Choleric

Chapter X

Ttsssss

The hot straightener forced raven locks to flatten as Celia cringed, hating the wheeze it made as it glided through thick strands. Sunlight glared into the window, shooting unforgiving rays onto soft skin and raising the temperature of the small spare room. Celia breathed in heavy, humid air as the heat from the iron came close to her neck.

Sophie held it delicately between thin fingers, a mixture of heat and intense concentration caused the thin brown singlet to stick to her back. Small flyaway strands of golden hair stuck to her heart shaped face as small droplets fell from the pores of her sun kissed skin.

"Do you mind if I open the window?" She asked softly, her manner entirely different to every other wolf Celia had come across so far.

"Please do. It's like an oven in here," Celia replied gratefully. Standing in front of the mirror she wore a thin, cobalt dress. The velvet was soft, but captured heat from her body and the air around her, uncomfortably entrapping sweat between the fabric and her dark skin.

Celia couldn't help but glance at her reflection in the mirror. The blue was her favourite colour and stood out beautifully against her skin without the contrast being too much. Before this dress she had tried a deep red strapless, floor length number. It was beautiful, but she knew Sophie had greatly overestimated the size of her breasts.

"You have a lot of faith in my near non-existent boobs," Celia had joked as Sophie pushed it into her arms. After trying it on and proving her boobs were in fact too small to keep the dress in place they found a new one in the back of someone's wardrobe. Celia didn't know who it was, but Sophie ensured it was a friend.

Now standing beside the bed she had slept in with dead straight hair falling to her waist, she couldn't care if the person was her worse enemy. They knew how to shop.

"I don't have any concealer that is your colour, but you don't really need it. The Alpha will be introducing you in twenty minutes," Sophie smiled softly. She was twenty one, three years older than Celia but they got along easily. "Nervous?" She asked.

Celia nodded silently, swallowing as small toes gripped the dark carpet. Sophie sat on the bed, smiling softly towards the young girl that stood before her. Reaching tenderly out, she clutched onto Celia's small wrist in reassurance. Her hand slipped slightly as the droplets of sweat kissed her skin. She would have crinkled her nose in disgust but the past few weeks have been torturously hot.

"You will get used to it. I know what you're going through... well kind of. Coming from a small pack of wolves, I was shocked to find I was Cash's mate. Of all people I was stuck with the Beta from the East pack. I was so scared and everything was different. But you get used to it and the hostility you feel at first isn't intentional, it's just the atmosphere around here," she smiled sincerely, reaching for the tall glass of water on the white night stand.

Sophie sighed with content as her hand clasped around the cold glass, fingers greedily accepting the condensation that had built up over time. Celia sighed, letting out the thick air that weighed down her lungs. Cash must have been the man she saw with Alpha Cassius this morning. Her chest clenched as the echo of a gunshot rang through her ears. She would never forget the sound.

When it was time, the two girls rose from the spare room and made their way outside, practically swimming through the thick humid air that wrapped around them like a blanket on a winter's day. Celia looked around at the building's entrance, her eyes catching the gravel driveway she was left on only yesterday. Nervousness was like caterpillars. It crawled into the pits of her stomach, stirring it up until she felt ill. The driveway was a small circle, like a roundabout with nothing in the middle. The land surrounding his territory was not the tangled bush lands like the glasshouse mountains and her old pack territory, but luscious rainforest. Dense, green and wildly beautiful.