Tutoring the Alpha

Chapter Eighteen: The Walking Dead

                   An hour later, I was seated on a couch in a private office, with Sabrina sitting in a chair across from me. I’d had time to compose myself and my thoughts, and even though I still felt sick to my stomach and so dizzy I was on the verge of passing out, I felt ready to confront her. Sabrina.

“Benny…I just want to start off by saying that I never thought I’d see you again. Not ever again, in my lifetime at least.” Sabrina looked very much the same as she did eight years ago. Same blonde hair, although it was wavy now, and quite a bit shorter. Her blue eyes still sparkled against her creamy skin, and her smile (although nervous and scared now) was still so infectious that it made you want to smile along with her. 

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you’re here,” I spoke slowly, the pace of my mind lagging behind the series of insanely unbelievable events of the past few hours. “How are you here?”

“It’s a very long, complicated story, Benny. Even I didn’t know bits and pieces of it until recently.”

“But-but...we saw you die! You died. A werewolf ripped your throat out. I saw it happen!” I screamed, my voice going hoarse as I leapt to my feet and gritted my teeth at Sabrina.

“I know that’s what it looked like, but...I didn’t die. I was turned. By that guy,” Sabrina admitted, tears shining in her eyes as she rose and clasped my hands in her cold ones.

“And I’m so sorry that I couldn’t tell you and Sam. I missed you everyday, I thought about you every minute but...he wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t even let me go home. After that day, I did die. At least, back home I did. He took me up to Maine, where I joined his pack. It was awful, Benny - they were all savages! I wasn’t like them, they weren’t like me.”

“How did you escape?” I asked, hypnotized by the trauma of her story.

“Eventually, the one who turned me got killed in a territory battle, and nobody else cared if I stayed or left. So I came home. But everybody thought I was dead, so I quickly had to move towns, which is when I came here and met Dominic. I’ve been here ever since.”

“How could you?” I whispered suddenly, surprising even myself as I ripped my hands out of her grasp and tripped backwards, away from Sabrina. 

“How could you?! Sam and I...we were ruined. We were devastated! You ruined us! We thought you were dead. How could you? How could you?” I demanded, tears falling freely from my eyes, and I turned away from Sabrina in a fit of rage. Screaming and sobbing all at once, the betrayal in my heart poured too much pressure into my head, and I dug my fingernails into my temples, shrieking at the top of my lungs. But when I opened my eyes to glare at Sabrina, my eyes weren’t met with the face of my best friend, but rather, a complete stranger. 

                        “Wha-who-who are you?” I demanded shakily, a steady ringing starting up in my ears as the pressure in my head increased and I struggled not to faint.

“Who are you?!” I screamed, breaking down into a crying heap on the floor as everything around me fell apart. My baby’s dead. Sam hates me. Sabrina’s alive. I’m in a house full of werewolves...my life is falling apart.

“Benny! Benny, shhh, it’s okay, I’m here, I’m here Benny. Just take a deep breath and calm down, okay?” Mickey’s deep, erotic voice met my ears and soothed the agony there, the heavy ringing beginning to recede. I took a deep breath, my bottom lip trembling as I cracked open my eyes and realized I was crumpled on the floor of Mickey’s foyer, where I’d been when I’d seen Sabrina walk in. Except there was no Sabrina. Crowded around us in a hesitant semicircle were Shane, Kent, Max, and Dominic with a random blonde on his arm who looked completely skeeved out. She also looked absolutely nothing like Sabrina, and I began to shake again. Am I going crazy? Did I imagine Sabrina? No, that’s impossible. We had a conversation, she told me what happened to her, I didn’t make all of that up! I’m not crazy.