His Christmas Mate

Chapter 2

_Aria's POV_

The door opened and everything stopped.

They were there. On his bed.....Ryan and Elena.

They were kissing hard. They were too close. Elena’s hair spread over the pillow like a dark halo. Ryan’s shirt was thrown to the floor. Elena had her hand at the back of his neck. He had his hand on her waist.

My eyes went to his chest. To the skin that had seemed so safe to me. I could not move. I could not think. My mouth was dry. My hands were empty except for the cheesecake box, which was suddenly heavy and felt stupid in my grip.

Elena made a small sound. A moan. It was a sound I had never heard from her before. It sounded like triumph.. like a bell. I felt my knees grow weak. The box slipped from my hands before I knew it. It hit the floor with a soft thump. I did not hear it. My ears were full of the sounds from inside the room. The laugh. The kiss. The soft shuffle of bodies.

Ryan lifted his head.

For a second his face showed shock. His eyes were wide like deer eyes. Then, the look changed. Guilt flitted over him like a quick shadow. He looked at me like he had seen something that he could not unsee. He opened his mouth. He did not speak.

Elena was still smiling. She looked at me as if I were the joke. The smirk on her face made my skin go cold.

Ryan stood up. He wrapped a towel around his waist. I heard the soft scrape of the towel as he tightened it around himself. My brain tried to form words but they would not come.

“Aria...” He started. His voice was thin and hoarse. “I can explain.”

I felt my step go back even as I held the counter to steady myself. The wall was behind me. There was nowhere else to go. He crossed the room in two long steps and reached for me. His hands were warm. His fingers closed on my shoulders.

“Aria, please. Don’t...” he said.

His words were a jumble in my head. It was like someone had poured marbles into my thoughts. They rolled and clinked and would not stop. He said sorry. He said it was not what I thought. He said it was a mistake. He said he had no idea how it had happened. He said Elena had come by and he had been drunk. He said he was ashamed. He said that he loved me.

All the words fell out of him fast and messy. None of them landed right. None of them made sense. Elena laughed behind him. She laughed like I had never heard her laugh; sharp and bright. She looked as if she had been waiting for this moment her whole life.

“You should leave,” she said softly. There was no kindness in it. Just a ribbon of cruelty.

It took every ounce of something inside me to push him away. My hands were shaking. I pushed until his fingers loosed from my skin. He stumbled back. For a second he looked like a child who had been caught doing something he knew was wrong.

I did not listen to him. I did not listen to the apologies that followed like rain. I only knew one thing. I had to get out.

I opened the door. I shut it and it felt like everything was falling apart.

I started running.

Outside, the cold hit my face and I felt alive in the small way that panic gives you life. Running felt like a clean cut. It made the sound in my head smaller. It moved my feet in a way that made the world simple again. My breath came out in hard white puffs. The snow slotted softly under my boots.

I saw the pastry woman through the shop window. She waved at me with the kind of gentle face that small towns keep. Her hand moved and then dropped. She opened the door and called, “Miss Aria! Are you all right?”

I kept running. I did not speak. I did not hear her. Nothing mattered. Not her voice. Not the frost on the shop glass. Not the man on the corner who tipped his hat. I ran until the streets narrowed and the houses spread into fields. The world grew emptier. I kept going until the town slid away and the trees rose up like dark knives.

I knew the woods like the back of my hand. Nature was the place I breathed. The green of the leaves made my chest loosen. People were sharp. Trees were steady. I had always felt smaller in crowds and larger among trunks and branches. So I ran to the place that soothed me.

I reached the river and sat under an old willow. Its branches hung down like a curtain. I pulled my knees to my chest and tried to breathe.

I tried to make sense. How could he do this to me? He had been my safe place. He had given me his scarf when I cried. He had wrapped his jacket around me when I was cold. He had been the boy who made me laugh on the rough days. He had promised me small things. He had promised he would not break me.

He had promised.

But he chose Elena.

That choice twisted inside me like a knife. I thought of all the times Elena had smiled at me like I was naïve and silly. I remembered the nights she had taken the best gifts. I remembered how my parents had looked at her the way the sun looks at gold. I had learned to swallow it. I had learned to be quiet. Now that quiet felt broken into pieces.

I cried until my face was wet and numb. The tears came without stop. Each one felt like a small stone. My chest ached. My heart felt like a bird trapped in a jar, fluttering and hitting the glass harder and harder.

Why him? Why Elena? Why me?

I kept asking the same questions until my head was empty. The wind moved through the willow. The river made a low sound. I did not notice the time. I did not notice how the world turned from late afternoon into the thin blue of evening.

Then, something moved.

At first, I thought it was a fox. A flash of dark fur on the other side of the river. Then, the flash grew into a shadow. A shape that did not belong in the quiet river scene. It moved fast. It crossed the snow in a blur and then it leapt.

It hit the bank with a sound like a struck drum. My breath stopped. I saw the shape unfold. There were muscles, teeth and claws. The thing looked too large for any wolf I had seen on the edge of town. Its coat was black as coal. Its eyes gleamed like two moons.

Before I could think, it was on me.

It knocked me to the ground. I screamed, the sound coming out of me like a wounded animal. I could feel its weight. Its claws sank into my coat and then my skin. Pain flared like a white flame.

I tried to push. I tried to grab it. My hands slipped on its wet fur. It pinned me down with a power that felt like iron. My neck pressed against cold earth. My breath came in shallow and frightened bursts. The world narrowed to the hard press of paws and the smell of wet fur and forest.

I saw a flash of silver where its teeth caught the light. I felt hot breath on my face. My cheek pressed against the frozen ground. I could not move. I could not think. My chest tried to rise but the creature sat heavy on me like a rock.

I wanted to run. I wanted to scream for someone. My throat made no sound that could carry far enough to matter.

Then, through the blur of fear, I heard a sound. A low sound. Not animal. A voice that grew from the trees. A footstep that did not belong to a man. Something moved in the dark, and the shadow over me shifted its weight as if hearing a call it feared.

I did not know if the sound was help or a new danger.

All I knew was that I could not breathe.