“What is it?”
“I think maybe I have an idea why you might be feeling kind of shitty.”
“Why’s that?”
“When Clayton had me pinned to the railing up on the roof I was pretty sure he was going to kill me and I needed to do something to stop him. And I realized with this whole blood-wolf-wolf connection thing I have now, I could maybe use that to my advantage. So I sort of went looking for something I could use to, like, hurt him back.”
“Hold up.” She shuffles a little closer. “What do you mean you went looking?”
“It’s hard to explain. It’s like I could feel his emotions, and those were linked to events—memories—and if I concentrated hard enough I could see those memories, like visions.”
She lifts her brow, impressed. “You’re not escaping those Professor X rumors.”
“True. A-anyway, I saw one of Clayton’s memories. You were in it.”
Aisha’s amused expression drops, replaced by a wall of neutrality. She shrugs and looks away. “And?”
“I saw him trying to…and you when you rejected him. I know you were mates once.”
With a huff and a shake of her head, Aisha purses her lips and continues not to meet my eye.
“It wasn’t like I went looking for that memory specifically, it’s just what I found. And I don’t mean to be intrusive. I know it’s weird. I know it’s super uncomfortable. That’s why I wanted you to know what I saw. So it wasn’t a secret.”
Finally, she turns and places a hand on my leg. “It’s fine, I’m not mad at you. It’s him, it’s always him. That’s why I’m burning cakes and acting all weird. Because I hate feeling this way. After all this time and after rejecting him he still makes me flinch, y’know?”
“I get it.”
She looks at me now with tears springing to her eyes. “I told people he was an ass. I told them he was no good. But he’s so rich and powerful, so entrenched in the pack and all that, no one cared what I had to say.”
I place my hand on top of hers. “I’m so sorry that happened.”
“Thank you.” Swiftly, she wipes a single tear from her cheek and sniffs back the rest. “That’s why I don’t hang out with the pack as much as I can––I’m still part of it, but that’s why I love dancing and that’s how I found Troy, because it’s separate from all that.”
“Yeah but you shouldn’t have to be separate. You’re as much a part of the pack as anyone. You deserve to feel welcomed.”
She shrugs. “I wish it were that way too. But that’s just not how things are.”
We sit quietly for a moment. There isn’t much else to say. It’s wrong that Clayton got to stay in the inner circle—got to hold on to his status and feel like he owned the whole damn world while Aisha had to look elsewhere to feel like she belonged. It’s so wrong, it doesn’t warrant stating. So instead we sit quietly, knowing we’re aligned but that there’s nothing much we can do.
“Man, this is terrible,” Aisha says finally, pushing the unfinished plate of banana bread farther away with her foot. “You want to go out and get something decent to eat?”
“For sure.”
“So your parents were cool with you and Jasper being mates?”
“Mmm, I wouldn’t say that.”
Aisha and I are sitting in the back of a cozy noodle joint in her neighborhood, enjoying a couple of steaming ramen bowls.
“After the initial shock had worn off they were happy for me, I guess. But then the floodgates sort of opened. They were suddenly suspicious of everything that had happened since the Blue Moon Festival. Wanted all the details.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“Pretty much everything.”
She sucks a noodle into her mouth with a slurp. “Whoa.”
“I guess I figured since there was no reason to hide anything they might as well know everything that’s gone on.”
