Page 59 of Bullied Pretend Mate
“I think it might be more than that,” I whisper. “You guys remember the shit I used to say about Maeve?”
“Yeah,” Soren says. “I remember.”
“We heard it in my grade, too,” Kalen says. “We already knew who she was when all the fire stuff went down.”
Xeran swats at his younger brother’s arm, but it’s not like Kalen was the one talking shit about Maeve back then. That was all me.
“Well, I didn’t know the stuff about the magic,” I say. I knew that Maeve could use magic, but we never really talkedabout it, and she didn’t wield it around me. At least not that I could see. “But she said all that stuff from back then, it’s part of what led to that night. Me, being an asshole.”
The other guys are quiet—Lachlan and Xeran trudging forward steadily—and I get the sense that I’m not alone in this. That maybe even back then, we were all more interconnected than we thought. That our friend group had more to do with the fires.
Maybe Holden Sorel should have punished us, too.
Suddenly, my head perks up, and I realize I’ve caught Maeve’s scent again, strong and sure, heading up through the trees. The other guys look to me, eyes widening.
“I’ve got it,” I say, shifting, already running along the path of jasmine in my mind’s eye, the trail of crumbs leading me to Maeve.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get her to forgive me. But I’m going to keep her safe and get her off this mountain in one piece.
The others shift, too—Xeran into a sleek black wolf, his brother Kalen into a slightly smaller version. Lachlan with golden fur, and Soren with a copper coat that’s a little richer than Maeve’s strawberry-blond.
It makes me miss her with a strong pang, and I push myself even faster, outpacing them, lungs and muscles screaming for relief as I race up the side of the mountain.
Together, the five of us come to a stuttering stop in a clearing. When I see Maeve, it settles my heart and riles up my anxieties all at once.
Because she’s okay, physically sound and in one piece, but something is still very, very wrong. She stands with Phinaand Valerie at her sides, the three of them facing down another person in the clearing.
Someone who stinks of daemon fire and is looking at the girls like she could eat them alive.
She’s tall, lithe, with sharp hips and blue shaggy hair that looks almost like a lick of daemon flame itself.
“Who the hell is that?” Lachlan breathes, and this close to Maeve, I remember what she said the first time I caught up to her, when she ran out of the wedding.
Do you realize that it was all that shit with you that drove me to that group? With Phina and Tara? That it all led up to that awful night that ruined everything?
“Yeah,” Xeran growls, shifting back next to me. “Who is that woman with the blue hair?”
“I’m not sure,” I say, even as I know—maybe through my bond with Maeve—that it’s the other girl. One of the friends in her group. A girl I’ve never seen before in my entire life. “But I think her name might be Tara.”
“Tara?” Lachlan says, shaping the name strangely in his mouth, and I know why. I don’t remember a girl from our school with that name. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t one. I would have remembered someone like that, with the blue hair, the way she walks, the commanding tone she uses.
Weallwould have remembered that.
The women are talking, their voices getting more shrill as they rise into the night, and the five of us inch closer, desperately trying to hear what they’re saying.
“What’s the good part?” Valerie asks, her voice faint.
The girl with the blue hair hops down off her perch and starts to walk toward the girls, and we all glance at one another. Xeran holds up his hand, watching to see what happens. Maybe thinking his wife can take the girl,Tara. And, based on what I’ve seen from Phina, she can.
“The good part,” Tara says, grinning thirstily, her side profile flashing in the light from the moon, “is when I take your power from you, just like I used to do back then.”
Chapter 29 - Maeve
Before coming back to Silverville, I spent a lot of time prepping with my therapist. Talking about what this place might bring back to me. How it might get into my head, trying to convince me that my pastisme.
How my grandmother’s house and her legacy might remind me of the trauma I went through as a kid. All the comments about my weight, my appearance. Every time someone made me feel like less of a person because I existed in a different body than they did.
We worked on affirmations and phrases I could use to steer clear of that. Ways I could stay true to myself.
