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Callie was oddly quiet during English and Literature. She stared off into space and doodled on her page. I had a feeling it had something to do with Daniel, but I decided to let her talk about it when she was ready.

Nicole was sitting beside Ashton but she was flirting with the guy sitting on the other side of her. Ashton didn’t seem to pay any attention to it though, and came over to me when class was finished.

“Hey,” he said to Callie, who continued to stare off into space.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asked.

“It’s complicated… there’s a new noble family by the way.”

“Yeah, I heard something about that from Jackson. I-”

He was interrupted by one of his crew members who cut into our conversation.

“Long time no see, Ashton,” he smirked.

“What’s up, Wyatt?”

“Nothing much,” he said, still smirking as Nicole came up to him and ran her fingers down his arm. She gave me a onceover and scoffed.

I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t deal with this child right now.

“Last night was fun, babe,” Wyatt said, leaning down to kiss her.

“You should come over again tonight,” she purred at him while staring Ashton in the eyes.

Ashton rolled his eyes and glanced at me. The moment we made eye contact we both burst out laughing. Something about the situation was just too hilarious.

Nicole broke the kiss to glare at me and Ashton.

“Let’s go, Elizabeth,” he said, slinging his arms around my shoulder.

I was about to take his arm off me, but decided to let it stay there. Instead of moving away, I leaned in closer to him.

If Nicole was trying to spite Ashton and try to make a fool out of him, we would just have to show her that we didn’t care what she was doing. Ashton looked down at me and I smiled at him. He grinned and we started to walk off.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” Nicole screamed at him, pushing Wyatt out of the way, but we were already in the hallway.

I tried to break free from his grasp, since we were a good distance away from Nicole and Wyatt, but Ashton refused to let me go. Since he had suddenly reappeared at school, for the first time in weeks, everyone was staring at us, convinced that we were really dating.

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Kevin fell in line with us as we entered the cafeteria. He looked extremely annoyed.

“Are you okay?” I asked, noting the scowl on his face.

“Nicole’s been getting to their heads,” he pointed at some of Ashton’s friends.

“I realized,” Ashton said, glancing over at them.

“It’s pissing me off,” Kevin growled.

Ashton turned to me. “I’ll see you after school?”

I nodded and he smiled.

I walked over to my table and Callie and Melissa came in a little later. Callie still looked stuck in a daze.

“Did you know that the Royal Realm is like a country in itself?” Melissa asked us excitedly. She had been on a tour of the place with Kevin yesterday. “I’m glad Ashton woke up. You finally look alive again,” she laughed.

“I’ve been looking alive,” I protested.

“Nope, you usually look like this one right here,” she said, pointing at Callie.

Callie stared at us blankly. “What happened?” she asked.

“That’s what I want to know,” Melissa said. “You haven’t said a word since you saw him yesterday.”

“Oh,” Callie mumbled. “A lot happened yesterday.”

“Are you feeling any better after talking to him?” I asked softly.

“That’s the thing. I don’t know how I should be feeling right now. I thought that meeting with him would clear up all my confusion and questions, but now I just have more.”

She poked at her lunch with a frown. “Do you remember the day Daniel left?”

We nodded slowly.

“He didn’t meet with me on that day did he?”

“Not from what I remember,” I frowned. “You said he asked to meet up with you in the morning, but he never showed up.”

Callie nodded. “And the rest of that day is a blurry memory. I get headaches trying to remember what happened.”

“I always wondered how you knew that he was gone,” Melissa mentioned. “But I couldn’t bring it up before.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. It was something I’d thought about too. That day, Daniel didn’t meet with Callie, but by the end of the day she had called us crying that he was gone. We thought he would have come back eventually, but the days blended into weeks, then into months and just like that, years had gone by.

“And you couldn’t remember what happened,” Melissa added.

“Yeah, I don’t remember that much. I even walked into a busy road and if it wasn’t for Demetri I would have been a goner,” she sighed.

“Did Daniel say something about that day?” I asked.

