Page 14 of Savagely Mated (Shared Mates #1)

“It means you can’t come around like this anymore. If Sevilla were here, or the baby, and you show up basically naked with half the city after you…” He gives me an apologetic look, and I swallow the sharp, lancing pain I feel in my gut as I realize exactly what he is saying, and why.

I’m losing my oldest friend because I’m a piece of shit. He wouldn’t put it that way, but I would. I’m trouble. I bring trouble. And he’s about to settle down and play house with the woman who is most likely the love of his life.

He’s about to be happy.

And I can’t get in the way of that.

“I understand,” I tell him. “Don’t worry, I won’t come back. I get it.”

“I’m sorry, Darcy, but she’s going to move in soon and I need everything to be perfect for her. If things ever… if you get… maybe in the future, if you, you know…”

“If I get normal?”

“Yeah. I mean, no. But yeah,” he says. “I’ve got to be respectable.”

“Don’t worry, Jory,” I tell him, sucking up my hurt pride. “I understand. Really. I do. You’re going to have a baby. That’s the most important thing. The baby has to come first.”

The words feel like they’re turning to ashes in my mouth. I always thought that was a weird expression and I had no idea what it meant. But I do now. I’m saying what I have to say, because saying literally anything else would make me the world’s biggest asshole.

There’s a part of me I’d never dare give voice to, and that’s the part that wonders why that wasn’t true for me.

I didn’t come first. I got abandoned. I was left and raised in an institution by a parade of people I don’t even really remember.

But Jory’s kid is already more important to him than I ever was to whoever my dad was. Feels bitter.

“Hey. Good luck, man. I’ll see you around,” I say, pulling my—well, his—clothes up into more appropriate positions.

“You don’t have to go right now,” he says.

“Oh, but I do. You’re gonna be a great dad, Jory. Catch you later.”

I get up and I go, because I’m very close to crying and I don’t want to let Jory see that. I don’t want him to feel any more guilty than he obviously already does.

“Darcy…”

I hear him say something, but I don’t hear what it is. Blood is rushing in my ears as I run off, back to the academy. I hope my absence hasn’t been noted. I’ve gotten in more trouble than this before.

I try one of the rear side gates to the academy, hoping it’s still early enough that nobody is on guard yet. It’s not entirely uncommon for the lesser gates to be manned by students who often run late.

Today, as I have already established, is not my lucky day.

“Darcy, where have you been?”

The soldier at the gate is in my class. His name is Brian, and he’s good at math. None of this matters, but it’s what I think of when I see his country boy face looking at me with curiosity. Brian is excited and honored to be at the academy. He can’t believe his fucking luck.

“I went for an early morning run,” I say.

He looks me up and down. I can practically see the syllabus of the detection skills class running through his head. Chapter 3. Part 5. External Indicators of Dishonesty. I’ve read that book dozens of times. I’m actually quite good at study, in spite of being a complete mess in every other respect.

“Wearing boy clothes?” He frames it as a question, but I just reclaim it as a fact.

“Wearing, as you say, boy clothes.” I find it’s easier to just agree with what people are saying.

He narrows his eyes at me, and shakes his head. “You know this is going to catch up with you. I’m going to have to put this in my report.”

“Do what you have to do,” I say. I sound like I don’t care, but that’s mostly because I can’t bring myself to right now.

I am exhausted. I am alone. I’ve lost my best friend, and I’ve lost all sense of the safety of the academy’s walls.

The men who abducted me from here are obvious ex-inmates.

They’ll be back, one way or another. I don’t know how I can save myself.

He waves me through, and I go up the side passage, trying to yet again avoid people. Only problem is you can’t avoid everybody on a day where everything is going wrong. It’s like a cosmic rule or something.

I make it all the way to my dorm floor without issue, but the second I set foot on my level, a female voice rings out from behind me with officious annoyance.

“Darcy, you’re late for breakfast, and your room is a mess.

Tidy it up this instant!” Matron snaps at me.

Of course everybody is on me today. Usually I’d argue with her.

I’d tell her some kind of lie, or I’d tell her my room’s not really that messy.

I’d defend myself in some way, but today I don’t bother.

I always wondered what would happen if I didn’t answer back.

Turns out, me being quiet just gives her more space to fill with words.

“You have more space than anybody else here, and you don’t appreciate a bit of it. I’ve a good mind to have you relocated to a storage closet.”

She keeps lecturing me, but I turn my brain off. I can’t listen to any of this. I don’t care.

I walk into ‘my’ room, the room that everybody would tell me isn’t actually mine, the same way this isn’t really my home and I don’t really have a family. I used to think Jory was like family, but family doesn’t tell you that you have to stay away because they’re starting an actual family.

I look around the room and I realize all of a sudden that not only do I have nothing, it kind of means that I am nothing.

I’ve lived here my whole fucking life, but the people who looked after me when I was younger have moved on several times over.

This matron is someone I met two years ago.

She’s only a few years older than me, and she thinks I’m a pain in her ass.

Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe being abducted and fingered in a van has made me look at myself and my life in a way I never have before.

I make a decision in that moment.

I’m going to run away.

I’m going to leave the academy, and I’m going to get a job somewhere in Eclipse.

I’m going to start a new life. One of my own choosing.

I could be a package runner, or a delivery driver.

I’m fast enough, and they’re always looking for new runners because of the death rate.

Fifty-something package runners die every day.

Or I could be a server in a restaurant or something, but I heard that can be kind of dangerous.

I start tidying up my room for the last time.

I have a pack, of course. Everybody has one.

It’s designed to hold clothes, rations, supplies for when we go out on expeditions and things.

I pack my prized possessions into it, my street clothes, the shoes I have, my makeup, and…

What else is there? I don’t have a lot of stuff.

I don’t keep the stuff I steal; I almost always give it away.

There are a lot of people in need in Eclipse, but more than that, I’d get in deep shit if I ever got caught with contraband.

I used to hear the others complain sometimes that something being confiscated had been given to them by their family on one of the traditional family giving days.

There are birthdays, and winter solstice and summer solstice.

I’ve never gotten a gift on any of those days.

Academy doesn’t give gifts. It gives the gift of learning and of service.

Can’t get emotionally attached to either one of those things, but I guess they can’t be taken away by a power-tripping superior either.

Before I leave, I have a shower and I change into some fresh clothes. I put on underwear that fits. I wish I could sleep, because I’m absolutely exhausted, but I know they’ll just send someone to wake me up every time I miss a class.

I go back out the same gate I came in, but before I go out, I take a small charge and detonator combo, and I throw it over into some bushes. It sparks and explodes in a puff of smoke, making a small fire.

Brian is on that fire in an instant. He’s also no longer anywhere near his post. The book Elements of Deception and Disguise by E. A. Bitten wins again. I slip out of the academy.

They liked to tell me I’d never graduate.

I guess they were right.