out of high school and had kids. Two sons, to be precise, and I hope for the sake of all nerds out there that they are nothing like their father.
I would like to think that motherhood has humbled Natalie somewhat, but with the way her eyes assess my outfit, I guess it hasn’t. She still looks as if she has a rotten smell under her pert nose.
Or it could be the fact that she is around her high school friends again and has reverted to an infantile, childhood state.
But if she keeps gazing at my Alphas in such a suggestive way, I’ll punch her in her perfect white teeth. I’ve done a few self-defense classes since I left Silverpine; she can’t corner me in the girls’ toilets anymore.
“Hi, Natalie,” I say, keeping my voice calm.
Her two best friends arrive by her side, Rebecca and Sarah, and my gut clenches.
These three always waited for me in the girls’ toilets during lunch, and once again I see myself cowering before them.
One time, they were smoking weed in there.
Even when I promised I wouldn’t snitch on them, they still made an example of me.
There was a girl back at my school in Manchester. Saylor, her name was. She was small, unassuming, and wore glasses.
And the kids gave her a hard time, bullying her over her beautiful name. So, I took it upon myself to welcome her into our squad with open arms. And then all the kids respected her afterward.
All just because I reached out.
Natalie could have done the same. But she still decided to be a bitch.
Natalie continues to smile with that smirk of hers. It was always hard to tell whether she was smiling or smirking.
But then she takes me by surprise, throwing her arms around me. “Come on over here, girl. It’s so good to see you again! We have so much to catch up on.”
She squeezes me, and I peer across at Ash and Briar. They don’t look so convinced of her sudden altruism, keeping their eyes on her the whole time she holds me. Neither of them blinks.
Natalie hugs me harder, and it’s like being strangled by a boa constrictor.
The hug is a threat. She sees me here, with two of the best-looking men in the room. And she is warning me.
No one steals her crown, after all.
Seriously? We’re twenty-eight now. Thirty in a few years, and she is still concerned about that crown?
Perhaps it’s the only one she will ever have. I should feel sorry for her. But when she has her arms around me like a snake, it’s hard to agree with that sentiment.
She finally lets me go, grabbing Sarah and Rebecca’s hands, and then the three of them trot off.
Holding hands… as they did back in school.
Ash and Briar stare at the trio, horrified. Briar elbows Ash. “Did we enter a timeslip when we walked through those doors? I could swear I was back in high school for a moment.”
“Same here,” I mutter. My muscles are still coiled up.
Ash places a hand on my shoulder, and my muscles loosen a little. “Are you okay, Bumblebee?”
I have to take a few moments to collect myself. That was awful; I think I had a little PTSD the moment I set eyes on Natalie.
I’m shaken. And that hug.
“Those bitches can’t harm you. Not now. You have us, just as you should have had back then.” Briar brushes a blonde curl from my face.
Despite how strong I try to be, a tear escapes. Ash wipes it away, throwing his arms around me. “You don’t have to talk to her or any of them. We are here,” he whispers.
I don’t return his hug at first. I’m aware of the eyes of everyone in the room. It wasn’t just the most popular kids who gave me a hard time.
Everyone took their turns at tormenting me because it improved their social status at the school. I was some kind of rite of passage.
Pick on Daisy Rose, and you’re cool.
I lost many friends over that fact. I still remember when Sarah was the new girl. We befriended each other at first because we lived close by.
But then, within a few weeks, she’d changed. She started wearing makeup and fashionable clothes, and she even started smoking.
And then she joined Natalie’s squad. She elevated her status because she disowned me.
Finally, I return Ash’s hug, uncaring of who sees us now. He even lifts me off my feet, spinning me romantically.
When he drops me to my feet, Briar throws his arm around me and guides me further into the room.
The band has just started playing songs from the years we were in school, and screw hanging around on the sidelines and being invisible.
Now, I am going to take center stage, just like I did when I read my poem.
Except this time, it will be different.
This time, I’ll have my Alphas.