Chapter 6
YVAINE
Home is where the heart is. Although, the truth was that my love muscle had been dissected, divided into several pieces, and scattered everywhere.
One bit stayed with my parents. Another was thousands of miles away, in the Scottish Highlands, with my grandparents and uncles.
Another belonged to my little brother in his hospital room, fighting against an evil bigger than all of us.
Thankfully, I was lucky enough to have a piece of my heart with me, in my everyday life: Tiziano, Amaia, Makena, and of course, Lachlan.
At that precise moment, I was with a fragment of that particular piece, enjoying a night out with friends at the university bar…
excluding Amaia, who hadn’t joined to exploit the rare solitude of the fortress, and without Lachlan and his gang, who had canceled at the last minute with some silly excuse.
I knew it was just because someone didn’t want to be in the same room as Makena.
A body hurled itself against mine.
“Sorry—Oh, Yvaine! You’re here.”
I glanced at the girl who’d fallen on me. Sitting on a stool by the window—between Tiziano, slobbering over his fourth margarita, and Makena, palming a physiotherapist’s bicep—I said, “Hello, Ludmilla. How have you been?”
“Oooh, look! A radiologist!!” Tiziano’s filter never worked on that huge mouth. Whatever he thought, the boy had to say it aloud. “I think I broke my nail lifting this drink! Could you check if there’s some internal bleeding—”
I pasted on a practiced smile for Ludmilla. Tiziano disliked radiologists, physiotherapists, or anyone that “pretended to be a doctor” without going through medical school. His words.
I whacked his shoulder. “He’s just kidding.”
“I certainly wasn’t—”
But I quickly placed my hand over his active mouth.
Ludmilla seemed nice, placed in the category of acquaintances I only ever met when I hung out with Makena’s wild pack of pharmacy and radiology friends about twice a year. The two of us had never conversed much beyond small talk, which my wolf and I considered a waste of brain energy.
Ignoring Tiziano, she popped a hip. “I’m fine, girl! We’re going to the vet med faculty later. Wanna join for more drinks?”
The amount of time I could devote to these people without getting drained was not unlimited.
“Early class tomorrow. Next time!”
“Definitely not next time.” Tiziano’s voice buzzed through our private mind-link, probably the most useful werewolf feature. It was like having phones installed in our heads, just with fewer privacy settings. At least it only worked with members of the same pack.
“Sure, no worries.” She wore a sheepish smile, avoiding my eyes.
“Why is this girl still here?” he grumbled.
“Actually, I need a favor…”
Ah, here we go. Five minutes of banal conversation to get to the heart of the matter.
“Could you lend me your phone, please?”
Strange request, but still, it sparked my curiosity. I slung one leg over the other and lifted my glass of pear cider to my mouth. Yes, pear cider was my alcohol of choice.
“Of all the people here, why is she asking you?”
“Behave, Tizzy!” I warned with a suppressed chuckle.
“Ask her to sanitize her hands first!”
“You know I wash my phone every night anyway.”
“I need to text someone to solve a…miscommunication issue. Bit of an emergency.”
Ludmilla seemed off. She brought her beer to her mouth for a long pull.
“I think the alcohol’s finally gotten the better of her werewolf genes. Her skin has started to shrivel.”
Ignoring Tiziano’s meanness, a result of Ludmilla intruding in our conversation and the ice melting in his glass, I placed my phone in her awaiting hand. “Here. Hope everything is okay.”
“Thanks, Yvaine! You’re the best!”
“If the simple act of lending a phone was enough to be rated as the best, then we would have been better off staying acquaintances with this girl and not friends,” Zelda, my wolf, scoffed inside my head.
“Harsh. But true.” I turned my attention back to Ludmilla. “Who are you texting, anyway?”
“Just this boy…”
I raised my brows. “That’s a lot of information.”
Ludmilla pouted. “A boy I’m seeing.”
Tiziano gave her a patronizing pat on the shoulder. “Does he know that, sugar?”
Cider slid down my trachea, and I coughed. Tiziano slammed a hand onto my back before I dabbed at the corner of my mouth with the napkin he dangled in front of my face.
“Yeah. He blocked my number over a silly misunderstanding. And I think he has most of my friends’ contacts, so…” She rubbed her chest. “I have to text him from an unknown number, because I—”
Tiziano let out a loud snore, pretending to wake up all of a sudden.
I smiled at Ludmilla. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a message.”
Clutching my phone over her tattooed chest, she beamed up at me. “Thanks again! Let me know when he answers, will you, please, please, please?”
