Page 56 of Bullied Pretend Mate
But I don’t get a chance to go on, to finish what I’m saying. Because she shifts back before my eyes, her entire body seeming to glow as she turns and bolts into the forest again.
I shift, try to chase her, but after ten minutes, it’s clear she’s doing something to go faster than I can keep up with, using her magic. I shift back, breathing hard and leaning against a tree, my entire world spinning.
Maeve is running into the forest, further and further away from Silverville.
And something—a sense deep and sure, almost like it’s coming from the tenuous bond between us—tells me that history is about to repeat itself.
And this time, there’s not a chance in any of the hells that I’m going to let her get hurt.
Chapter 27 - Maeve
At first, when I shift and start running from Felix, it’s with the futile knowledge that he’s just going to catch up to me again.
But I couldn’t stand there for another second, watching him realize how much he hurt me.
For some reason, it made it even worse that he didn’t know. That he could so easily make my life miserable without it being an explicit part of his plan.
When I was living in Los Angeles, I’d resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to resolve my feelings for him, even as my body continuously tugged in his direction. That I would have to leave things between us the way they were because I was never coming back to Silverville. And it wasn’t like I would just run into him at a bar in L.A., be able to ask him why he was so fucking mean to me back in the day.
And now, having the answer, I wish I’d never learned.
When I first start running from him, I hear him crashing through the woods behind me, and it makes my heart race. What happens if he catches me again? Where do we go from here?
I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to talk to him. It fills me with a sort of desperation I’ve only ever felt at one point in my life.
But now, I know better. I know how torun.
Doing something I’ve never done before, I reach into myself, look for the magic bubbling just under the surface. Magic casting as a human is fairly straightforward, but we never tried it in our wolf forms. Maybe because Valerie couldn’t shift, and the whole point of our little group was that we were accepting of each other. Up until this moment, I’ve never questioned whetheror not I could cast while in my wolf form. I’d never thought about whether something like that would even be necessary.
I pull at the magic, fan it like a flame until it’s available to me, and force it down into my paws, letting it infuse through my body. It winds around my veins like a current, warming my blood, supercharging me.
Forcing me to run faster,faster. I’m a blur through the forest, nothing more than a copper streak among the trees. I run so fast that I start to fear I might not be able to weave through the trees fast enough, that I might collide head-on with one of them.
As I’m an omega and Felix an alpha, there’s no chance that I’d be able to outrun him on a normal day.
But this isn’t a normal day, and I’m not a normal omega.
And when I reach the crest of the valley, stopping to breathe and looking out over the moonlight-drenched forest, I know that he’s not going to find me. He lost me a long time ago.
If I could use my magic to get away from him, then I could also use it to find the blue-haired girl I really, really need to talk to right about now.
***
“Maeve!”
An hour later, I’m still moving through the forest, switching between my human and wolf forms, smelling for the girl I’m convinced is up here in the woods.
When I turn, heart starting to pound, it’s not Tara I see.
“Fucking hells,” Valerie says, running up to me, her green hair pushed back into a ponytail. I realize she and Phina are bothwearing workout sets and have their hair up. They’re breathing hard when they reach me.
“What are you guys doing here?” I ask as Phina steps up next to me, raising her hand to my face. It’s all scratched from the bramble, but I can barely feel the sting. I’ve only been focused on one thing—finding Tara.
“We came to find you,” Valerie says, glancing at Phina for a second. “It’s like—I don’t know. We just felt some weird tug to come out here, then we caught your scent and followed that.”
“Felix is probably worried about you,” Phina says, glancing back toward town. “What’s wrong? Why don’t you come back with us so we can figure this out? I’m sure he’s losing his mind with worry.”
“Ha, right,” I mutter, bitterness and something else coursing through my veins—something I don’t want to look too closely at. Something tender and caring.
