“I have a hard time believing that!” I scoff. “You can’t seem to deal withme!”
“I don’twantto!” she cuts back bitterly. “I don’t want to deal with you! Not now, not ever! Just go!”
“Go?” I ask, taken aback when she grabs the door handle and pulls the door open, pointing me out.
I can’t believe that I’m about to get kicked out of my own cabin.
“Yes! Leave!”
I don’t need to be told again. As soon as I’m outside, Yvonne shuts the door with a loudbangin my face, leaving me fuming as I stare at the wooden structure, my inner wolf fuming and threatening to be let out.
I turn and shift in the snow, my pulse ignited by Yvonne’s abrupt and cold disregard for any attempt I’ve made to softenher up to me. Can’t she see that I’m trying? Can’t she see that I’m not bound to the strict, unwavering laws of an elder who is no longer around?
My nostrils flare as red-hot anger passes through me, spurring my agile tread in my furry form through the forest where I’ll join the other alphas in the hunt for the demon.
With Yvonne around, I’d asked to sit out tonight’s hunt, hoping I could make some progress with her. But now that she’s rebuffed my attempts, I need something to distract me.
What better way than to search for the malevolent spirit that haunts our pack?
Chapter 7 - Yvonne
When I offered to help out in any way I could around the pack facilities as payment for being given refuge in Girdwood, I still had my reservations. Though Luna Aurora assured me that no one would really bother me in the library, since most of its visitors were the younger werewolves who attend classes in the local school, I was still wary.
It was her idea to place me in the library despite my offer to cook in the cafeteria. She was adamant that the library was the right fit for me, but she has no idea what she’s done by posting me here.
She’s opened up a can of worms….
As soon as I walk in, it’s as if a foreign wind breezes by, billowing out my hair behind me, and I’m frozen on the spot. My eyes immediately go to the window up ahead, and I’m instantly hauled into memories that I refuse to face right now.
Luckily for me, five years is a long time, and things have changed. The chair I would usually sit on in the corner is long gone, and in its place are rows of wooden benches with carved wooden desks against the wall.
I let out a tiny breath of relief, but still find myself walking toward that window, my feet moving of their own accord to take me to the spot where Dawson Black had claimed my virginity. I thought I’d buried those memories so far back that I’d never have to see flashes of the images of that night, but they cloud my vision now. Absentmindedly, my hand lifts to the window pane, my fingertips brushing along the chipped sealant around the window.
As I stare out beyond the library building at the village center ahead, my eyes become blank canvases in which paintingsof that night begin morphing in my mind’s eye. I remember having a similar experience while I bawled my eyes out during one of those nights after Dawson rejected me.
It’s how I was able to determine that I was pregnant. First, an empty chasm of deep nothingness that soon turned to the blood cells beneath my skin, and a pattering heartbeat that signaled Gio’s formation in my womb.
It was more than just the vision that alarmed me, but thefeelingthat came along with it. I justknewI was pregnant back then, just as I know that the walk down memory lane has elicited another strange psychic vision that cannot be explained.
As the mist in my vision unfurls to a scene of the forest in the outlying area of Girdwood, a flash of onyx skitters by, growing larger and more menacing as a bleating cry rings through my eardrums, the ominous, dark presence startling me out of the vision.
When I’m snapped back into the present moment and the bustling village comes back into view, a hand flies to my throat. Parched, it takes me a moment to gather my senses and process what I just saw, what I just felt…
“Yvonne,” comes Luna Aurora’s sweet voice from behind me, and I’m startled again, goosebumps erupting across the flesh of my arms.
“Luna Aurora…” I breathe, letting out the deepest, longest exhale.
“Are you alright, Yvonne?” Aurora frowns as she approaches me, sauntering forward with graceful steps while cradling her belly.
“I’m…” I pause to gulp, needing to lubricate my throat so I don’t sound so croaky. “I’m fine.” I plaster a smile on my face to mask the lie.
I’m anything but fine.
Not only am I in the spot where I lost my virginity, but I just had a seemingly psychic vision that makes no sense to me.
Aurora doesn’t seem convinced, her frown plastered on her face as she joins me at the window.
“Are you sure? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Aurora speculates as she lifts one brow.
