novelxo Chapter 2
Imogen
I woke up to the light from the morning sun flittering into the room from open window blinds I could have sworn was closed when I went to sleep after my bath.
“Who are you?” It was a simple question, but the voice of the person asking was unfamiliar. And worse yet, the unfamiliar voice probably belonged to the owner of the house I was renting without paying.
“Shit!” I sat up in shock, realizing that, for the first time since I started sneaking into and sleeping in other people’s houses, I had gotten caught.
I tried to think of a lie or explanation that would seem reasonable to a human as I looked toward the owner of the voice that woke me up. I found him leaning on the wall, close to the foot of the bed, watching me with undivided attention.
At first glance, he registered as a tall handsome guy. At second glance, his intense coffee brown eyes were stunning. He was an incredibly handsome human with jet black hair and a slightly crooked nose, which had to have been broken at least once. He was also at least six feet three inches tall and a few inches taller than Nate, which was a rare feat for a human.
“As much as I enjoy the view, I’d like to know what you’re doing here.” He drawled.
I blushed as I glanced down my body to find that my white camisole was exposing a rather generous view of my boobs.
I pushed up the straps as I sat up. Then I pushed away the blankets and got off the bed that didn’t belong to me.
“I’m so sorry. I just needed a place to sleep, and I will get out of your house right now.” I didn’t dare to look him in the eyes because I felt ashamed of getting caught staying over at his house without permission.
So I rushed into the bathroom with my overnight bag, without waiting for his reply.
I tugged on a skirt and blouse as fast as I could and walked out of the bathroom to find him still standing where I left him.
Well, for sure, he was a gentleman. I knew many human guys in my school who would have followed me into the bathroom without a care in the world.
“I’m leaving now. Thank you for not calling the cops when you saw me here,” I said, and then I started walking out of the house.
However, before I could go far, a hand gripped my elbow. I threw the hand off my elbow and turned to face its owner, ready for a showdown if that’s what I needed to do to get out of here.
“What do you want?” I asked, getting ready to defend myself if I needed to.
“You haven’t answered my question yet. Who are you? What are you doing here? Are you homeless? You smell familiar, but you don’t smell like a human or a werewolf, so what are you? Vampire?”
That question made me pause for a moment as the gears in my mind started running at a hundred miles per hour in fear. He wasn’t human? Then that was worse.
Although I could deal with a human, I wasn’t confident that I could fight another supernatural as an untrained youth who hadn’t ever changed to werewolf form. So if he wanted to harm me, he could.
Since I didn’t know what kind of supernatural he was or how powerful he was, and I didn’t want to risk being on the receiving end of mercy from a potentially rogue supernatural, I decided running was my best option.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. There… someone is waiting for me.”
Without waiting for his response, I walked out of the house as fast as I could without outrightly running. Once I was out of sight, I ran down the block to where I packed my car.
Even though it was already 10:49 am and school started at 8 am, I headed straight to school driving as fast as I could till I was many blocks away.
* * *
At 11:10 am, I arrived at school. Even though I didn’t have my schedule because I lost it the second day after I got it, I knew I was late for French class, which was supposed to start at 11 am.
Even though French was one of my best subjects in school, I didn’t like to go to the class because I shared it with Luke and Harriet, my tormentors or, less dramatically, my bullies.
Even though Nate was the Alpha of the pack and he could stop them if he wanted, he never interfered whenever Luke and Harriet bullied me verbally or physically. And he didn’t seem to mind that they made my life hell and ridiculed me any chance they got.
I had learned to just live with the bullying because I knew they both had reasons to hate me. Luke hated me because we had once been in a long-term open relationship where we could have sex with other people as long as we were protecting ourselves. When he wanted to make our relationship a closed one, I ended our relationship because I didn’t want to commit myself to a relationship with anyone other than my mate.
He had been bitter about it, but everything had passed until he’d realized that I was in a relationship with Nate. That was when the taunting started. When the video of us having sex got leaked to the pack’s intranet and Nate rejected me, his taunting progressed to full-out bullying.
Meanwhile, Harriet hated me because she wanted Nate for herself. I couldn’t be sure what her intentions were because I couldn’t tell if she wanted Nate for his Alpha position and the Luna position mating with him would give her, or whether she genuinely liked him. She seemed to sense that there was history and a connection between Nate and me, so she always found creative ways to taunt and bully me with her friends.
I crept into the class, but before I could slink in, Miss Jaffe, our human French teacher, stopped me.
“Ginny?! Where have you been and why are you late to my class again?” She demanded in a tone that would have been confrontational if I couldn’t hear the concern in her voice.
“I’m sorry, Mademoiselle. I slept late and woke up late.” I replied.
“You’re always late, Imogen. You need to improve your time awareness. Come closer.” She said, gesturing for me to walk to her.
