April's POV

I avoided Jerkface's surprisingly beautifully coloured eyes. My shoes suddenly seemed a lot more interesting - I wasn't sure if he'd hurt me in front of the kidnappers or wait until we were alone. Either way, my hands were still trembling.

"Please. Sit down." The dark haired, green eyed driver boy said.

I dragged my feet to the chair, keeping my eyes on the boy at all times with a mixture of apprehension and bewilderment. To be fair, they did not seem any older than I was, which simply accentuated the wackiness of the situation. Sitting as far from Jerkface as I could physically be, I perched at the edge of my seat so that my elbows were leaning on the table top.

"Well, I'm not sure how to explain this all," the dark haired, green-eyed boy gestured around him. "But, we'll begin by introducing ourselves and we'll explain this - this situation to you."

"I'm Diego." He said, shooting me a smile.

The honey-haired one spoke next. "Daniel."

"I'm Beau and I'm better than all of the people in this room, so if you want to be friends with anyone, you know who to come to." The other boy winked.

"Carlos." The other boy with the stern eyebrows and serious expression greeted. His arm was resting around the flame-haired girl, their bodies positioned impossibly close to one another.

"I'm Emma," the red-head spoke, her voice warm like buttered rum. "I cannot wait for you to get to know us." Her emerald eyes shone with sincerity, though at that moment in time, I wanted nothing more than to run away from her.

After a couple of minutes of silence, Diego spoke to the blonde positioned at the far end of the table. "Donna, introduce yourself at least." She stared at me through what seemed to be perpetually narrowed eyes.

"I'd rather not introduce myself to her. She's not one of us. It's pathetic that we're even contemplating this situation right now, especially with the way it'll reflect upon our pack." Her words flew over my head, though some managed to pierce my heart with their feathery deadliness.

Donna tucked her blonde hair behind one ear carefully and shot me a measured look of distaste before slamming her chair back and walking out of the room. After a moment of what felt suspiciously like stunned silence, my eyes involuntarily flickered to Jerkface.

"Aiden." One word was all that came out of his sharp-tongued, bitter mouth.

I flinched slightly.

"And what's your name?" Emma asked, her eyes probing and yet gentle.

"April." The sound barely came out of my mouth; it was merely a croak, a hoarse whisper amongst the voices of these confident, strange kidnappers.

"That is a beautiful name. Is that a British accent?" Emma smiled at me, eyebrows rising.

I nodded silently.

"Well, April. There's something I think we should tell you." Diego said giving me a small, pained smile. "Aiden? Care to explain?"

Aiden glanced at me and leaned against the counter top, looking at me with those unfathomable eyes before launching into the speech that would ultimately ruin my life.

"I need a girl. Well, my father wishes for me to find a girl – a mate more specifically to symbolize my transition into giving a fuck in the world. The only reason I am doing this is because I need a few things that are very dear to me," he trailed off here. "I chose you – a random girl off the side of the street. I'm going to become the Alp - I mean leader of our – our group. I needed a girl who would pretend to be my mate - my girlfriend of sorts – any girl, to be honest. But with the pressure of time weighing down on my decision, I chose someone random. I do apologize." His apology was all words and no substance, a mere tendril of meaningless babble that came from his mouth.

I could not respond. I barely understood what he had said. A few phrases, however, were etched into my mind, causing it to race with dark thoughts.

1. He needed someone to pretend to be his girlfriend or 'mate.'

2. He picked an entirely random, poor soul to pretend to be her.

3. He ruined my life.

No words were able to form in my mouth – not properly anyway. A tsunami of emotion built up inside of my mind, but physically, I could not respond at all. All I could feel was a dulling sense of numbness. Then, it turned to anger - a seething anger that seemed to ignite every single fibre in my body.

How dare he treat like that? That - that twat. How dare he simply kidnap me off the side of the road, insult me and order me to cooperate in his twisted game. If this was a joke, the humour was dead.

"No." I said slowly, shaking my head. "I'm not going to stay here to pretend to be whatever it was that you wanted me to be. If you have a problem with your father, I'm sure you can sort it out between yourselves. Bringing me - a bloody stranger - into it is unacceptable! I don't know who you think you are or what you think you can do, but if this is your idea of a joke, I suggest you play it on someone else. Or better yet, not at all." I walked backwards, shaking my head at him as I spoke.

Aiden pushed himself off the counter his eyes ablaze, not with anger but something else. "You have no choice in the matter anymore. It's hard to accept, but I'm trying to make this as simple as I can. I'm sorry."

Again, a meaningless apology.

"No! You can't expect me to leave my life for this. Go and find someone else. This is ridiculous, you know that? This is so ridiculous."

"Unfortunately for you, leaving is not an option anymore. You know our names, our faces – too much. You just can't return to normalcy until you cooperate. And yeah, sure you probably think I'm a jerk for kidnapping you, but honestly I don't care – I can't care. I know this is confusing now, but you'll learn to accept it."

I hadn't realized that he had walked towards me, his hands raised slightly in surrender. I was trapped. I raised my leg to knee him in the balls again but he stopped me, his eyes hard.

"Not again."

"Get the fuck away from me," I hissed. "Seriously, back off, back off - back off." I repeated as I warded him away with my hands. My courage didn't do much for me in that moment, because he simply raised an eyebrow, looking bored.

My face fell. This can't be happening. Why me? Why me? I could feel my palms sweating, my head aching from the suddenness of everything. I refused to cry, however. I will not cry. I don't cry in front of anyone. And I certainly won't cry in front of him. All the fight had gone out of me. Realization hit me.

"What happens if I don't cooperate?" My voice was quiet.

"Nothing good." Two words were all it took to make my heart wither, blacken into soot and die. "You know, if you don't work with us, we will be forced to use your family and friends to get what we need." Correction, that last statement was enough to make him tear my heart out.

"No. Not them. Please not them."

He smiled, but it was lifeless. "I will have to do that if you make me do that. We have your phone - your family's names, your friends names and addresses, your address."

"Will I ever be able to return to my life? I swear that I won't tell anyone. Because this must be a dream. It has to be a dream." I pinched myself hard on the arm.

"Perhaps. It depends, really." He shrugged. "And it's not a dream. More of a nightmare, don't you think?"

I ignored the jibe and pleaded my case once again, this time, with a slightly less panicked mindset. "Can you get any other girl? Someone you actually know? I'm sure there will be others who are willing. I promise that this can all be buried knowledge if you let me go – I swear it. " This time, I started up at him.

"We can't trust you. It's too late. If I did have time to change it I would, but I've left myself no choice." He shrugged. His easiness was very hard for me to comprehend, especially when inside, I felt my panic settling to the bottom of my stomach.

I stayed silent. I can't have him find my family and friends. Somehow, I knew that he really did know their names - my phone password was pretty crap. A simple 1,2, 3,4. Damn you, April. Could you not have made it so easy for them?

I stayed noiseless for a few moments. "What's a mate?"

"Let's just say, we need to act like we're in love. It's kind of like a soul mate. Of course, those do not exist, but that's why the art of acting exists – it allows us to transform into the impossible and fool the people around us." Then, after minutes and minutes of silence on my behalf, he snapped his fingers in front of my face, before sighing, giving up and leaving.

And even though my world was tearing apart and everything had happened so quickly, I knew one thing for certain - I wasn't going down without a fight. And I'd also do anything to protect my family and friends.