“He tried to convince me that he did meet with me,” she said, her brows creased in thought.

“But he didn’t…” Melissa pointed out.

Callie pulled out a white ring and placed it on the table. “He said he gave this to me,” she continued.

I picked up the ring. I hadn’t seen it in a long time. I gently turned it around in between my fingers.

“You were wearing this when we came over to your house in the night.”

“Yeah, I know that. I can’t remember when I got it and he has one exactly like it, with the date he left on it. But mine doesn’t have any words anymore.”

I frowned as I stared at the ring and turned to Callie in confusion. “It never had any words.”

“What?” she asked in confusion. “The words probably got rubbed off after I stomped it.”

“No… even before all of the abuse you dished out. It didn’t have words.”

She stared at me and then turned to Melissa who shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t remember. But it was the first time I had seen you with that ring. I just thought that it was new or that you just barely wore it. You said it was from Daniel.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It looked new, so I thought you had gotten it recently.”

“And you don’t remember any writing on it?”

I looked at the black scratches where it looked like words used to be, but it was illegible now.

“You threw it away that night, and I picked it up just in case you wanted it after you calmed down,” I said.

My mind flashed back to the moment when I’d squeezed under Callie’s bed to retrieve the ring using my phone’s flashlight. I remembered the light hitting the smooth white surface of the ring. There were no words.

“I’m positive. If there were words, they were scratched out before you got home,” I told her.

Callie sighed. “This is a mystery.”

“Okay, so let’s get this straight.” I said, trying to arrange everything in order. “Daniel asked to meet up with you, but he never showed up. However, he says you did meet up and he gave you that ring which was supposed to have a date on it, but it doesn’t. You remember the ring having words, but you can’t remember what it said. On top of that, you don’t remember anything that happened until you met Demetri, who saved you from getting into an accident. You also somehow knew that Daniel was gone despite not talking to him.”

Callie grimaced at my summary. “That really doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t,” Melissa agreed. “You both remember two different things.”

“Can you make sense of this?” Callie asked me.

I thought about it. “Maybe you and Daniel did end up meeting that day and he gave you the ring before he broke up with you and you scratched the ring out of anger. The trauma was so great that your mind blocked it out, you were pretty dazed and walked out into the road and Demetri helped you.”

Both of them stared at me. “You got all of that from that?”

“It might not be correct. But it explains why Mel and I had never seen the ring before and why it was scratched. After almost getting hit by a car, you were shocked out of your daze and that’s why you remember Demetri and everything else after. It also explains why you don’t remember anything that happened, but somehow knew that Daniel had left.”

Callie slumped back into her chair. She looked completely lost and that was how I was feeling too. My theory could be wrong, but there was just no way of knowing. I doubted some of the places they went to had security footage from three years ago and even if they did, they wouldn’t show it to us for just that reason.

“It was bothering me,” Callie murmured. “The fact that he actually didn’t seem to be lying when he told me about all of that. He said he asked me not to take any pictures, and I didn’t, so we don’t even have proof.”

“Wouldn’t it be faster to just ask Demetri what he remembers?” I asked, but she shook her head.

“If I do that, then we’re finished.”

Melissa frowned, “But this is important to you. I’m sure he can leave his jealousy out of it.”

Callie sighed. “I thought he would have been able to… but his behavior this week changed my mind.”

She lapsed into silence, so I decided to shift the topic from Demetri.

“Did he tell you why he left, though?”

She nodded and explained to us what Daniel had told her. We listened in fascination. I had never expected our lives to become so impacted by Origens… even from so long ago.

“That’s crazy,” Melissa gasped as Callie wrapped up her story.

“But that’s not all,” Callie said hesitantly leaning closer to us. “Daniel and I kissed.”

The apple I was about to bite slipped from my hands and landed in my lap. Melissa pursed her lips and nodded slowly.

“It just happened,” Callie frowned. “But I was the one who asked him to kiss me.”

“I figured something like that might happen,” Melissa said. “You two were head over heels for each other before. It makes sense that you both still had some unresolved feelings.”

