Claimed by Her Alpha (11 page)

On the way to school, the pressure Saki felt didn’t lift at all. Instead, it got worse. She was breaking up with her boyfriend, ending her sister’s imaginary joy, and leaving her family forever. It had to happen, though. She had to break the hearts of everyone around her to keep them safe.

Suddenly, Saki had a realization as she looked toward her mother. For the first time, she considered their family’s situation from a different perspective. What if this was what her mother had done in bringing them here?

None of us wanted to come back to Nassau. All of us hated leaving our lives and friends behind,
she thought. But was it possible that her mother did this to somehow keep her family safe? Was it possible that her mother had done for them what she was about to do for everyone around her? Saki stared at the profile of her mother as she drove and considered it might be true.

Walking to class, Saki thought about her life, taking into account this new insight about her mother. Certainly, it didn’t explain everything. Her mother still openly favored her sisters over her. She gave them a phone while leaving her to suffer. She still made Saki do chores while allowing the twins to watch TV. Saki suspected her mother would still throw her overboard to rescue her precious twins. But all of her mother’s actions didn’t seem as harsh when she considered why she might have uprooted everyone and moved them here.

Saki had always known that her stepfather was an angry man. She had even overheard sounds that she didn’t want to think about. Yelps and groans had come from her parent’s bedroom, and they didn’t sound like sex. Maybe he wasn’t as nice a man as Saki tried to believe. Maybe, Saki‘s mom was protecting them in some way. Maybe her mother wasn’t as bad as she had made her out to be.

When Saki woke up from her thoughts, she realized she was already sitting in homeroom with the other students. Saki knew what she had to do. She had to make things right with Dax‘s pack. They would be her pack now. She had to make them trust her again.

“Good morning,” she said to them for the first time ever.

“Hey,” Mark and Frank replied.

Saki noticed Gully hadn’t turned around. Patrick also hadn’t replied, but Patrick’s lack of response was to be expected. It was Gully that worried her.

“Gully,” she said, beckoning for him to turn around.

“Yeah?” He said with his nose still buried in his homework.

“I want to apologize.”

He turned around.

“For what?”

“I didn’t tell you guys the truth.”

All of the boys circled in closer.

“About what?” Gully inquired further.

“About a lot of stuff. I didn’t get my sunburn on the beach with my family. I got it when I was on the boat with Lane.”

“Lane?” Frank asked, quickly glancing back at Lane and his pack.

“Why were you on the boat with Lane?” Gully asked with a confused look on his face.

“Because I was looking for a way out of my deal with Dax. Dax asked me to give up everything for him and you guys. That was a lot to ask. I wasn’t ready to do that yet. But I am now. You all are my pack. I’m done with the lies and everything else. I just want for everyone to be safe. I want the fighting to stop. And for that, I will do whatever Dax says.”

The boys stared at her blankly.

“We knew you were with Lane this weekend. At least, we were pretty sure. We knew that you were gone, and then we checked if he was as well. And on Monday, you both look sunburned.”

Sunburned?
Saki glanced back at Lane looking for a change of complexion that she had missed.
Maybe he is darker
, she conceded, not having noticed it before.

“So the question is, how can we trust you now?” Gully continued.

“I don’t know. Time? I don’t know. But I am a part of your pack now. So I’ll do whatever it takes.”

The bell rang, ending homeroom ushering the kids to their first class.

“We’ll think about it. But you betrayed us. We can’t just let that go,” Gully confirmed, leading the charge out of the room.

Saki lingered in her seat a while longer. Soon the only ones left were her Mr. DeMarco and Lane. She could smell Lane as he got closer.

“Hey Saki…”

“No,” she said cutting him off quickly. “We can’t do this anymore,” she whispered not looking at him. She gathered her stuff and walked out leaving him behind. “We can’t do this anymore,” she whispered.

Saki wanted desperately to cry as she made her way to class. She had promised herself she wouldn’t, however. Maybe promises that she’d made previously didn’t mean much anymore. But still, it didn’t seem right to cry.

Saki staggered through her day as if walking toward her death. Her decision meant an end to all of this. This life was going to be replaced by something else. Although it could be better, it was hard to give up on it, even the things that she had grown to dislike.

In each class that she shared with one of Dax‘s pack, she didn’t just sit next to them, she sat with them. Her location was the same, but her mindset was different. She was now present with them, knowing that she wasn’t going anywhere else.

At the end of the day when they returned to homeroom, Gully hesitantly asked her if she wanted to hang out. Saki graciously declined, saying that she wanted to spend these last few days with her family. They understood.

“Mom, did you think about it?” Marnie asked as soon as she got into the van.

“I thought about it. And I will tell you what I think over dinner,” she said with an ever-present smile on her face.

Saki must put this charade to an end. She saw the joy that it brought her sister, though. In fact, it had somehow lifted the mood of her entire family. Even Maddie seemed excited for her twin. Saki had expected her to be jealous. But no, Maddie was so excited, it might have been happening to her. Saki wasn’t quite ready to break all of their hearts just yet.

Saki avoided Marnie as much as she could before her mother got home. During dinner, Marnie asked again.

“Please, mom. Pleeeaaase!” Marnie begged playfully.

“Well, I thought about it. And I think that it will be fine for you to go to dinner with this young man,” she concluded with a smile.

“Yaaay!” Marnie exclaimed reaching over and hugging her twin. She next got up and threw her arms around her mom. “Thank you!” She said effusively.

“Maybe you shouldn’t let Marnie go out to dinner with this boy,” Saki said sullenly.

Saki‘s mother’s emotion changed. “Now, why do you always have to do that? You see that your sister’s excited. Why do you have to be the wet blanket?”