Maybe I should’ve introduced Ludmilla to Lachlan. They both liked Sabrina Carpenter.
“Did he answer?” Ludmilla asked me for the—I counted with my fingers—sixth time. I peered at the phone.
Zero messages.
Again.
“Not yet.”
She huffed out a weary exhalation, pulling at her pink locks.
Putting on my green parka, I hopped off my stool and decided to head back home to take Zeus out before my private after-party, featuring pillows and fluffiness. And my ice mask.
“So, who is this guy?” The question was genuine.
I always found it fascinating how people developed the capacity to obsess over someone.
Obsession was just dopamine sprinting through the nucleus accumbens while the prefrontal cortex tripped trying to keep up.
It was the brain mistaking a person for a reward, rewiring itself like an addict chasing the next hit—except the drug was a voice, a smell, a text message at 2:00 a.m. I’d seen it on fMRIs. The same circuits lit up for cocaine.
She waved her hand, spilling her lemon beer.
“Never mind. Bye!” As she walked away, I heard her growl under her breath, “Thanks for nothing.”
Not very nice.
When I got back to campus, I was so tired that my feet dragged, refusing to fight gravity.
The night was quiet, with few people around.
Bats swayed through the wind as forest animals slept amidst the trees scattered across the campus.
Being a werewolf university, endless expanses of forest and greenery were as much a necessity for us as a commercial hub would be for a human community.
Once I reached our building, I listened to the steady breathing, snoring, and the muffled mumbling from a few werewolves asleep in their rooms. My brother wasn’t home, so I sent him a quick goodnight text.
I stalled in my steps. There was one soul that lay wide awake. A heartbeat, one as frantic as the beating of a hummingbird’s wings trying to flee an impossible-to-escape danger.
Heartbreak.
Makena.
Hurrying in, I followed her scent.
I shivered at the look of her. Makena—my strong, independent friend, always wearing a confident smile, always with whoever she wanted at her feet—was now curled up on her bed in the fetal position, clutching her chest.
Her blanket, sprinkled with depictions of miniature strawberries, covered her shaking form like a hug she needed but had yet to receive.
“Mak.” I sat on the edge of the bed. Based on her swollen face, she must have been crying for a while. I could almost trace the dry rivers of tears tracking down her cheeks.
“It hurts so much, Ivy,” she sobbed. “So much that I wish I’d never met him. I wish he was nothing to me.”
Then I noticed it. A large, red, pulsing bruise on her chest, like a blooming rose of pain and betrayal. She had internal bleeding, her heart crying blood. A clear sign of a werewolf’s fated mate cheating.
“Let me get my stethoscope and—”
“No. No need.” She let out a shaky exhalation. “Don’t worry, it’ll pass soon. It always does.”
I drew in a gasp as waves of concern swept through me. “How many times has he—”
“Less than I have.”
I thought about Killian coming out of Makena’s bedroom, then later, how Gaius had been massaging his chest. Just because you found your soulmate, it didn’t mean things would be easy.
“Lie down with me?” She patted the spot next to her.
My arms slithered around her, and I rested my chin on her shoulder. “I’m here anytime.”
The situation probably needed an intervention, but I decided to let it go. For now. Instead, I did what she asked me to: I comforted one of the pieces of my heart. My Makena.
Some time later, slippers moved across bare floorboards before halting in front of the bedroom.
“I’ll take over now, love,” Tiziano mumbled, his eyes flicking to the blood on both our chests. Makena’s. “Go to sleep; you’ve got an early class.”
He patted me on the head. Tiziano, the Dad provider, was here.
I rinsed off my tears, patted serum onto my face, then flossed and brushed my teeth. I finally scrambled onto my bed, toeing off my socks.
Seriously, how was this fair? We were forced into this whole ‘fated mate’ nonsense in the first place, and when they cheated, we had to bleed for it?
Makena and Gaius weren’t even together, but that didn’t matter.
Once you met your mate, you were tethered.
You could either choose to reject them and the bond, or you could stay bound.
Stay fated mates. Obviously, Makena and Gaius hadn’t severed the bond, but I couldn’t blame them.
Rejecting a mate was as traumatic as killing your own wolf.
You would live, but something inside you would cry forever.
I was about to step into the sweet land of unconsciousness when my phone lit up.
If I had known how a simple text was about to rearrange the axis of my life, I would have prepared my heart for it. Done some cardio. Maybe brought a defibrillator from school and tucked it under my bed.