Dark Shadow (Book 1 in DARKNESS DUOLOGY)

Seventeen: Heartfelt Confession

*Warning: Explicit Chapter*

.დ THREE WEEKS LATER.❧

My chin sat on top of my hands resting on the dining table. I had borrowed my sister’s circular mirror that was about the size of a melon, and leaned it against the fruit bowl sitting in the center of the table.

Staring into the mirror for the past hour and a half, my eyes were shifting back and forth between colors. The gold shimmer coating would slowly disappear as the pretty electric blue would replace it. Then I’d switch back to gold. It was something to do as I was passing the time.

Actually, I’d been like this for the past three weeks.

Every day I was slowly losing interest in going outside. The only time that I did was when I had to go to work. But having called out so many days, I eventually had to talk to Cindra about my inability to concentrate at my job, and gave her my two weeks. She understood, a little disappointed, but she understood and even placed a fifty dollar bill in my money jar on my last day.

I gave that jar to my parents, telling them that I’d been saving it for them to help with any finances. Even though my father was his best warrior, my father wasn’t paid as he should have been. It was always something I found unjust, really. I’d put at least fifty dollars from my paycheck into that jar and after counting it out there ended up being more than six hundred dollars. It wasn’t much. But at least it’d help a few months.

And when I spent my days sitting in my room drawing, reading, and listening to music without stepping a foot outside, my parents were beginning to worry. They would come in to talk to me, asking me what was wrong and I didn’t have the heart to tell them about my confusion of Ridge. Or I should say Ridge’s confusion.

I knew that this plan of his father’s to keep us from being together until Alpha Hannibal’s pack left was supposed to end but the visiting pack had overstayed their welcome. For whatever reason, Alpha Hannibal had prolonged his stay and was attempting to work out a peace treaty between his pack and Alpha Beaumont’s.

Dad says it was frustrating our alpha because Alpha Hannibal’s persistence about the Quail Wolf kept coming up and even though my alpha insisted there was no such wolf, the other alpha thought otherwise.

It was getting close, Dad says, to a final agreement. And the two alphas were spending long hours in the conference room—just the pair of them—at the main hall. Dad says that was unlike his friend to exclude Dad. It made Dad worried that Alpha Hannibal might negotiate things that our alpha didn’t like.

So with the prolonged visit, it just meant that Ridge and I had to stay away from one another. I didn’t know it was going to be this hard. I’d fallen in love with Ridge in that one week and my heart felt like it was torn out all over again. Especially when I’d have to see him with Molly around the pack. She’d flaunted her “fiancé” around and I got upset about it.

It made me wonder what went through her head. Molly wasn’t really his fiancé, so why was she milking this so badly? It didn’t make sense to me. And how was our alpha so calm with her around after whatever she’d been doing to his son? My parents wouldn’t have let her anywhere near me.

What was worse, I remember last week when Eden and I were heading back to her house from mine to have a girl’s night. We had planned to paint out nails and do our make up like we did as kids.

But as we walked past the Alphas’ home, I got a strange feeling and happened to turn to see Molly shove Ridge against the nearest wall with a few spectators in full view of them. She’d pressed herself up against him, her hands sliding up his chest to wrap around his neck and tugging his head towards hers.