Chapter 5 The East Parking Lot

• I didn’t think, I just ran.
• My sneakers hit the hallway tile so hard the sound echoed off the lockers, and a teacher yelled something about running indoors that I completely ignored. The east parking lot was on the far side of the building, past the gym, past the science wing, and I made it there faster than any normal girl should have been able to, but I didn’t care anymore who noticed.
• I skidded around the corner of the building and stopped dead.
• Damon was there. Standing by his car. Not alone, exactly like the text said.
• A girl stood in front of him, close, way too close, one hand resting on his chest like she had every right to put it there. She was beautiful in that effortless, expensive way, dark hair, sharp cheekbones, the kind of confidence that came from never once being told no.
• My stomach dropped straight through the pavement.
• “Aria,” Damon said, spotting me, and I watched him step back from the girl so fast it looked almost comical. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
• “It looks like you ditched lunch to meet another girl,” I said, arms crossed, voice sharper than I meant it to sound, which annoyed me, because this whole thing was fake, so why did my chest feel like someone had reached in and squeezed.
• “That’s Ivy,” Damon said quickly. “Ivy Whitlock.”
• The name hit me like a slap. Ivy Whitlock. The girl his parents wanted him mated to. The girl our entire fake relationship was supposed to be blocking.
• “Oh,” I said. “So you ditched me to meet the girl your parents actually want you with. Cool… Great… Makes total sense.”
• “It’s not like that,” Ivy said, stepping forward, hands raised like she was trying to calm a spooked animal. “I asked him to meet me. It’s important.”
• “I’m sure it is,” I said.
• “Aria.” Damon reached for my arm and I pulled it back before he could touch me.
• “You said lunch,” I said. “You said you’d tell me everything at lunch. Instead I get a text from some stranger telling me to come find you with another girl.”
• Damon’s face went still. “What text?”
• I held up my phone and showed him the message. His jaw tightened as he read it, and something dangerous moved behind his eyes, something I hadn’t seen from him before.
• “Someone’s watching us,” he said quietly. “Actually watching us. Not just texting from a distance.”
• “Yeah, I got that part,” I said. “What I didn’t get was an explanation for why you’re standing here holding hands with your future arranged wife.”
• “I wasn’t holding her hand,” Damon said. “She put her hand on my chest for two seconds because she was telling me something important, and I was about to step back when you showed up.”
• “He’s telling the truth,” Ivy said, and there was something steady in her voice, something that made me actually look at her instead of just glaring. “I’m not here to steal your fake boyfriend, Aria. I don’t want him. No offense, Damon.”
• “None taken,” Damon muttered.
• “Then what do you want?” I asked.
• Ivy glanced around the lot, checking for anyone listening, and lowered her voice. “I wanted to warn you. Both of you. This whole fake relationship thing, it’s not just annoying my family and his. It’s making people ask questions. Dangerous questions.”
• “What kind of questions?”
• “About you,” Ivy said, looking straight at me. “People are starting to wonder why Damon Cross, of all people, suddenly wants a girl nobody’s ever paid attention to before. Wolves talk, Aria. And wolves who talk eventually start wondering things they shouldn’t wonder.”
• My chest went tight. “Like what I am.”
• Ivy nodded slowly. “Like what you are.”
• The three of us stood there in silence for a second, the wind picking up around the empty lot, the distant sound of the lunch bell about to ring somewhere behind us.
• “How do you know?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
• “I don’t know anything for certain,” Ivy said. “But I know how my pack talks about female Alphas. I know what happens to them when they’re found. And I know Damon’s never once looked at a girl the way he looks at you, which means either he actually likes you, or he’s protecting something big enough to matter.”
• I looked at Damon. He wasn’t denying it.
• “Ivy,” Damon said, voice tight, “you shouldn’t be saying this out here.”
• “I’m not saying anything that isn’t already being whispered,” Ivy said. “I’m just the one brave enough to say it to your faces instead of behind your backs.”
• My phone buzzed again in my hand. I looked down, half expecting another cryptic text from the mystery number.
• It was Wren.
• Where are you? Lunch is almost over and you’re not answering.
• I shoved the phone back in my pocket, my head spinning too fast to answer her right now.
• “I need to go,” I said.
• “Aria, wait,” Damon said, reaching for my arm again.
• “No,” I said, stepping back. “I need a minute. Actually, I need more than a minute, I need this entire day to make sense, and it’s not going to, so I’m just going to go find Wren and pretend everything’s normal for the next forty minutes because that’s apparently the only thing I know how to do anymore.”
• “Aria…”
• “I’ll see you after school,” I said, cutting him off, and turned to walk back toward the building before he could see how close I was to actually crying, which was stupid, because none of this was supposed to matter to me, none of this was supposed to be real.
• Ivy called after me. “Aria.”
• I stopped, not turning around.
• “For what it’s worth,” Ivy said, “I hope you figure out who’s sending those texts before they figure out everything about you first.”
• I didn’t answer. I just kept walking, my legs carrying me back toward the building on autopilot, my mind racing through everything Ivy had just said, every warning wrapped inside every sentence.
• Wolves who talk eventually start wondering things they shouldn’t wonder.
• I found Wren at our usual table, picking at a tray of fries, worry written all over her face the second she spotted me.
• “There you are,” she said. “I was about to send a search party. You look like you saw a ghost, again, that’s like the third time this week.”
• “Bad morning,” I said, sitting down across from her, forcing my hands to stop shaking.
• “Bad morning, how?”
• “Just, stuff with Damon,” I said, which wasn’t even a lie for once.
• “Trouble in fake paradise already?” Wren asked, then immediately winced. “Sorry, bad joke, real paradise, whatever you two are.”
• “It’s fine,” I said, though nothing about any of this felt fine.
• My phone buzzed one more time. I almost didn’t look, my stomach already twisting in knots, bracing for another cryptic message from a stranger who somehow knew more about my life than I did.
• It wasn’t the unknown number this time.
• It was Damon.
• Come to my house tonight. There’s something I need to show you. Something about that name I mentioned. Something about your father.
• My whole body went cold, the cafeteria noise around me fading into a dull, distant hum.
• My father.
• The father who’d been dead for ten years.