The Bridge (Golden Lycans Sequel)

Puzzle Pieces

Dad stands there staring at me impassively, as Ollie and I stare back.

We are all stood on the lawn about fifty metres from the outside of the main hall.

"To my office. NOW," he barks, curtly.

He turns around and begins striding back toward the school with Ollie and I in his wake.

When we get to his office he nods toward one of the chairs and I sink into it, feeling rather childish and foolish. I'mm in my dad's office wearing a very skimpy outfit, and while I know he's seen worse in his time, this isn't the ideal situation to be in.

Ollie takes his place along the side wall with his arms crossed. He couldn't look more like a stereotypical PE teacher right now, in his polo shirt and shorts. All he needs now is a whistle and a clipboard.

"Can someone please explain why I've seen two dozen people and wolves returning hurriedly to the school grounds after curfew? Can you also explain to me why the hell you're dressed like that, Serena?" he asks, sounding strangely calm, now.

He may no longer be the alpha of our pack but he's my father...his tone goes through my mind in a very particular way.

I feel small and helpless in front of him now.

I just feel my lip tremble, and I say nothing.

"Were you planning on telling me about this, or are you trying to establish yourself as the cool teacher who identifies with the students?" Dad asks Ollie, directly.

Ollie sighs and shakes his head.

"I was going to tell you. But...I was hoping to hide Serena's participation," Ollie admits.

I look between them both and Dad looks pissed.

"Why? Why would you do that?" he demands.

Ollie looks at my dad and shrugs his shoulders a little.

"Because I know what you're now going to do to her, and it wouldn't be fair because she didn't plan it and she sure as heck didn't bring any of the alcohol that was there," Ollie replies, looking back at my dad impassively.

"Alcohol?" Dad asks, even more irritated now. Considering it barely does anything to Lycans unless consumed in large quantities, I can't see why this is a big deal.

"Louis Astor from BE turned eighteen today. His idea of a good time was to plan a little party in the barn on McGreer's farm, with a speaker and a bunch of cheap alcohol," Ollie explains.

"How do you know that Serena didn't partake in the planning of this?" Dad asks, glancing at me briefly. Cheers for the trust, Dad.

"Well, because Serena wouldn't supply the piss they were serving, to be blunt. You raised her better than that," Ollie says. I snort a little with laughter, and Dad whips his head around to me, frowning with disappointment.

"How did you come across this illicit gathering?" Dad asks Ollie.

"Well, I was marking up the sports field after the watering was done and I saw tracks. Someone was clearly wearing heels; it's messed up part of the sports field. Definitely someone in a hurry. I followed the tracks, and then I followed the noise. I found around thirty of the kids including Serena, and I kicked them all out."

"Kate and her bloody heels," I mutter, shaking my head and exhaling in irritation.

"Ollie, I want a list on my desk first thing Monday morning of those involved. You're needed back at the pack early tomorrow, so you should head off," Dad says to Ollie.

"I need to go clean up their crap," Ollie replies.

"No. Serena will do that tomorrow as part of her punishment," Dad says.

Ollie nods and then leaves the room. The silence is deafening as my Dad appears to be contemplating things in his head, probably conferring with his wolf.

"It was kind of him to try and spare you, but Ollie is right. Unfortunately, as my daughter, I will have to come down harder on you than anyone for this. I cannot be seen to be even slightly soft on you, otherwise the other parents will riot."

I nod silently. I wish I'd never gone, and I'm strangely willing to accept any punishment he sends my way.

"You will go after breakfast tomorrow and clean up that barn. I'll be in contact with Mr McGreer about what happened in case you've been spotted on any CCTV he has around the place. You need discipline, Serena. You're going to help out with the weekend combat classes starting next weekend, and I want you to assist Sen in the garden until further notice," he says, looking at me sadly from under his thick eyebrows.

"I'm sorry, Dad. I accept my punishment," I reply honestly, keeping eye contact with him so he doesn't doubt me.

"Perhaps I'll also make you confined to the grounds until further notice," he adds. I feel a pang in my stomach at these words, and I immediately look back at him in dismay.

"No Dad, please! I'm meant to be going out on Sunday," I exclaim. He sighs.

"Where? With whom? Because clearly the company you've been keeping so far while you've been here, has done you zero favours," he states.

I take a deep breath and wonder how he's going to take it.

