Page 25 of Bullied Pretend Mate
“Since Phina and I started talking again, we realized…well, basically—”
“You know how Xeran publicly rejected Phina?” Val cuts in, leaning over the table and meeting my eye.
I swallow, nod.
“Well, Lachlan and I…we were together, too. And he broke my heart right around the same time Xeran broke Phina’s.”
“Since repaired,” Phina amends. “But, yes. Basically, we were wondering if you were going through anything at the same time.”
My mind flashes back to that moment in the hallway with Felix. The kiss I waited and waited for. How, when I finally got it, he made it clear that it would never happen again. The way he told everyone that I had a crush on him. The way that, in itself, became the joke. That I would be stupid enough to like him, to think there would ever be a chance for us.
“With Felix?” Valerie prompts, her eyes earnest, seeking.
I swallow. They knew about the crush thing, about the way people started to laugh at me more in the hallways. Maybe even Valerie and Phina whispered about it between themselves.
But they don’t know that I wasn’t totally deluded. That Felixdidkiss me. That there’s always been something between us.
Felix and I just click together. Soulmates.
Mates.
Without thinking, I reach up and touch his mating mark on my neck, thinking about the rightness of it. How fitting it felt to have his mouth on me, his mark staking a claim on me.
“That’s what I thought,” Valerie says, biting her lip and leaning back in her chair. “It’s, like, too weird to ignore. The factthat all three of us were going through something similar at that time.”
“You mean, going through something more than being a fat teenager?” I ask, casually, reaching out to the tray of fries and popping one in my mouth, just for something to do with my hands. “Something more than being a loser and a magic wielder?”
“You should know that Xeran is working on making changes for the magic wielders in this pack,” Phina says. “Now that the fires have stopped, he’s making more progress on the amendment to the pack rules.”
“Why should we even talk about it if the fires have stopped?” I ask quietly. We haven’t been kicked out of the restaurant yet, but it’s still hard for me to accept the fact that people are okay seeing the three of us together in public.
“Don’t you want to know more about what happened back then?” Valerie asks, pausing with her hand halfway to her mouth. “When everything went down, it just…it felt like everything was out of control. Like, I don’t know how we got from one place to the other.”
For the first time in years, I feel the slightest sense of comfort about that day. If Phina and Valerie also felt like everything was out of control, then that means my experience of that day is not completely off.
“Yeah,” I say. “I don’t know, either. I guess it would be good to figure it out. But how do we even figure it out?”
Phina leans forward on the table and meets my eyes. “I have some ideas.”
Chapter 12 - Felix
I’m waist-deep in Engine One when Xeran finds me again.
“Can you come out of there?” he calls.
Soren shoots me a glance from his side of the engine, a look that saysyou’re in deep shiteven though I haven’t done anything wrong. In fact, since Maeve got back to town and we’ve been following our date and sleepover schedule, I haven’t been late a single time.
It’s just like when we were kids. Maeve keeps me in line. Telling me which homework is going to be due, and making me study for tests. I think about every time she took me out to “hunt,” only to quiz me with chemistry questions the whole time, until I started looking forward to the sessions.
“That’s called operant conditioning,” she said when I finally figured it out and confronted her about it. “And that reminds me—you need to study for the psych exam next week, too.”
Now, Xeran’s gaze is heavy on my back as I grab a rag and wipe the oil from my fingers. “Be right there, boss,” I say.
“I’ll wait for you.”
Soren shoots me another look, and I run through everything this week, trying to figure out if there’s anything Xeran could possibly be pissed off about. The only thing that comes to mind is Maeve.
But as far as he knows, that’s legit. And as much as my parents might not approve of me mating with her, it’s not like Xeran’s going to give me a lecture about my social standing.
