Chapter 14 - Snow white
Snowflakes were silently making their way towards the ground, holding a promise of a white winter for the first time since I could remember. The trees had lost all of their leaves, leaving only bare and lonely trunks in the forests around Greenile.
Satisfaction warmed my chest when I thought about this being the first christmas that Erik and I spent together. We were at home and he was putting up different christmas decorations at the moment. Mica had come over too, so it was my whole family helping with the christmas stuff.
Dad suddenly jumped up on the sofa and sang the chorus of the song that were playing really loud and not even a single note was right, but it was still nice to hear.
His song made me burst out in joyous laughter while trying to put up a light in the shape of a star in the window, but I ended up rumpeling the edge.
School was still going at an annoyingly fast pace, preventing any student from relaxing and getting into christmas-mode, but I had managed somewhat fine with the last tests, so I wasn't too worried.
Erik had it a little harder since he was older than me and had harder classes, but he handled it with a moderately calm demeanor.
I had been able to help him with his math classes, since I had taken classes before my own grade took them.
One weekend he had to be out of town to do some meetup with another pack together with his parents, so I spent the saturday night with Jeremy. He was going to the local tivoli together with some of his friends and checked if I wanted to come with, so I thought 'Why not?' and joined him.
I was already dark when we arrived at the gates of the tivoli, but the light from every little lamp that covered the whole place lit up the sky well enough.
There had to be at least a million lights on the whole scene, literally everything was covered in lamps and it was so beautiful.
The thin smoke from my breath clouded the air as Jeremy and I stood in front of the tivoli, waiting for his friends to arrive.
After a while three of them came from a car parked near the gates. Two of them were two girls I had never seen before and the third was a tall guy. I couldn't quite make out who if was before the company neared us, and it was.. George!
"Hi, George!" I said with glad voice, I didn't know that he was going to be here so it was a happy surprise.
He eyes found mine and he smiled at me.
"Hello, I didn't know that you were going to be here?" He answered my greeting.
He bent down to give me a half-hug and looked enthusiastic that I was here.
"No, I didn't really have any other plans, so I decided to tag along Jem."
"That's great!"
The other two girls introduced themselves as Felicity and Theresa.
They were both very friendly, although Theresa certainly was more interested in talking to Jeremy than making conversation with me.
I quietly wondered how Jeremy met such nice girls as we all walked down the main street of the lit up tivoli.
Jeremy and both of the girls were very excited about the different rides and really wanted to try out everything, while I stood with both feet on the ground the whole time of being there. I wasn't there for the carousels, but for the beautiful decorations and the hot chocolate.
George stayed behind the rest of the group together with me, even though I told him many times to join them, he obviously seemed like the person to enjoy such things, but he insisted.
He bought us both a cup of the warm drink that I held dear and we made our way over towards a cold bench under some pretty arches filled with lamps.
"So how do you know those two girls?" The thought came to my mind as I had never seen him with them before.
"Theresa takes the same classes as me and Jeremy and Felicity is her friend from another town. Jeremy is quite lucky, I mean, you can basically see as the air sparkles between him and Theresa."
"Oh." Now that George had said it it made more sense, of course there was something between my brother and that girl. Only by the way that they were looking at each other one could tell.
"So how about Felicity, do you... wish to know her better?" I asked him hesitantly. Felicity seemed like a nice girl and George wasn't dating anyone right now, I thought.
"Oh, like you mean to date her? No, god no! I mean, she's a nice girl and all that, but I'm just not into... you know, girls." He looked up to meet my eyes with a sincere gaze.
The surprise hit me like a truck. I had no idea that George wasn't straight, I guess I had just assumed that he was, since he was a very 'boy like' boy. How incredibly stupid of me, since especially me should have been able to see through those kind of stereotypes.
"Oh, I really didn't know! I... Are you out to everyone yet?"
"Yes, since a while ago."
I guess that people can really surprise you, when you think you know a person well, you still never know everything about that person.
That was a scary thought, especially since that I was one of the people who was mated to someone else, someone that I was about to spend the rest of my life with.
But, I also think that that is vital when you have a relationship with someone, not to know every single detail about them, so that they can happily surprise you later on.
I looked around where we sat on the cold bench and noticed that there were other couples around us that were... doing some other activities, including sticking their tongues down each other's throats. For god's sake, this is a family place!
Those couples got me thinking how it must look like for me and George, and I suddenly really wanted to get back into the crowded, but child friendly, part of the street.
I got up from the bench and though George looked a bit surprised he followed me.
As we were walking I felt George's hand on the low part of my back and I shuddered, it felt weird.
I didn't have time to tell him to remove his hand though, so I just kept walking.
"Get your hands of him, or you'll lose them." An ice cold voice said to our right.
I turned around to see my boyfriend, standing there with a bit sprawling hair from the wind and a furious look in his eyes. I felt the hand on my lower back disappear as i took two steps forward to hug Erik tightly.
I breathed in his scent and leaned out a bit before asking him what he was doing here, since he was supposed to be with his parents out of town.
He didn't answer me though, he just stood there glaring at George.