"A walk, plus a picnic, with a new friend I made in my human law class this week. She invited me along with her friends," I say quietly, avoiding his gaze.

"You may go," he says without pause. I look up at him in confusion.

"Interesting...you decided that quickly. Why?"

"Because, Serena, I am simply glad to hear you're making new friends, particularly ones that aren't going to be encouraging you to go out to a barn after hours. A group of people going for a walk and a picnic on a Sunday sound like good people to be around."

I nod, fiddling with my fingers awkwardly.

"Yes, well my previous friends...I don't know, I just don't seem to gel with them anymore. Things are different, they've changed and they're so shallow and vapid now," I explain with a sigh.

"Now? Serena they've always been that way. Maybe you're finally growing up and seeing them for what they are? Regardless, this walk? Sounds like a good step, you've needed to be around different people for some time, now. Anyway, get to bed. I'll have some things ready at reception in the morning for your cleanup, before I head home to your mother for the weekend."

..

I enter the room and Kate's sidelight is on. She's sat on the edge of her bed removing her earrings. She glances at me briefly and I see her roll her eyes.

"Bloody Ollie," I curse lightly, and I immediately feel bad.

This wasn't his fault. It was part of his job to protect the students and we'd taken ourselves into a situation where things could've gone very wrong, very quickly.

"Narc," Kate mutters before she turns off her light and lays down in bed.

I have to bite my tongue.

I want to yell so many things at her right now, but I hold back. It...she... just isn't worth getting into an argument right now and it wouldn't change anything anyway. It's a little before midnight, so I know I should sleep too. But, instead go out onto the balcony and sit down in one of the chairs. It's chilly but I'm Lycan, so it doesn't bother me.

I look out across the grounds.

Kate's comment stung.

It was her sodding heels that gave us away, not me. I'm not surprised, given her narrow minded comments of late. Kate wasn't my friend, not anymore. Had she ever been? Having met Christa this week, someone who actually felt like a friend, I was really starting to doubt it.

I doze off there on the balcony, thinking about my first week back here.

I find myself dreaming again, where I am surrounded by the crystal blue waters. They make me feel warm and safe as I allow myself to fully immerse in them. I feel free, whole, even though the ocean is expansive.

It makes me feel like I've come home...

...But, my eyes rudely open, the vision of the grounds stretching out before me as I wake up in the chair on the balcony.

I stretch, feeling well rested and content-which changes abruptly as memories of the night before come flooding back to me. I had gotten a tiny bit physical with Louis, something I'd wanted for a long time, but it wasn't the fulfilling experience I had expected.

At all.

Perhaps due to Ollie's interruption, but it wasn't feeling right before that happened.

It had almost felt...wrong...like my body was repelling him, at a point.

I go into the bedroom and it's empty, Kate isn't there. Her bag and shoes are gone, so I assume she's gone out for the day.

Good.

I change my clothes, as I'm still wearing my silly outfit from last night. I take a quick shower and dress in some jeans and a plain grey t-shirt- I've got chores to do now.

I go down to breakfast and I see a few people who were there last night at the barn. They all avoid making eye contact with me, and I can sense their unjustified annoyance at me.

I feel a little isolated, but it is what it is. They could think that way. I'd like to say I didn't care, but I do...a little.

I grab some food and pick a table, a random table I've never sat on before, and I eat my food in silence.

After food, I head to reception. Lynda doesn't work on the weekend, but there is a post-it note on there for me. I scrunch it up in my hand and push open the door to the reception room, spotting some unopened bin bags and a pair of rubber gloves. I exit the school and start my way across the grounds.

I'm thinking about various things on my way to the barn. When I get there I see a man around twenty years older than my father, inspecting the inside of it.

I assume this must be the farmer Mr McGreer.

"Ah, you must be Serena, Mr Landry's daughter," he says, looking at me blankly, "he informed me early this morning that you'd be coming here to clean up after your classmates. I know this wasn't your thing, so I appreciate the fact you're here to do this. Must be hard having your dad run the school."

I nod, but having mulled it over since last night, I understand my dad's perspective on this, I understand how stupid it was and I'm willing to make up for it.

"There are worse things in life. I didn't plan this but I was here. I broke rules, so this is the way it has to be," I say with a shrug, looking around at the mess that seems to have tripled since I hurried out of here last night.

"Come up to the house once you're done and I'll make us some tea. Leave the bags in the doorway and I'll get them later, it's too far for a young girl to carry back to the school," he says, before he exits the barn.

