My Fated Mate Chose My Sister, So I Left novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Million Views

The video goes up before Nina can stand, a stranger in the stairwell sits with her through the bond tearing, and the last message of the night is from her adviser.

I made it as far as the fire stairs before my legs gave out.

The pain came in waves, each one starting at my ribs and ending at my teeth.

Behind the stairwell door I could still hear the hall. Somebody said "Oh my God" and somebody else laughed.

I sat on the concrete step with my duffel bag between my feet and my arms around my own chest.

The bond was gone. Five years of a warm line pulling toward one man, and now there was only a raw place where it used to be.

The stairwell door opened.

I smelled him before I looked up. Wolf, but no pack on him at all, only pine smoke and wet canvas.

He was tall, in a worn field jacket, with a scar cutting through his left eyebrow.

"Ms. Corvino," he said. "I'm Tobias Hartley. I'm visiting faculty in your department."

I wiped my face with my sleeve. "I'm fine."

"You're not. A torn bond hurts for about nine hours, and the first three are the worst."

He crouched two steps below me and held out a bottle of water.

I took it with a hand that wouldn't stop shaking.

"Breathe out slowly," he said. "Longer than you breathe in. Don't fight the pain. It passes faster if you stay with it."

I did what he said. It helped a little.

"Did you see?" I asked.

"I was at the back of the line. I saw all of it."

"Then you saw them laughing."

"I saw you do something hard in front of sixty phones," he said. "Most people wouldn't have managed to stand up."

He didn't touch me. He didn't tell me it would be okay.

He took the duffel strap off the floor and held it so I wouldn't have to lift it.

Upstairs, boots hit the hall. Two men in grey Murgatroyd pack jackets carried Alexander through the lobby between them, his feet dragging.

I knew them both. One had taught me to ride a bike.

Neither of them looked at me.

Tobias watched through the glass panel of the door until they were gone.

"He didn't shift?" he asked quietly.

"No. Why?"

"Because he should have been able to hold his claws against that much pain," he said. "Never mind. Is there somewhere you're staying tonight?"

"My apartment lease starts tomorrow."

"Then you need a room."

I found a motel on my phone, a forty-nine dollar place off the highway, and booked it with my card while he stood and waited.

My hands were steadier by the end.

At the bottom of the stairs, Tobias held the exit door for me.

"Your adviser's group meets Thursday," he said. "Your funding was approved in April. If anyone tells you different, ask to see the paper."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I read your thesis," he said. "It's good."

He left me at the curb and walked back toward the science building without waiting for a thank-you.

The motel room had a bed, a humming ice machine outside and a window that faced the parking lot.

I lay down in my coat.

My phone buzzed against my chest, and it kept buzzing.

Forty-one missed calls from my mother.

Three from the Alpha's house.

Eleven from numbers I didn't know.

Then I opened the app and saw what Giada had posted.

It was my face, huge and frozen, from the second the woman at the window said my name. The caption said: Pranked my sister at grad school and she did NOT take it well.

Underneath was the whole clip. The registration line. The laughter.

My own voice, clear and cracking: "I refuse the bond between me and Alexander Murgatroyd."

The video had been up for four hours.

It had one million, nine hundred thousand views.

The comments came so fast that I could not read them.

Prank gone wrong lol.

Imagine being this dramatic over a joke.

Her sister is the real victim.

Someone had posted a clip of Alexander being carried out with the caption: she broke him. Under it, a hundred people had written the same thing.

Poor Giada.

I put the phone face down on the blanket.

I thought about calling my mother and hearing what she'd say.

I already knew.

At eleven that night, the phone buzzed once more, and this time it was an email.

It came from my adviser, and the subject line was only my name.

The message was three lines.

Nina, we need to talk. Come to my office at nine tomorrow morning. Bring your laptop and your student ID.

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