I had always suspected that while others were blind to it; she was psychically empathic and seemed to know that something was not quite right at home for me. Her next question, which she always asked me whenever she saw me, was proof of that.
“How are you doing?”
We always communicated in the French language outside and in class, so I responded to her question in French.
“I’m fine, thank you.” I looked back at everyone in the class watching us and said. “I’m just embarrassed.”
“Then, don’t come late next time.”
She gazed at me for a moment and asked, “You would tell me if something was wrong, yes?”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” I tried to make my lie as convincing as possible.
“And you’ve been practicing your French as promised, yes?”
Miss Jaffe was very invested in my French language education because, as she told me when I started learning with her, I was very talented and quick to learn. So she had always encouraged my efforts to gain mastery of the French language in any way she could. She allowed me to hang out in her office whenever I wanted and always found time to communicate with me in French whenever she could. She also gave me free learning resources and was always ready to lend me her beloved French novels from her library of books.
“Yes. Little by little.” I smiled.
She stared at me for a few seconds, sighed, and gestured for me to take the only empty seat at the back of the class, close to where Nate and Harriet sat, with their desks pushed close together.
After French, I didn’t have to leave the classroom because it was the same classroom for the next class on my schedule, Mathematics. A class I also shared with Luke, Nate, and Harriet.
Before I could rush out of the class to go to the toilet or somewhere else for the five-minute break before our calculus class would start, Luke stood in front of me.
“Hi, Ginny! I was just going through my phone when I saw that videotape of us together. I started feeling a little nostalgic about your body, so I just had to ask if you wanted to hook up. I promise I will try to meet your expectations because I’m sure you’ve gone professional with your whoring since we stopped sleeping together.” He said.
I stared at him with a deadpan expression because I was used to his taunts and they had no effect on me. Whenever he taunted me, the only emotion I felt was irritation because he couldn’t seem to let go of the past and move on with his life. And my irritated feelings were only present because I knew that the mention of the sex video was a reminder to Nate of my inadequacy as his mate.
“I still don’t know how you can stand having sex with someone when you know the person has slept with everyone in school?” The drawl belonged to none other than Harriet.
I didn’t say a word and didn’t look to the side where I knew Nate was seated, looking peaceful, but probably seething. I also avoided the glances from our other classmates, who, whether they were human or werewolves, were used to hearing Luke and Harriet ridicule me.
“That’s cos you just don’t understand how good it can feel to be with a skilled whore,” Luke replied, with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes like the ones he used to have whenever we were playing video games at his house.
I stole a look sideways to find Harriet perched on Nate’s lap, kissing his neck. As the familiar sour feeling of jealousy filled me, I turned to look forward, picked up my bag, and stood up, ready to hide out in the toilet until it was time for our next class.
I pushed Luke aside and walked to the door, stopping with my hand on the doorknob, when I heard Harriet’s outrageous moan. Although I knew I shouldn’t have looked back, I couldn’t resist doing just that.
So instead of walking out of that class, I turned around to find Harriet and Nate engaged in an intimate public kiss that divulged into a make-out session in less than a minute.
Nate and I kissed once in a while, but whenever I wanted to make out, he always refused, going straight to the act itself.
I stood there and stared at them as they kissed and groped each other shamelessly in a class filled with 30 other people. I wanted to look away, but strange wrangled feelings of jealousy, longing, and disgust made me watch my mate publicly make out with another girl right in front of me.
When the warning bell rang and they came up for breath, I came back to myself, looking away to try to stabilize my emotions. When I looked back at them, I met Nate’s glinting eyes, his smirk, and Harriet’s smug look.
Fighting tears, I stormed out of the class, walked straight to the parking lot, and then drove home because I knew my father wouldn’t be there. When I got home, I ran straight to my room where I crashed on my bed, crying my heart out.
I wasn’t someone who cried very often, but I believed in taking the time to cry once in a while just so I wouldn’t have a breakdown in front of people. After all, many things in my life made me unhappy. My mate was ashamed of me. I had no friends other than my co-worker at work because my pack mates had all isolated me. And the secrets I could tell no one about were also eating me up from the inside.
Probably because I hadn’t cried for a long while, I cried myself to sleep. So when I woke up, it was to find that it was already dark outside.
As soon as I noticed it was dark outside, I woke up. My drowsiness disappeared as I realized that it was evening and I was still home.
I picked up my phone to check the time to find that it was already 8:10 pm.
“Oh, shit!” I exclaimed as I tried to rush off my bed to get my bag, car keys, and phone and get out of this hellhole.
Then, I heard someone clear their throat.
Immediately, I looked up to find someone’s silhouette in the shadows of my room. Terror gripped me as I recognized who owned that silhouette. My father.