Chapter 1 - Liv #2
I didn’t answer, instead staring out, trying to see the oasis through her eyes. I tried—more on a skeptical whim than because I believed it would work—to sense that magic she was talking about. I felt nothing.
“I’m guessing you know why I wanted to speak with you,” the Oracle said, pulling me back to the present.
I took a deep breath, fingers flexing as I stared out at the water. “I have a guess,” I admitted. “My mate?”
The Oracle cracked a smile. “You always were a perceptive girl,” she said. “Yes. The fates have decreed it’s time for you and your mate to bond.”
Those few simple words clanged in my head like an alarm as my insides constricted. I had known it was coming, but I had held out one last time in the hope that maybe I had been wrong, that the Oracle had come to talk to me because of some other reason. Those words snuffed out the last bit of hope.
“I see,” I managed to choke out.
“Do you know who it is?” the Oracle inquired.
Of course I did. I had known for years. I shook my head, anyway. If there was the faintest chance I had been wrong all this time, I would take it.
“Drake Greystone.”
I had known it was coming, but hearing it come from the Oracle’s lips felt different.
It gave it a solidity that hadn’t been there before.
I had been right all this time. But I didn’t feel any sort of vindication.
I only felt dread. I stared out at the water, watching the kids play as I let it all sink in.
Drake. After all these years, after making myself move on and live my life, after learning to love myself despite him, I was being dragged right back to where I had been. Back to him.
My mouth felt like a desert as I licked my lips, taking a deep breath. “Does he know yet?” I asked.
The Oracle shook her head. “I was about to tell him once you and I finished talking,” she explained.
I didn’t say anything for a moment. I considered saying no, or asking her to pick someone, anyone other than Drake.
Except I knew what had happened with Rachel, and I knew that trying to change the Oracle’s mind once she had decided was almost as effective as telling a mountain it should budge a foot to the left.
“When?” I asked.
The Oracle shrugged. “I will leave that up to you and your mate.” I hated hearing Drake being referred to that way, even if I knew it was true. “I would suggest sooner rather than later, though.”
I tried to keep the frustration off my face as I nodded. “Okay,” I said.
A thousand different words pressed at my lips.
I wanted to argue, even though I knew how pointless it would be.
I had grown up being told that I always had to at least pretend to be happy.
Showing negative emotions wasn’t becoming for a woman in the pack, at least according to my parents.
Normally, it wasn’t an issue because I could find a bright spark in most things.
Right now, though, I wanted nothing more than to scream.
Instead, I smiled and nodded, keeping the grin plastered on my face as I bid the Oracle goodbye a few minutes later and walked toward home.
I didn’t let the smile or the bounce in my step dissipate until I was certain I was alone.
Once I was, though, that smile dimmed to nothing.
I rubbed my face as exhaustion kicked in, mixing and blending with anxiety and dread.
I let those emotions show for the briefest of moments before I resurrected my grin and headed back through town toward my apartment.
I got back home and collapsed on the couch, feet kicked over the armrest while I slung my elbow over my eyes. I took a deep breath, letting the news sink in.
Drake. The Oracle had just told me I had to mate the man who had broken my heart all those years ago.
Most of the time, I was able to find the bright side of things. I could typically hunt it down in the worst of situations and cling to it like a life preserver. I sometimes made a game of it, searching for the upside of something that seemed dire. This time, however, I couldn’t see it.
I had spent the last several years of my life getting over Drake. I had finally gotten to the point where I was comfortable in my own skin and able to be happy in almost any situation. Now, after all that, I was being dragged back to him.
It isn’t fair, a voice said. There’s nothing fair about this.
I couldn’t do it. Not this, not after everything Drake put me through. Except I couldn’t get out of it, either. I was stuck in this position with no way out. I was about to be tied to a man I wanted nothing to do with for the rest of my life.
There had to be a way out.
You could run away, a tiny voice in my head whispered.
I stiffened, recoiling on instinct. I couldn’t leave Silver Falls.
This was my home. It was all I had known my entire life.
My parents might have been dead, but I still had roots here.
Rachel, for one. And I loved my job. The idea of starting from scratch in a town I knew nothing about, with no friends or support network, seemed absurd to even contemplate.
But as the thought took hold, sinking roots into my brain, the more appealing it became.
I mulled it over, picturing what it would entail.
I would need to move quickly, before anyone tried to start the mating ceremony.
I couldn’t bring everything, just a couple of suitcases and whatever else could fit in my car.
I couldn’t come back, either. That was something I needed to acknowledge.
Because I doubted I would be allowed to leave a second time now that the Oracle had decided I had to be mated.
I would have to disappear entirely, too.
Emma had moved to Adobe Creek, and she’d been dragged back to Silver Falls when she had to mate Elias.
I would have to disappear entirely, cut off all contact, not tell anyone where I was going, or even say goodbye.
It would raise too much suspicion. It would mean abandoning Rachel, Amelia, and Jessie, another of my friends.
I would hate leaving Rachel and other aspects of my life, but it was the only way to get out of this arrangement with Drake. Because if I stayed, there was no way I could escape it.
Stay in town, where I knew everyone and everything and felt comfortable and would mate Drake. Or leave all this behind, but be free for good.
I already knew the answer.
I stared at my closet where my suitcase rested on the very top shelf. Could I even do it? Would the pack let me, considering what the Oracle had decided, or would they drag me back?
I gritted my teeth, my fingers curling. I had to try.
Committing myself to what I was about to do, I pushed myself to my feet and walked over to the closet. Standing on tiptoe, I nudged the suitcase off the shelf.
There was one final moment of hesitation and apprehension as I pulled the suitcase open on the bed. I could still change my mind, could put the suitcase back, and accept my fate. The second I started packing, that would be it.
I thought about everything I loved about the town. I thought about Amelia and her school. I thought about Rachel and Isaac. I thought about Jessie and me running through town, laughing as we decided what to do next.
I thought about Drake telling me fated mates didn’t exist, that we weren’t mates, that he didn’t feel anything for me.
I opened the top drawer of my dresser and began throwing things into the suitcase.