Page 43 of Roaring Flames

I am calm. I am collected.

Movement at the end of the hall captures my attention. I turn to see Emery chatting with a group of guys on the football team.When his eyes meet mine, they harden instantly, turning glacial. He sneers at me.

Emery has been my best friend since we were in diapers. We’ve had petty disagreements over the years, but never anything like this. Not once has he ever looked at me with such raw, unfetteredhatredbefore.

She did this to us.

She tore us apart.

Just as I knew she would.

Emery turns and stomps away without a single word to me, and I watch his retreating back with a spike growing in my throat. Swallowing it down proves to be impossible.

“You fucked up.”

I turn to see my older brother leaning against the wall beside me, his sleeves pushed up to his biceps and his arms crossed over his chest. His dark hair is mussed in a way that makes my eyebrow begin to twitch. Hasn’t the imbecile ever heard of a hairbrush before? Father would have an aneurysm if he were to see him now.

“You shouldn’t be using that language around a student,” I snap, something dark and insidious crawling through my chest like a venomous snake. It grips my heart in a vise-like hold and refuses to release.

“I’m not going to pretend to understand your reasoning?—”

“I need to get to class.” My voice is inflectionless as I begin to walk away. I don’t want him to hear the anger brewing. That would mean I lost control, and I refuse to allow that to happen.

Not in front of him.

Not in front of the brother who abandoned me when I needed him most, leaving me behind with our deranged father.

“You’re not just going to lose your mate but your pack as well,” Christian calls to me.

His words still my feet.

I turn only my head to glare at him over my shoulder. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t?” One of his eyebrows lifts mockingly. Arrogantly.

And I find I want to hurt him. I want to hurt him the way that I’ve hurt myself, the way I hurt my packmates, the way I hurt Isabella.

“You don’t have a pack, Christian, so you can’t possibly understand.” I bare my teeth at him. “Why don’t you retreat into the woods and lose your mind there? I’m not in the mood to deal with you and your baggage.”

For a brief, brief moment, I swear I see pain flicker in Christian’s eyes. But it’s only for a second—no, less than a second—and I wonder if I imagined it in the first place.

Still, I can’t help but feel a pang of guilt.

Guilt…and self-loathing so intense I fear I’ll drown in it.

“Be that as it may, I know your packmates. And believe it or not, I know Izzy. You’ll lose them all if you keep pushing them away.”

Fuck. Even hearing her name is a punch to the gut.

Isabella is a perfect poison, deadly but enticing, unhealthily intoxicating. I need to purge her from my body once and for all.

I am calm. I am collected.

I am calm. I am collected.

I am calm. I am collected.

Once I’m sure I have my emotions under control, I give Christian a dry look and say, “I’m protecting my packmates.”

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