Page 100 of Conner's Luna

His mouth quirks up. "I won't tell you what to do or feel Bailey, but I will tell you this; it's exceedingly difficult for a powerful male to resist his mate. It's even harder when another male is moving in on your female."

I scowl, "so Trey may become jealous? He didn't want me before. All that bullying and even getting the professors in on it. Heck, even the Dean of..." my voice trails off when the steering wheel makes an ominous creaking noise.

"The dean of the college, what now?" Papa Smurf says.

Shoot. He had me fooled with his pretty blue eyes behind his thin glasses and the pleated khakis. He looks like my type of person, but he's not. He's a wolf person.

"Nothing," I reply a little too quickly.

"The dean of the college," he mutters, ignoring my protest. "That's Karol Sancieo, right?"

"Yes?"

He scoffs before bitterly explaining, "she's in RedMoon. I've given money to that damn university, Bailey. That bitch had better remember who really signs her paychecks."

Wow. Papa Smurf is intimidating in a billionaire-with-a-grudge sort of way.

"I want you to understand, Bailey, how messy this situation is." He pauses for a moment, "you know Lydia?"

"Unfortunately," I grumble.

"Tell me about her."

I sigh, "so, you know I'm very biased, right? At least now I know why she and Trey always bothered me so much."

"Everything you say here is private," he holds up his hand as if swearing himself in on a bible.

"Alright," I shake my head. "Trey is always a jerk. Mean. He loves to belittle me but mostly avoids me. Lydia... she'll do this thing..." I huff out a breath. "It's just frustrating. She never really does anything that I can pinpoint. It's just a feeling, I guess."

"Tell me," he says abruptly.

I think for a moment. "Well, this happened... oh, a few times, at least. Lydia would find a way to be near me somehow. It was nothing overt, mostly subtle things. One of her friends would decide to sit right next to me in the library or the coffee shop. I would be in the bookstore and she would happen to be shopping at the same time. And where Lydia is, Trey would follow. Then, he would be a dick," I say bluntly, "and she would pretend to care about my feelings."

"OK," he said slowly, "are you sure it was her?"

I frown, "see? You think I'm biased. Even I thought that because I was so attracted to Trey. Then... I started going out of my way to avoid them and one day her friend Nessa spilled her drink on me. I went into the bathroom to wash off and when I came back out, my chair was soaked in liquid. That was the first time someone other than Trey bullied me. It was as if they couldn't get to me, so their friends did, instead."

I took a deep breath, then continued, "Dean Sancieo and Trey, oh, and Professors Lane and Hancock, were all jerks to me, but that I know of, the nasty tricks with my stuff were all Lydia's friends. Specifically her friends."

"That's interesting," Papa Smurf says. He's nodding, a frown on his face.

"It is. There are things that happened and I can't identify the culprit for all of them, but every time Icould, it was one of her minions. Then..." I take a deep breath, "I noticed that whenever the bullies slack off, Lydia's sycophants get the cold shoulder from her. In October, right before I met Conner, I saw Lydia screaming at one of her friends. It was right after Conner and Trey got into this big fight and Lydia and Conner got into this shouting match. Later that day, Lydia was screaming at her friend. That day my laptop in Biology was covered in sticky liquid, my hair was pulled twice - hard enough to lose some strands, and my car was drenched in Gatorade."

"Those little shits," Papa Smurf breathed angrily.

I nod. "My head hurt for days, but I didn't notice because I crashed my car that day and was knocked around a little anyway."

"They made you crash your car?!" he snarls.

I freeze guiltily, "no."

Papa Smurf relaxes and I keep talking, "now I can't say anything to Conner because then it just makes me look jealous."

"It's important to be honest," he points out, sounding exactly like every father ever.

"Not if it hurts Conner and doesn't achieve anything," I tell him stubbornly. "Besides, I don't know if I can trust my own opinion about Lydia, especially since..."

"Trey," he says flatly.

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