George didn't say anything either, he just stood there, looking a bit lost, and I had absolutely no idea why they were acting like this.
"Let's settle this once and for all, should we?" Erik asked George after a moment of silence.
What the hell where they talking about?
George gave a silent nod and started walking in the direction of the forest behind the tivoli. When he had turned his back Erik finally looked down at me and greeted me with a small kiss.
"What's going on?" I asked him carefully.
"I'm going to have a little talk with George, it will be over soon. Where is Jeremy?"
I shrugged, I had no idea. Erik seemed bothered by that, until he looked around and found my brother, who were jogging through the crowd towards us. They seemed to be talking over the link, once again keeping me out of the conversation. Why did people keep doing that?
Jeremy came over to us and took my arm in a grip with his hand. Erik gave me one last uncertain look and then he turned and walked of in the direction that George had walked off in.
"What is going on, Jem?"
"Nothing, Erik's just going to check up on George."
"Oh, come on, cut the bullshit! Is anyone's going to get hurt?" Okay, now we're getting serious, I almost never swear.
"No." I could clearly hear the lie in Jeremy's voice and I immediately ripped my arm out of his hold. This was not going to happen, no one was going to get hurt because of some stupid fight.
I started running in the direction of the forest, leaving my brother at the lit up fake-street.
Happy music soon shifted to the silence of the woods and the bright light from the lamps couldn't reach in between the trees anymore, even though the ground was white from the snow.
Almost twenty meters forward I could see two huge wolves growling loudly at each other.
Before I could reveal my presence the black wolf, Erik, lunged forward and crashed into the dark brown one with claws and teeth out.
"No!" The scream ripped out of me.
Panic shot through my veins and before I knew it I had shifted into my wolf-shape. Erik and George was twirling around in the snow, claws and teeth out and I could distinctly hear a whine as teeth penetrated skin on one of them.
George managed to throw Erik of himself for a few seconds and I chose that time to step in. I leaped forward and landed in between the furious wolves and managed to surprise them both. They turned quiet immediately and looked at me.
A few drops of blood dripped down into the snow from George's fur, which only fueled my anger.
Move, Liam. I could hear Erik's voice in the mind link.
No, you need to stop fighting! You will get hurt!
That is kind of the point, Liam... George decided to join us in our chat.
Move now.
A growl slipped out of Erik as he made himself ready to attack George again. No, this couldn't happen! There wasn't even a reason for their fight, at least not one that I knew of.
Can't you two settle whatever this is like real people and just talk about it?
As soon as George doesn't touch what isn't his. Erik answered my question and Gorge immediately dove in to defend himself.
You're one to talk, you don't even deserve him! He has done nothing bad, but you just go around his back hitting and fighting people because you're jealous over literally nothing!
Wait, what? Were they fighting over me?
Wait, so Erik, did you really hit George after the pack-dinner? I decided to ask Erik.
My mate turned down his eyes to the snow, as if he didn't want to meet mine. He slowly nodded, without looking at me.
Exactly! That's what I'm talking about! George stepped in with and my anger immediately turned around to him instead.
You actually shouldn't be so cocky. So, you have been hitting on me all this time, knowing that I was with someone else? Even though you may have feelings for me that's so low. You don't just do that, especially when you know that the person you like is involved with someone else!
George's eyes widened at my sudden outburst. It felt like all of the thoughts that I had held in the last months ran out of me, burning on my tongue. But then my voice turned soft, I actually felt bad for George, regardless of what he had done.
You need to see that there will never be something between us, George. I am already mated with another person, so there couldn't be anything even though I had feelings for you. I- I am sorry. Really.
I met his eyes, he looked like he was breaking inside.
His gaze was filled with pain, if felt like looking into the sun, it hurt.
Knowing that I had caused that pain, a part of me broke.
It felt like a small part of my heart that had really liked him, melted, just like the way hoped melted from George's eyes.
He took three steps backwards and then turned around. I could see that he hesitated for just a bit, but then he leaped forward into the darkness of the trees and didn't look back.
It could have been a minute, it could have been an eternity that I just stood there, looking at the place he disappeared.
Soon I felt the body heat of Erik come up beside me and carefully and slowly nudged my ear with his nose.
That was like a signal for my body to move and suddenly I was released from my frozen state.
I backed away from Erik with a small growl and he immediately looked hurt.
I'm still mad at you and I don't want to talk to you right now. Please leave.
I didn't look at him, my mind couldn't bear the fact that I had hurt him too, so I looked away until I didn't feel his presence there anymore.
After a while I could calm down enough to shift back, but I didn't have the energy to walk anywhere.
It was freezing as I sat there and could do nothing.
George would probably never talk to me again and that hurt so bad.
I didn't have any kind of romantic feelings towards him, but losing a friend is almost worse than that.
I had known him since forever and now our entire relationships was just over.
Erik was probably confused, and maybe mad. I sank down to my knees in the snow.
I felt hands wrap a warm jacket around me, but I couldn't see anything through my tears. They rolled down my cheeks as Jeremy took me home.