e

gainst it as if it could barricade me from

suffocating. My eyes scan the plush carpet, the ornate dresser

yet I feel like a bi

st friend, Lily's, number on a secured line reserved for our pack. She

hey! What's up?" Her voice, always full of o

making choices for me and setting me... He's setting me...

heaven's sake; I shoul

freaking me out," she says, her voice

of the Black Veil pack." The words spill out of my

ins quiet for a few seconds. "

't want to be tied to for eternity," I say mirthlessly and feeling the drea

ows what he looks like. It's said the only ones who have seen his fac

ch!" I say with sarcasm, knowing

t... With all the rumors,

and my eyes drift to my reflection in the mirror. The girl staring back at

n, rumors are rumors, right? Maybe he's not as bad as people make him out to be. I mean,

s too," I say with a heavy s

phies from various pack competitions, and my study books-all tokens of a life I thought I wa

not just some pawn to be moved across a chessboard for the sake of pack alliances.

ck first, but... I breathe out a sigh when my thoughts crash into each other. A

making alliances is part of that life. Your father is only doing wh

selfish,

above a whisper, drowned out by the sudden lump in my thro

is time. "I wish I had an answer for

d we'll figure this out' hang in the air unsaid, but I know she's thi

he girl in the mirror, one green and one blue, but it's like looking at

ound me like a cocoon. As I close my eyes, my mind dr

d untamed and unshackled. My dreams become a realm of impossible f

ying and beautiful. Freedom, maybe, or maybe just the illusion of it. But as my dream self breaks through t

into a restless sleep, caught between th