According to Alpha Agnus, during the Victorian era, a debutante ball was a way to present a fully transitioned young woman at the age of eighteen to society in hopes of finding a suitable mate or a true mate. But, in the LS, instead of a debutante ball, they held hunting parties.
Sounds horrible, right? That’s because it is. During the summer, the Alpha of the pack would gather all the eligible young female shifters between the ages of eighteen and twenty and force them to stand naked in the middle of nowhere. Then, they would release the unmated eighteen-and-older male shifters to hunt for their mates.
In my case, though, I didn’t shift at the age of sixteen like most girls, and now that I am eighteen, I still haven’t shifted. Now that I have refused to take all hormone replacements, I’m not sure I ever will. I guess it’s a good thing that we are no longer in the Victorian era because the pack would cast me out andlabel me as a human—non-shifter. I would be forced to live a life as less than a rogue shifter.
Despite my inability to shift, Tyler still loves me and has accepted me for who I am. With his love and encouragement to help me to discover my purpose in life, he has boosted my confidence. I am grateful to the Moon Goddess for blessing me with his presence in my life. Together and with Alpha Agnus’s nudges, we have been slowly discovering my strengths and what career path I would like to navigate. My confidence has been growing by leaps and bounds. I no longer feel like that lost, homeless girl, left with scars sitting on that clinic bed.
Tyler's voice fills the quiet of my bedroom as I replay his voice message again. I also reread our text message exchange. He said he would be here when he was done, but he never came.
Maybe I’m overthinking it. He has a life outside of the guard and me. It’s just not like him not to send a message. Even Emily hasn’t heard from him, and she blew up his phone throughout dinner.
Emily fell asleep on the opposite side of my bed, her phone resting on her chest. She’s worried about him too.
I reflect on our time together in the early morning hours. Did I push him too far? Say or do something that made him uncomfortable? But if I did, would he have called me and left a message after Peaches’s trial?
I replay his voicemail message for the hundredth time. There are no changes in his voice or tone that would make me feel that my paranoid thoughts were true.
I think back to Sixes’s experience with the guy who dumped her after they had sex. We didn’t have sex, but we were more intimate than we ever had been. I shake my head, refusing to believe Tyler would do that to me. He’s not like that—he wouldn’t hurt me.
Pushing that thought away, I place my phone on my chest and stare up at the ceiling and pray that I will hear from him soon.
My phone buzzes, and without looking at the caller ID, I answer it. Jumping out of bed, I rush to my bathroom. “Hey, how are you doing? Everything okay?” I rush out in one breath. Trying to sound calm and collected like I wasn’t worrying about him the whole time.
“Uh, yeah... everything is great. How about you?”
I frown at the voice on the other end of the line. This isn’t Tyler. I pull the phone away from my ear to look at the caller ID. It’s Luke. Oh, shit,it’s Luke! I clear my throat and answer him. “Good. Great. And you?”
He chuckles. “You asked me that already. You didn’t know it was me. Right?”
I laugh awkwardly, trying to calm my racing heart. Perceptive punk. He still gets a rise out of me, even when he’s nice. “Yeah. I thought you were someone else. Guilty.” I try to say it in a confident yet joking way to avoid a fight. But who knows with this prick?
“Who calls you after midnight?”
Why areyoucalling me after midnight? “I don’t know—my music producer, Charlie, or a friend. You know with the time difference and everything…”
“You have friends outside of the guards and recruits in a different time zone?”
I scrunch my face and shake a fist toward the phone. Agitation quickly replaces my tentative calmness. “What do youwant, Luke?” I say on a sigh, letting him know that he’s getting on my nerves.
He sighs. “Right. The reason I’m calling?—”
“Yes. That would be helpful, unless you called just to piss me off.” Like you always do. Usually, he calls one of the twins or dad. We bicker back and forth between one of them. He never calls me directly.
“I’m calling to wish you a happy birthday,” he says softly, almost apologetically.
I instantly regret that last snarky comment. “Oh, well, thank you.”
He clears his throat. “Did you get my gift?”
Gift? My brain was so preoccupied with worry when Tyler didn’t show that I was a little distracted. I asked everyone not to get me anything. I just wanted a nice family dinner to enjoy their company. I don’t remember opening anything from Luke.
“I don’t think I did.”
“Wait. The twins didn’t give you my gift?”
I received some cards, and my mother gave me a coupon for a mother-daughter spa trip. Owen gave me a necklace, which I need to remember to talk to him about.
“Was it a card?”