Marnie suddenly stopped smiling and stared at Saki, confused.

“I’m just saying that maybe you should meet this boy first. He’s a senior, you know. He’s a lot older than her. And wouldn’t it be nice for us to do something together on Friday?” Saki suggested.

“Do something together on Friday?” Her mother asked, confused now herself. “This is coming from the girl who disappears for an entire weekend? You think because you’re grounded, everyone should be grounded with you? I’m not going to embarrass Marnie with this boy. Allow your sister her good time.”

“I’m just saying that he’s a senior. I’ve heard stuff about him.”

“Stop it. You hear me? Stop it,” her mother demanded. “And if you gonna be like this, just go to your room. If you can’t be happy for your sister, then you don’t need to be here.”

Saki looked up into her mother’s angry face. Saki didn’t want to fight. She didn’t have the strength for it. Instead she got up, placed her full plate on the side of the sink, and went to her room. She fell onto her bed and cried.

It was an hour later when Marnie came in. “I don’t understand. Why did you say that?”

Saki didn’t respond. Instead, she rolled over, losing herself in thought. Marnie eventually walked out.

When Saki woke up the next morning, her first thought was of what day it was. It was Friday, the day when everything was going to happen. She had to put an end to it all, but she didn’t know how. How could she willingly walk away from everything she wanted?

Saki couldn’t get herself to look at her sister all morning, because it was one thing to know what you have to do and another thing to do it. If she looked at her sister, she would immediately give into her. Once she did that, she couldn’t go back.

At school, everything was the same. The Dax’s boys were cold toward her, but they didn’t isolate her. She recognized this feeling. They were acting like angry siblings. They might have been upset with Saki, but they were still her brothers.

This must be what it feels like to be a part of a pack
, she considered.

Saki did her best to take in every moment of her last day, like a foreign student soaking in a new culture. She observed it without making it a part of her. She wasn’t sure how successful her time at the school had been, but it had been unique. For that, she would never forget it.

Mr. Adderley and math class was something she would never forget. English class, chemistry, biology, she wasn’t sure if she was present enough to really walk away knowing what the classes were like. The din at lunch, though, it was unique. Both here and at her old school, lunch was this minefield of cliques and social dramas. She doubted she would ever experience anything like that again.

By the end of her last class and the beginning of homeroom, she felt like she had said a proper goodbye. She wasn’t really ready for it all to end, but she did feel prepared.

“So, what?” Gully asked open-endedly.

“What?” Saki replied.

“Can we trust you?” Gully elaborated.

“Yeah, you can,” Saki said definitively.

“Are you one of us?”

“I am one of you.”

Gully stared at Saki for a moment and then turned to the members of his pack. None of them spoke, but it seemed to Saki that each of them knew what the other was saying. Gully turned back toward Saki.

“Good,” he said, before turning around.

Saki lowered her eyes toward her desk. With the boys back to what they were doing, she was acutely aware of the attention of one person in particular. Lane was staring at her. She could tell. She wanted desperately to turn around and look at him one last time. She knew she couldn’t, though. If she wanted to save him, she had to let him go completely. It was the only way she could do it. Everything else would hurt too much. She had to let him go.

When Saki saw Marnie next, Marnie wasn’t nearly as excited as she had been. She kept trying to get Saki‘s attention, but Saki averted her eyes. She knew that she had to call off the charade. She had to stop Marnie and her date, but she couldn’t quite do it, even once they all got home.

Saki heard Marnie enter her room. She looked up to see Marnie was dressed for her date, and her eyes asked for some type of guidance. Saki still couldn’t speak. She knew that she should, especially then. But she couldn’t. So when Saki heard Lane‘s familiar car drive up and the front door close, Saki felt like she had failed again.

Saki felt paralyzed under the weight of what she had done. Perhaps no one would be hurt tonight. Perhaps everything would go off without a hitch and the worst that would happen would be her sister being called into the principal’s office on Monday. Saki had been in that position. Though uncomfortable, it wasn’t bad. At least, it wasn’t unrecoverable.

Desperately trying to shake off what she had done by letting her sister continue with her plan, she pulled herself to her feet. To try to forget, she begin packing. Dax would undoubtedly arrive on Sunday some time before the full moon and whisk her away to the island. She had to decide what she was going to take to her new life.

She emptied the books from her bag and opened her draws. She started with underwear and shorts. When the bag quickly filled up, she pulled out a duffel bag from under her bed; she had packed her clothes in it when they moved to the Bahamas. Filling it with jeans and shirts for the last move of her life, she shed a tear. It wasn’t out of the melancholy that she had felt for the past two days; it was out of gentle nostalgia. It felt final.

With her bags packed and set aside, she heard the familiar car again. She looked up at her clock. It was 10:30. They would’ve had more than enough time to do what they had to do. Her sister would return with the medallion, wondering what to do with it next. Saki had decided that she would tell her to take it back.

Saki could hear her mother and Maddie questioning Marnie on how it went. She could only hear one side of the conversation, but from her past performances, she was sure that Marnie would say that it was fantastic. Saki was confident that her mother would be pleased with herself, and that her twin would be internally jealous though happy for her twin on the outside.

The way those three huddled together suddenly didn’t seem as threatening to Saki. In fact, she was glad that they depended on each other. They would need each other in order to comprehend why Saki had left. Although their family would never be complete again, at least they had each other.

Saki was long in bed by the time Maddie crossed her bedroom into her own. She didn’t have to look to see who it was. She could tell by her scent. An hour later, after Marnie got tired of waiting for her, she entered Saki‘s room to find her.