Me: We’re just friends!
Emily: Does Owen know that?
Sixes: Right?
Letting out a long breath, I tip my head back to gaze at the ceiling. When Owen arrived for my birthday dinner, he gifted me a necklace. I realized then that Shadow was right.
Guilt gnaws in the pit of my stomach. An intrusive thought formulates in my mind. Did he leave me because he thought that I was unfaithful? The same invasive questions I had in my head the other night resurface. Voices from my nightmares appear in my head.Did you really believe him, when he said he would meet you tonight? It was all an act. He made you believe that you were his true mate. He doesn’t love you! He was just using you!
I cover my ears with my hands in a desperate attempt to block out the voices in my head.
Stop! Stop it!
My breathing comes out in rapid, shallow bursts. My throat tightens, and my chest painfully constricts. The feeling of an imaginary noose around my neck tightens with each passing second.
Trying my best to fight this overwhelming sense of dread, I grip the edge of my desk to ground me and force myself to take several slow deep breaths. I count backward by three, starting with some random number that pops into my head. Tyler found this technique in his search for tools to help me cope with these attacks.
Ninety-seven.
Ninety-four.
Ninety-one.
When the tension in my throat and chest begin to ease, I retrieve a chocolate bar from the stash that Tyler stocked in my desk drawer for after episodes such as these. And then I begin to sob uncontrollably.
A knock at the door jolts me upright in my chair, and I hastily swipe at the tears. Before I can answer, the door flies open. I jump up from my seat, searching for a shirt or my joggers to cover my lacy bralette and matching boy-leg briefs.
Odyssey stands in the doorway in shock. I drag him inside and slam the door shut and cover his mouth before he can say anything. My core starts to throb. Just like in the computer lab, a bright yellow-white ball of energy bursts into Odyssey. His irises turn white before returning to his normal brown eye color.
This is seriously not happening right now.
Ripping my hand from his mouth, “What did you do to me?” he hisses.
“I don’t know,” I hiss back. “Why the hell did you come into my room before I said you could enter?” I prod him.
His face flushes; his eyes scan down my body and back up to my face. He whips around to face the door. “Put on some clothes,” he grumbles.
I cross the room to my dresser and pull on a pair of joggers. “You didn’t answer me,” I snap.
He whips around, looking angry this time. “This whole time, you were a girl pretending to be a boy! This whole time!” he shouts.
“Keep it down! It’s not like everyone else knows.”
He lowers his voice. “I thought we were friends, but obviously, you didn’t trust me enough to tell me your secret.”
Odyssey and I aren’t exactly besties, but after spending time in the holding cell, we weren’t enemies anymore. I took what he said to heart and made more of an attempt to make friends, not be so closed off. But there were limits to how open I could be with everyone because I didn’t want them to find out I was a girl. The more time I spent around all of them, I started to worry that they would treat me differently if they knew. I didn’t want them to.
As it was, the twins sometimes forgot and excluded me from exercises for fear I would injure myself. Skunk, Owen, and Elijah always volunteered to take my place if they thought it was too much for me to handle. I didn’t like it. I wanted to be treated as an equal, even if it meant I had to work harder and sometimes paid the price for it.
Pushing my hair back off my face, I finally make eye contact with Odyssey.
“How the hell did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Say all of those things without moving your mouth?”
Can he hear my thoughts? Did that big ball of whatever make him telepathic? What the hell is happening to me?