I get to work, opening the bags and filling them with the detritus that my Lycan classmates left behind them last night. I fill two of the bags with rubbish, and gather the glass bottles in a crate that I find in the corner of the barn. It takes me around forty minutes and once I'm finished I leave the bags and the crate at the entrance to the barn. I could've easily carried all this back to school, but as far as the farmer knows, I'm just a weak teenage girl.

I take the gloves off and poke them into the top of one of the bags and I hesitate.

Do I want to go have tea with the farmer? I inquire to Hera.

Sure, can't hurt. All that waits for us back at the school is people looking at us like we had a hand in getting busted last night. Or Kate. I'll take the farmer, thanks, Hera growls.

Yeah...good point.

I turn around and head down the track toward the farmers house.

It's a beautiful cottage, and it looks very well maintained. It reminds me of a number of cottages that are situated across our pack territory. I walk around to the front of the property and go through the little gate at the head of the garden path. I knock on the door and wait, feeling the sun on my back as I stand there.

The door opens, and the farmer beckons me inside with a smile. It smells a little of dogs as I walk in and I spot three large dogs laying out on dog beds in the large kitchen he leads me into. Two golden retrievers and a lurcher.

"You look like a nice girl, what business do you have going to a rickety old barn at night?" he asks, pouring some tea out of a teapot into a mug.

"I'm so sorry for the intrusion. It was just a gathering for someone's eighteenth birthday," I reply, standing there a little awkwardly.

"Sit down. It's okay, I was young once myself," he says, placing two cups of black tea on the dining table next to a bottle of milk and some sugar cubes. I take a seat on one of the wooden chairs in front of the table and pour some milk into my tea. It isn't earl grey, but I'll make do- I was used to people not having it. I hadn't ever met anyone else who drank it, in all honesty.

I plop a sugar cube into the tea and stir it well with a teaspoon.

"Snuck out of school myself one time. Well, a couple times actually," Mr McGreer says. I smile at him and he chuckles.

"I only did it for a boy," I tell him. He chuckles again.

"I only did it for a girl."

I giggle and take a sip of my tea.

"But, no boy is worth getting in trouble for," he remarks, taking a sip of his own tea, "when it's a boy worthy of your time...it will be so easy. You won't need to sneak out to a barn. Being around them will be easy and natural, and just being you will be enough. Then, sure enough, they're there, occupying your every thought and feeling...and you won't be able to shake 'em. There in your dreams and in the forefront of your waking day...even in death," he says wistfully, staring at a photo on the wall behind the table, evidently a photo of him and his wife on their wedding day.

"Your wife?" I ask timidly. His eyes are glassy as he stares at the photo still.

"Aye. Nora, my one and only. Serena, I lied to you," he says, and I raise an eyebrow, "I'd have snuck out to a rickety barn every single night for that woman. But I just would never have had to."

"What happened to her, if it's okay to ask?"

"Aneurysm. It was quick. Out like a light, she was suddenly gone. Gone but never forgotten," he replies, taking another gulp of tea. He gets out a tin of biscuits and we chat for another hour. I enjoy listening to some of his tales. He didn't grow up here at this farm, but he was from the local area. His father was in the Navy and as such he went to boarding school in several different countries. Much like talking to Christa this past week, it's nice and I feel better having had a friendly chat with someone.

"Well, it's been lovely having a chat to a pretty young girl again. I am sure you have other more exciting things to be getting on with at your age," He says, standing up from the table.

"Not really, but I do have a little bit homework," I reply, standing up myself, "thank you for the tea and biscuits Mr McGreer. I'm sorry, again, for what happened in your barn last night."

"Please, call me Ian," he says kindly, "feel free to drop by any time. I like to maintain a good relationship with the people who run the school. Maybe one day it'll be you."

"Ha...I hope not, but we shall see," I reply with a laugh.

I say goodbye and I leave, enjoying the sunny walk through the fields and trees back to the school, feeling a little lighter than I did before.

..

Back on school grounds, I decide to go pay a visit to the Lavinia Memorial Garden and see Sen, figuring my Dad has probably spoken to her too. It apparently used to be a much smaller greenhouse, before Ella transformed it with the help of her friend Will and then eventually, with Sen. It had been expanded quite significantly into a botanical garden around the first tree that Ella grew, and she had named the building after her birth mother.