I nodded as I thought about what she said. It made sense.

“I don’t know how I’m going to tell Demetri about it,” she groaned.

“Tell him you were just doing it to cheer up your friend,” Melissa retorted. “He’s used that one before.”

My jaw hung loose as I gaped at her.

Callie laughed at that. “Maybe I will.”

Her expression suddenly became serious. “There’s one more thing that I left out of the story,” she said, leaning in again.

We leaned in to her, as if to hear some big secret.

“Apparently, I’m his soulmate.”

Neither Melissa nor I were prepared for that one.

“What?!” we shrieked and she reached over to clamp her hands over our mouths.

“That’s…” Melissa searched for the words.

“That explains how you guys liked each other so much before,” I gasped.

Callie shook her head. “He said it wasn’t because of the soulmate bond because his senses hadn’t awakened as yet,” she whispered.

I thought about that. They liked each other before the soulmate bond really took effect. Then could it have worked in the opposite way? If so, then that meant that I might have developed feelings for Ashton regardless. The soulmate bond just gave us a push towards our true feelings for each other.

I contemplated that for a while. Then that meant that I really liked Ashton despite the soulmate bond?

I glanced over at Ashton who was rolling his eyes at Nicole, who was sending Kevin flirtatious gazes which he avoided. She was sitting in the lap of the guy right beside Ashton. It wasn’t Wyatt. It was some other jock who smiled widely despite Nicole’s obvious lack of interest in him.

I liked Ashton? Like, I actually liked him? My face heated up at the thought.

“Are you okay?” Melissa asked cautiously.

I nodded and forced a smile before stealing another glance at Ashton. “What are you going to do about Daniel?” I asked Callie.

She frowned. “I don’t know... I have to think about it. There’s a part of me that still misses him so much and now that he’s here I feel confused and scared and excited.”

Melissa laughed from her side of the table. “Put a finger down if you have an Origen soulmate.”

Callie and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“You better keep an eye on Trey,” Callie grinned.

“If he was an Origen, Ashton and Kevin would have realized,” Melissa countered, sticking her tongue out at us.

We laughed again and I suddenly saw a familiar face enter the cafeteria.

“Micah!” I shouted, waving him over.

He glanced tentatively at Ashton’s table. Ashton was watching him with an arched brow. Micah paled and started to back out of the cafeteria, but Ashton just rolled his eyes and motioned for him to pass. He smiled shyly and made his way over to us.

He paused for a moment and looked over at Ashton, who narrowed his eyes. Micah nodded and continued over to us. I wonder what he said to him.

Micah sat down beside me and offered me his sunshine smile. I smiled back, ruffling his hair a little. He was so adorable. I glanced over at Ashton, who glared at me. I ruffled Micah’s hair again and his eyes narrowed. I grinned at him deviously and focused on Micah.

He chatted animatedly with us about his classes. His wounds were completely healed and his face was scratch free. No-one would have been able to tell that he'd gotten badly beaten up a few weeks ago.

“I can’t wait to choose my subjects and start Law,” he said as Melissa filled him in on her classes.

I could tell that he was very interested in Law, so I decided to get him a Law book as a present.

“When is your birthday Micah?” I asked nonchalantly.

“December six,” he smiled. “Armani’s is August twenty-eight,” he added.

That was too far away. I wanted to give it to him before.

“Speaking of birthdays,” Callie said excitedly. “Our baby is finally becoming an adult in a few weeks.”

“Whoo!” Melissa shouted.

Somebody in the cafeteria echoed this and soon the cafeteria erupted in a chorus of cheers, without even knowing why.

“What are you doing for your birthday?” she asked me. “I know you don’t like surprise parties.”

I thought about it. I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet. Technically, I wouldn’t officially be eighteen until December, but I didn’t mind celebrating the day the same as always.

Callie launched into a series of planning my birthday and dishing out her ideas excitedly.

I smiled as she chatted animatedly. There was a light in her eyes that I hadn’t seen in a while.

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