Just My Luck

16○ A Retelling

V E R Y A N

I should've known that the ducks would be here. Wherever Nicoletta walked, the ducks waddled behind her leaving their webbed prints in the grass.

"Can't you put the ducks in a cage or something?" I walked faster, feeling them eye me.

"No. Marco and Nando don't like the cages. And they're good boys so they don't deserve it," she hummed in response. Like a child she skipped, patrolling the perimeter basking in the sun like a descendant of the star.

I walked in the shade, away from the ducks and away from skin cancer. Trees sprouted lightly around this area, the ground blossoming with wild flowers and the sound of streams and rivers like soft caresses.

Nicoletta had somehow managed to convince Landon to let me walk this far out into the forest. He seemed to be at ease around her. No scowls. No dull gazes. Just something close to comfort. Torrez would never act that way towards his beta. He'd never even act that way towards me. Only his mate saw his soft side. Lucky her.

I loathed it. The comfort and the ease people felt with someone by their side. Loyalty may be something earned, but it is something I've seen be quickly forgotten.

The hand you trusted to feed you will also strange you to death. The words of love you once spoke, will choke you. And you will cry because you were too comfortable. And it will all be your fault.

"I never expected alpha Landon's mate to be a man who hates him." Nicoletta turned to me, so bright in the sun, squinting her eyes at me.

"He deserves to be hated. He has a hate-able face," I responded thinking of the few times we met.

"He doesn't," she stopped walking, "Maybe he has a face that just makes you angry but, he doesn't deserve to be hated."

"But he does. We met a total of three times and all I wanted to do was kick his ass." She flopped on the ground, waiting for me to continue.

I leaned against the tree, pulling out the memories I hoped to never relive, "All three times we met at Xavier's. So within the Blue Blood Pack."

Now that I think about it, it's all the fucking old man's fault that I met Landon in the first place.

Torrez was of age to take his place as alpha. He already had the qualities down, short tempered, major asshole, tragic past and twenty four pack abs.

Xavier called a meeting with packs around the globe, which will just consist of the few I can remember. Multitudes of alphas and their spawns in one room. A brewing of disasters.

I was dragged along, at the age of sixteen, by Torrez so I'd be less likely to cause trouble, and as a young pup, the only thing I was good at was causing trouble.

Stuffed in a room with the foreboding faces of overbearing adults was a nightmare in the making.

I managed to escape the chaos that is autocratic animals banging fists against tables in an attempt to bring their points across to other domineering idiots.

And then I saw him, for the first time, sitting in a corner pelting stones into a pond with a glare on his face. Even at fourteen the faces he held still looks the same at twenty two.

Something drew me to him, like a beacon, and now I know why. I sat next to him, his glare deepened.

"I'm Veryan," I said to him.

"You like rocks?" I started.

He said nothing.

"Rocks are cool," I pressed.