I've sometimes wondered whether emotions would hit different if I was human. Before I let myself get weak, I used to feel everything the pack felt. Honestly, it was fucking overwhelming some days. But I didn't know any different. As the next in line to oversee everyone, I was privy to some shit no one needs to know or understand about someone else. Those surges of complex emotions coming from all directions is one of the things I'm not looking forward to regaining after the ceremony. I'm hanging onto the hope that I can control when and how I experience all that when I have more power.
Right now, though? I'm enjoying being a carefree and careless motherfucker, while I watch Em break up with the gnat. He's literally on his knees outside Emmerson's residence begging her to reconsider breaking up with him. People are streaming past them, averting their gaze. Fuck that. I'd stare.
I pick my nails and keep careful watch. His behavior seems unhinged.
Is this really how humans act with someone who has shown them so little genuine interest? There's no way he has even a spark of intelligence if what they had is really so appealing to him.
Or human relationships are a lot more basic than I ever expected.
Emmerson is the only human who has ever caught my interest, and it turns out, she's probably not organic. Someone sprayed pesticide all over her, tried to keep the weed of whatever she really is from poking through.
When she glances up with a helpless expression, and he tries to latch onto her arm, I'm done watching. He doesn't get to touch her anymore.
From the shadows, I shake myself out of invisibility and approach them. "You ready to go yet, babe?" I ask, slinging my arm around her shoulders and drawing her into my side.
At her feet, the gnat is sobbing. It'd be comical if it wasn't sort of disturbing. What the fuck is wrong with him?
Is he always like this? I ask Emmerson. But I already know he's not; I've watched them enough to understand he's laidback, which is one of the things the can't-remember-shit version of Emmerson told me she liked about him. He was easy. Uncomplicated.
He just keeps begging me to stay with him. We've barely seen each other the last couple of weeks. I don't understand.
"Are you..." The gnat tries to get the words out between sobs. "Are you the new boyfriend?"
"Yeah," I say without hesitation. Anything that'll move this shit show along, I'm going to agree to it. Maybe if he believes she's moved on, he'll pull himself together. I'm starting to feel some second-hand embarrassment as people mill past, shooting him furtive glances. One random person pats him on the shoulder in solidarity. I glance down at Emmerson. "We're leaving."
She nods. When she turns to leave with me, the gnat fumbles for her shirt, and I brush his hand aside with a rush of frustration.
"Keep your spindly gnat hands off her," I growl.
"I don't know what's wrong with me," he says with a sob. "It's like—it's like—I can't let her leave."
I rotate on my heel to face him. "Can't?"
He shakes his head and rubs his face. "I love her."
The way he says love confirms my suspicions, as though the word has been dragged out of him. He doesn't feel that emotion, but he's saying he does. Dropping Emmerson's hand, I take a step forward.
"Look at me," I say.
He stares up at me, eyes watery, and then I hit him hard enough to knock him out.
"Aidan!" Emmerson cries from behind me. "He's harmless."
"Not when he's under some amateur love potion," I say, taking her hand again and leading up away. "Best case, he'll wake up and whatever it is will be out of his system. It's such a small spell, it probably needs to be topped up daily."
"An amateur love potion?" Emmerson scoffs. "Why would Brody give himself a love potion? And, I mean, where would he even find that? He's not that guy."
I'm sort of surprised she isn't questioning the existence of potions in the first place, but it's more surprising she hasn't figured out he didn't buy it on Amazon or eBay. "Those are great questions to ask yourself," I say. "Maybe you should ponder those while we walk."
"That's not a very nice response."
"No one has ever accused me of being nice."
"Why can't you just tell me what you already know or suspect or whatever?"
"You want to be able to go back to your life after this, right? You want your basic human job and your basic human life. For you to have that, I can't fuck too much with your sense of what's real. So yeah, he bought a potion off eBay from some wannabe."
"I don't know what I want." The words are right, but the tone is off. She knows. We both know because if I could have whatever I wanted, it wouldn't be Clara and it wouldn't be this bullshit ceremony.
As the first born, my duty has to come first. The only way out of that is death, and if I die, I don't get anything I want either.
So, it's Clara and the ceremony in a few weeks, and it's me not thinking too closely about the feel of Emmerson's hand in mine. For now, she's mine, and I'm hers, and that'll have to be enough.
We get to the far corner of the campus, and I stop, glancing around. In all the times I followed Emmerson, I never went to Hailey's place, never even saw Hailey. If Emmerson hadn't talked about her non-stop during those evenings we spent at the state park that she can't remember, I wouldn't even know Hailey existed. And even as I have that thought, I realize it's weird that I haven't had it before.
"Which way?" I ask.
Emmerson takes the lead, and I follow, but all my senses are on high alert. A theory is starting to take shape, and if I'm right, I don't know if Emmerson will be able to easily slip back into her human existence in a few weeks, even if she wanted to.
At the ground floor apartment, Emmerson rings the bell, but when there's no response, she digs the key out of a potted plant and opens the door.
"Trusting," I murmur, checking the threshold as I enter behind Emmerson. "Why don't you just text her that you're going out of town?"
"She doesn't trust technology for the important stuff. Handwritten notes are the only thing she'll accept if it's big news."
While Emmerson digs out paper and a pen and starts to write, I wander the apartment. Vials are dotted around the apartment. Most of them have plants I recognize sprouting in them or in full bloom.
"Hailey have a bit of a green thumb?"
"She's always been into plants—herbs, stuff like that. Nature's medicine." Emmerson keeps scribbling, oblivious to my unease.
"How old did you say Hailey is?"
"I don't know if I did. We're the same age."
"Oh?" I pick up one of the plants and examine it. "Hailey ever seem older—like an old soul?"
"All the time. Nothing she likes more than being a woman of mystery." A crease forms between Emmerson's brows, but she keeps writing, only half-paying-attention to me.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't even know what town she grew up in," Emmerson says, setting the pen down to shake out her hand. "She never talks about the before."
"Before?"
"Before the car accident that killed her parents. She always tells me that the "after" is where she lives now, and she doesn't like visiting the "before." I get it, so I leave her alone about stuff she doesn't want to share."
"Hmm," I say, picking up things Emmerson has lying around and feeling my brain ticking over. "Did she like your gnat?"
"Brody? No," Emmerson says with a scoff. She stops writing and stares at me for a beat. "Though, lately, she's been different about him."
If Hailey is who I'm beginning to think she is, some of the pieces are starting to slot into place. She's local, and so a connection with Kaden makes sense. Since she's local, she might not want Kaden or anyone else to know she was in town. Weakness is an easy target.
But if my hunch is right, it doesn't answer all my other questions about why Hailey is with Emmerson and whether she's the one who's been fucking with Em's head as well as me and Kaden the last few weeks.
The door rattles, and Emmerson sets down her pen, linking her fingers together and stretching them out. "She's here," Emmerson says. "Brace yourself. She can be a little confrontational."
As the door swings open, I decide to beat Hailey to the punchline.
"Hello, witch," I say.
Tuesday, Miss Matched comes out in eBook and paperback! Yay!
Also, if I happen to have any German readers, Fake Crown just released in German into KU. The whole Bellerive Royals are translated into German and coming to KU this summer/fall.
UPDATE: I've been really busy with the Miss Matched release. I'm hoping to put out a chapter for this, but it'll be a day or two later than usual.
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