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“I didn’t do it this time. Selene is one of our young pack members. It wasn’t at all what she thought it was.Granted, if I hadn’t been messing around with all these other females, she might not have jumped to that conclusion. So while I’m not to blame for this specific time, I am to blame for her feeling that way to begin with,”I huff.

“Regardless, I want to make it up to Aisling. At least she listens to me.”

I pull back into the recesses of our shared mind and watch as he does his rounds around Aspen’s house before sitting in the woods.

“One day, you will have to stop hurting her but, one day, she will also see that you aren’t the same guy anymore,”he says as he watches Aspen move about her cabin.

“I don’t know if that day will ever come.”

Chapter 15

Aspen

Three Years Ago

“And that’s it for today's class. We will see you all after winter break,” my Lit Con teacher announces.

The room fills with the sound of everyone packing up their belongings and excitedly talking about their plans for their winter break. Willow and I plan to go home. When we came up with the idea to attend college, it seemed so grand, but now, we really miss home. It doesn’t help that Hazel wasn’t able to getinto the same college with us, so we are missing one part of our trio.

The strap of my bag is already digging into my shoulder as I make it down the stairs of our seating area. When you first see the classrooms in college, you think the elevated seating is cool and edgy. After walking up and down it four to five times a day, five days a week, that idea wears off. They never tell you that you won’t care about cute outfits and shoes after trekking across the entire campus to get to class. You will swap out those strappy heels for a comfy pair of tennis shoes not long after the first few days.

“There you are!” Willow exclaims, as if she didn’t know which building I would walk out of. We exchanged schedules and marked them on maps the minute schedules were released.

With a roll of my eyes, I turn to look at her. “Willow, you know exactly where to find me.”

Giggling, she wraps her arm around mine. “I know, but sometimes I pretend that it’s only coincidence that we ran into each other.”

With a shake of my head, I pull out my cellphone to scroll through socials as she pulls me through the crowds of kids all going in different directions.

“You ready to be home for two weeks?”

Honestly, no. I don’t want to tell her that, though. She is excited, and I don’t want to dampen that with my lack of interest. Ever since I found out that Warrick was my mate, I have wanted nothing more than to see how far away I could get from him. I promised Gail that I wouldn’t break the bond, which leftonly putting distance between us. We don’t live in a town big enough to avoid each other.

It was nice to be in a place where people didn’t know that your mate had rejected the mating bond, rubbed other women in your face, and that you hadn’t had any other boyfriends since. Here at Fairview University, nobody cares about any of that, because nobody knows about it. It’s been a breath of fresh air, for once.

Willow nudges me in the side to draw my attention back to her question. “Uh, yeah. I can’t wait to see Hazel. Hopefully, she is enjoying her time at Jasper Springs Community College.”

“Ugh, I know. I hope she can get in here next semester so she can be with us instead of by herself there,” Willow says.

Thankfully, it doesn't take us long to walk back to our dorms. As much as I am dreading going home, I do love my mom’s baking and hearing my dad yell about football. It’s the playoffs this weekend for the NFL, so goddess knows, there will be yelling.

“You better be packed already, Aspen. I want to get on the road in the next 10 minutes before everyone starts clogging up the streets trying to leave,” Willow calls from the bathroom as clunks of products hitting each other rings out.

“I was packed yesterday. I just have to throw in my hygiene products, but it sounds like you are doing that for the both of us!” I yell back to her.

Willow peeks her head out of the bathroom. “Hey! Not fair. I just want to make sure that we don’t need anything while we are home. Don’t judge a girl for thinking she might need to wax her eyebrows again while being home.”

Shaking my head with a smile on my face, I fall back onto my pillow to wait for the princess as she finishes packing. I open Instagram and immediately, videos of people sharing their road trip home mini vlogs flood my screen. Social media is a strange world where you think everyone wants to know everything that you are doing, so you share every aspect in hopes that you will get a like on that post. I’m mindlessly scrolling through it when Willow claps her hands together, startling me back into the present world.

“That’s all of it. Once we have the car packed up, we can head on home,” she says as she places one last bag on the pile of suitcases by the door.

My eyes bulge. There are seven full size suitcases with an assortment of bags piled on top of them. “Goddess, Willow. We aren’t going to be gone that long. Did you pack up all of our personal belongings?”

She simply shrugs her shoulders. “You never know what you are going to need and when you are going to need it. You will thank me when you think of some random item you wish you had, and I just hand it to you.”

Pulling myself up to a sitting position, I slip my feet into my shoes. “I highly doubt all of that. Too bad the dorms don’t come with those cart things that hotels have,” I say with a sigh.

It takes us every bit of thirty minutes to lug all the luggage downstairs and load it into her Nissan Altima. You would think we were moving out for the two weeks instead of going home to see our parents.