Page 29 of Shifting Fate
Dallon
I was in a Mood (TM).
I spent most of the following week cooped up in my room with my headphones on to block out everything. Unfortunately, no matter how loud I turned the music up, I couldn’t escape the thoughts and feelings that had bombarded me since the day Arias rejected me.
It hurt. Physically hurt. It felt like he’d reached into my chest with one clawed hand and ripped out my still-beating heart, and then ate it. My emotions swarmed like pissed off hornets and honestly, I just wanted to scream along to the music until my vocal chords bled.
Except I was pretty sure my pack would have something to say about my tone-deafness, and I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with them right now. Hence the hiding away like a pissy raccoon in a pile of goddamn trash.
I threw myself into my makeup, mixing and matching dramatic palettes and painting my face with color to try and hide the bags beneath my eyes. I couldn’t even escape into my dreams, because even there, he mocked my sorrow.
I didn’t even know why the fuck I cared. So I wasn’t good enough for him. So what? Why did it have to matter so much? I’m sure I wasn’t good enough for a lot of guys. Too skinny. Too bossy. Too girly. I’d had my fair share of rejection, but this? This was a knife to the heart.
My mate—the man who was supposedly fated to my soul—didn’t want me.
I dropped my head back against my pillows with a groan. I had every right to be angry and hurt and every other stupid emotion I was feeling right now, but that didn’t help with actuallydealingwith it.
Truth be told, I’d always been shit at handling real life issues. I always just plastered on a fake smile and hid behind a mask of glitz and glamour and laughed it off. Now my glitz and glamour was smudged eyeliner and black lipstick and glitter smeared across my pillowcase.
God, I was a mess. A teenager with a broken heart. What a cliche.
Anger bubbling up anew, I yanked the pillow out from beneath my head and chucked it across the room with a growl. It smacked into a lamp, knocking it off the vanity with a crash. Screw it. I huffed and rolled onto my other side, tucking my elbow beneath my head.
I didn’t hear the knocking, probably because of the angsty scream-singing filling my head with lyrics about how life sucked and then you died. Wasn’t that the truth?
So when someone grabbed my arm, I yelped and flung myself away from my attacker. I toppled backwards off the bed and hit the floor. Scrambling onto my knees, I yanked my headphones off my head.
Remy stared at me, wide-eyed and in shock.
“What the fuck?” I snapped. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
He made a face. “You need to eat.”
I grunted. “Not hungry. Go away.”
“Dallon, what iswrong?Everyone is worried about you.Iam worried about you! Obviously something happened to make you upset, and Tashi—”
“Tashi can eat a dick,” I grumbled, angrily punching the pause button on my music app. “I’m just upset, okay? I’m allowed to be upset. This is America.” I rolled my lips together, then licked my teeth. “Leave me alone.”
“Dude, be nice. No need to be an asshole.” Gage’s big body filled my doorway. He braced his muscular arms against the wooden frame, his bushy brows furrowed.
I groaned out loud. Not him too. “What is this? An intervention?”
“If it needs to be, then yeah,” Gage replied before meandering deeper into my room. To my frustration, he plopped himself down on my bed. The mattress bowed beneath his weight. “Talk to us.”
I glowered at them. “Can’t a guy mope in peace?”
“For two or three days? Sure. But a week? You’ve barely eaten. Youobviouslyhaven’t showered, and you look like shit.” Gage wrinkled his nose. “No offense. Dude, what the hell happened, because something happened. Something big.”
“Don’t make me do this.” My voice came out tiny and insecure, and before I realized what was happening, Remy launched himself over the bed and threw his arms around me. He squeezed me tight, like the cinnamon bun he was, and I cracked straight down the middle.
To my horror, a soft sob escaped my throat. I clapped my hand over my mouth to stop it, but it was too late. Gage joined the bear-hug and my heart knotted.
“I found my mate,” I uttered, defeated.
“That’s… That’s good, right?” Remy asked.
“It’s gotta be Arias. You’ve been barking up that tree for months, like a dog with a bone,” Gage added.