I enter the garden after swiping my room key on the security panel, once again greeted by a dazzling array of plants, shrubs, vines and trees. This place has always been epic and I love how much life and colour resides in here. I wander further in, hearing the calming sounds of several of the water features that are dotted around the place. The garden was open for access to all students, but complex enchantments had to be added to the building to conceal the faerie plants from the humans.

I often wondered what this place must look like to humans, but I didn't really see them come in here. In fact I didn't see many people here at all, and I think it's because they found Sen a little intimidating.

I feel myself relaxing in the beautiful space; I often come in here to think when things get a bit much. I walk over to one of several benches that have been erected around the main path. Tears prick my eyes as I read a plaque on this particular bench, out of all the benches I could have chosen:

"In memory of Orion Landry & Arcane, who governed this school for eighty years

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well lived brings happy death"

A quote he had enjoyed and had said to me only a few weeks before he passed.

I sit down on the bench and lean back with my arms crossed against my chest. I had been sitting here for a few minutes when I hear a rustle of leaves and sure enough, Sen emerges. She looks the same way she always did; long, flowing, light blonde hair that framed her angular face, with her slightly enlarged, bright blue eyes.

She is tall and slim like Ella and could easily be mistaken for her mother, except for the fact she was almost two thousand years old. In reality she looks like she is in her early sixties. She is wearing a floaty purple dress and looks otherworldly, which she technically is, given that the realm she comes back and forth from is in a different plane of existence to ours. She smiles as we make eye contact.

"Serena, it is good to see you, but do you not have class?" she asks as she takes a seat next to me.

"Well, no... because it's Saturday, Sen," I reply, looking at her oddly.

"Ah yes, I lose track of the days sometimes between here and the realm," she says with a laugh. I look sideways at her and as expected, she is studying my aura.

Classic.

She makes eye contact with me and she looks at me with a mixture of fondness and a little sadness.

"You do not seem yourself," she says, diplomatically, "is this related to what happened last night?"

I shake my head but also shrug. Dad had indeed come by.

"It's a few things. Things aren't the same as they were back in July. I've been back one week, and things...are a bit of a mess. Perhaps they always were? I don't know," I confess.

"Well it is now September and not July. Time causes change," Sen remarks kindly, "as a young adolescent you go through many periods of change. As for your mess; sometimes we need to take a step back to see that a mess isn't a mess at all."

Again with the cryptic s**t. she knows she sounds like Shakespeare, right? Hera laughs.

Makes sense when she was alive when he was around.

"The people I usually hang out with are even worse than they were at the end of last year. They're mean, they're juvenile...My roommate thinks it was me who reported the off campus party last night, so she's not speaking to me. None of the others who went last night would even make eye contact with me this morning at breakfast. It's like they all seem to think I got the party broken up," I say, feeling myself getting a little upset under the surface, "I feel so...lonely, now. My own kind are now all ignoring me. My roommate is someone I don't want to be around anymore. What's changed? Was it me or them? Why have the only reasonable and enjoyable interactions I've had since I got back, been with two humans?"

Sen contemplates her response.

"Of course you have changed and of course they will have changed. I've seen it many times since I came here, Serena. People grow, their relationships change and with that, sometimes, we must move on to other people and other things. You cannot force pieces of a puzzle to fit together if they never fit together in the first place. Kate was assigned to you as your roommate and naturally you spent a lot of time together. You never chose her. Sometimes great friendships form from such an occasion, like your sister Freya and Ella, but at the end of it all, you didn't pick Kate. You were put with her, but you don't have to stay with her."

I stare at Sen, as she's just hit the nail on the head.

"That's exactly how I've been feeling since I got back here. Like I am a piece that doesn't fit around here. I don't fit with Kate and the others anymore. But why?"

"Well, with any puzzle piece, that piece has its place. There are pieces out there you would fit well with and rest assured Serena...there is one piece in particular that you are destined to fit perfectly with until the end of time," Sen says slowly. I shift uncomfortably on the bench at what Sen had just implied with her last few words.

After realising it wasn't going to be Louis, I wasn't really ready to be thinking about my destined mate.

Not yet.

I had other issues right now.

"Mmm," was all I could respond with. Sen leans closer with a brilliant smile on her face.

"Rest assured Serena, those pieces are perhaps closer than you think, but where they are...that may surprise you."