My Childhood Friend is a Werewolf

Chapter Three

"Dren?!"

She heard Hannah's exclamation of surprise, but as far as Emma was concerned the entire world had gone silent. Dren's eyes were yearning and full of need, like a man who had finally found water after thirsting for days in the desert.

He was here. Dren was here.

He looked good; really good. He was a little taller than she remembered, her head now barely coming up to his collarbone and his arms bigger. Had he been working out? She recalled the days he would complain about his mom forcing him to play sports when all he wanted to do was laze around and nap. (He especially liked it when she napped with him.)

But now he was ripped. It may have been covered by his perfectly tailored suit, but Emma noticed the slight bulging of his arms against the sleeves of his jacket. His hair was different too. It was still black, but it used to hang messily around his eyes; now, though, it was slicked back to highlight his high cheekbones and piercing green eyes. Where before his atmosphere was one of laziness and exhaustion, it was a shock to realise that now he looked positively feral.

Emma snapped out of her ogling when Antonella's voice broke the stunned silence.

"I take it you know each other?" she asked, and there was a hint of something in her voice that Emma couldn't place. Ordinarily Emma would have paid more attention to it, but she was currently trying to keep her face neutral as she saw Antonella thread her arm through Dren's.

They're dating, she thought, trying to push away the utter heartbreak that almost made her face crumble in sadness. Of course they were dating. Who else would be gorgeous enough to be Dren's girlfriend? They looked like they belonged together. Dren was the devastatingly handsome rugged alpha male and Antonella was his sultry girlfriend, all curves and all woman. I'd just look like a little girl next to him.

Hannah awkwardly looked at Emma, who remained speechless like Dren. "Ah... we went to high school together," she said, attempting to fill the tense silence. Emma snapped out of her stupor when Hannah nudged her shoulder quite aggressively.

"Right!" she shouted, "We... we went to high school together. It's... ah, it's good to see you again, Dren." Emma wasn't fooling anyone with that nervous, stuttering sentence. Hannah's eyes were darting between the two of them, unsure what she was waiting for but trying to anticipate what would happen. Antonella, with her arm still looped through Dren's in an obvious display of marking territory, stared at Emma with a frighteningly calm expression. After a while, it became obvious that she was not waiting for Emma to continue speaking, but for her boyfriend to respond.

There was a long silence before Dren spoke.

"You look well." He then immediately turned to his girlfriend. "Shall we go find Weston?"

Emma's eyes widened. "Weston is here too?" She instantly regretted opening her stupid mouth when Dren turned and gave her a blank look. Hannah shuffled closer to her in a show of protection as she searched blindly for words. "Please tell him... please tell Weston I said hi and..." Here, her face flushed in embarrassment and her eyes fluttered to the floor. "I miss him."

While she definitely missed her other childhood friend, Emma hoped that Dren understood that she was talking about him. She hoped that he could feel and see how much she had missed him.

But Dren only nodded in response before turning and walking away.

"I'll be in touch," Antonella said, nodding to the two of them as she walked away with the one person Emma had never thought she would see again. It was hard to explain the destruction in her heart as she realised that the person Antonella had talked about all this time, the boyfriend that had sounded so loving and attentive, had been her first love.