Clare

“You lied to me!” The low growl that followed this statement startled me out of my daydreams about Elijah.

I looked up to meet Sawyer Hawkins’ icy blue eyes.

If I was standing, I would have taken a few steps away from him because he looked like an angry bull in front of a piece of red clothing with heavy breathing and furious eyes that stared at me as if I was the piece of red clothing used to enrage the bull.

I knew that I’d lied to Sawyer, but I never expected him to ever find out about it, so I looked around the cafeteria hoping a cafeteria staff or teacher would come to help me calm him down. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any staff member around. Unfortunately for me, Lissa, who could have probably helped me get a teacher, had gone to the admin office to help the school secretary organize some paperwork.

Everywhere I looked, the only gazes I met were the gazes of fellow students who were staring curiously at my table. It was the first time I was getting so much attention from so many people and as someone who liked to fly under the radar, I didn’t like this kind of attention at all.

So I steeled myself and met Sawyer’s gaze. “What are you talking about? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

My words, unfortunately, seemed to enrage Sawyer more as his nostrils started flaring and his breathing quickened. For a moment, it seemed like smoke was coming out of his ears and nose like it usually did in cartoons. I couldn’t help meeting his gaze at this moment and he held my gaze as he slowly calmed himself until the emotions of anger had leached out of his eyes and face.

To my surprise and utmost dismay, he didn’t speak again. Instead, he stood up and walked around the table to stand above me, staring down at me fixedly.

This calmness he was holding onto was somehow more scary than his blazing eyes and flaring nostrils and when he reached for me, I couldn’t help but instinctively try to protect myself as I pushed myself lower in my chair and covered my head with my arms so that any blows would not permanently injure me.

However, after several seconds that felt like hours without a single hit touching me, I couldn’t help looking up again, all the way from Sawyer’s hands clenched into fists by his sides to his stiff, rigid posture, up to his eyes that were filled with hurt.

That shocked me. Because I should have been the one afraid of him, so why was he staring at me as if I had betrayed him?

He looked away from me, fixing his gaze on the second cafeteria entrance that led to the empty expanse of land behind the cafeteria, which led to the woods.

Through pursed lips, he said, “Come with me.”

He paused for a second, looking back at me with a frosty gaze. “I just want to tell you something and then you don’t have to talk to me again.”

Without getting my response, he walked away and left the cafeteria through the back door he’d been staring at before.

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I hesitated for a while about whether I really wanted to be alone with Sawyer but curiosity and the blazing force of several people staring at me in the cafeteria made me stand up, re-wrap my sandwich, pack up my backpack, and then follow Sawyer.

When I got out of the cafeteria’s back door, I found Sawyer standing a few meters away from the cafeteria, close to the entry path into the woods.

I took a deep breath and released it, then did that at least twice to reassure myself before walking toward Sawyer.

I didn’t know what to say when I stood behind Sawyer, but he did.

He looked beyond me and when I looked back, I found several of our schoolmates peeping out of the windows.

They all dispersed when Sawyer said in what could only be the most compelling yet controlling voice I’d ever heard from an Alpha. “Go back inside and don’t eavesdrop.”

Without a single word of protest, everyone at the window disappeared, and I suddenly realized that there was more to Sawyer Hawkins than the bad boy first impression he’d given me. At the very least, he was not like the two future Alphas I’d met before.

The Alpha command he just gave, without any growling or lit up eyes, indicated that he had complete control over his connection with his wolf-half, something I’d only ever seen from the elderly pack Alpha of my first pack. I knew from what I’d read online that it required a lot of concentrated mastery of skill by Alphas and control not only over their wolf-halves, but over themselves as well.

“You don’t like me,” Was the first world Sawyer said to me as he locked gazes with me.

I didn’t know what to say at that moment, so I just stared at him.

“It’s not that you’re not ready to date, it’s just that you don’t like me. The person you like is Elijah Shepherd. Do you want to break the bond between us?”

His words made me frown. “What bond?”

“You don’t know?” He asked.

“Know what?” His words were making no sense whatsoever.

He stared at me with an assessing gaze for several seconds before whispering to himself with a chuckle. “You truly don’t know.”

“Know what?” I snapped, because his words had incurred my burning curiosity and his obscure statements showed that he knew something I didn’t know, even though it was obviously related to me.

Instead of answering me, he changed the subject. “You like Elijah?”

I frowned and answered him with the irritation of not getting an answer to my own question. “None of your business.”

To my surprise, he didn’t get mad at my response. He just squinted at me.

“Better be careful with Elijah. He seems easygoing and open, but his heart is hard as stone. If you fall in love with him, you do so at your own peril because, no matter how wonderful you are, he can’t see you at all.”

His words made me greatly irritated. How dare he talk about Elijah like that? I’d worked with Elijah for a few weeks. I’d even wormed my way into being on friendly terms with him. I was sure that my first impression of him was just right.

In fact, I was a great judge of character and I could see just what Sawyer was trying to do here.

“I don’t believe you. You’re just saying all this obscure stuff because you want me to date you, but I will definitely never date someone like you. I’ve heard about how you like to date girls who don’t belong to your pack. Care to share why? Or is it just because temporary pack members never stay long in the pack and you can continue dangling the promise of helping them become permanent pack members so they will do whatever you want? Don’t worry, I’ve met your kind before and I’ll never fall for your tricks.”

Sawyer didn’t say a word to refute me.

He just sighed and then met my gaze with a frosty gaze I’d never received from him. “You really do have a bad impression of me. It’s fine. I already warned you and that’s all that matters.”

Then, with an unreadable expression, he walked away from me without a single glance back at me.

Something about the way he left made my stomach turn uncomfortably.

“Sawyer!” I called out, unable to control the part of me that really, really wanted to apologize to him and clear up the frost and distance I’d just seen in his gaze.

However, he didn’t respond to my call or even look back to meet my gaze once.

Leaving me with a yawning sense of loss, he walked around the cafeteria without a single glance back at me.