I avoided Xavier for the next weeks. I skipped the classes we had together, which unfortunately was the majority of them. Every time my thoughts crossed to him, the guilt constricted me again. I thought about just telling him the truth, but him being my mate was not reason alone to give away my biggest secret.

Shouldn't that be the best reason, the only reason? A small part of me tried to ask.

Deep down, I knew I was hurting him more this way, but I fought against my heart, shutting everyone out.

Including Everlee.

She was his sister, and probably reported back to him for all I knew. So, in Biology all week, she attempted to talk to me, making small talk and asking how I was. I couldn't answer her the way a friend should answer without tears prickling my eyes. And so I kept our conversations clipped and short, even arriving to class later than I usually did and praying to the Moon Goddess the professor would be early and I could focus on the lecture.

By the end, she couldn't seem to take much more of it.

"Ape, c'mon. You've been acting so weird! Xavier even said you broke down on him and he hasn't seen you since. What's going on?"

I eyed her out of the corner of my eye. I was right, the siblings did talk to each other about me. Wonderful.

"I'm fine," I told her sternly, keeping my tone even. On the outside, I was appearing stable and disconnected. But inside I was breaking, holding back all of my emotion and staring at my paper to will myself not to cry. I knew the second I met her eyes I would lose it.

She didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve this.

So why was I being like that?

When I glanced at her again, she seemed so puzzled as she gazed blankly at the whiteboard in the front of the room. It was as if I could physically see the wheels turning in her mind, trying to figure me out, find a solution to whatever she was imagining had happened between us. Between Xavier and I.

The second class was over, I darted out of there without letting Everlee speak again, weaving between slow-moving students as they made their way leisurely out into the hall. I made myself lost in the crowd, turning down random hallways in case she happened to be following me. I would find my way to the parking lot eventually.

I managed to hold back the tears until I got into the car. I kept them in the entire drive to the Packhouse. I even made it into the house and up the stairs. But the second I was able to collapse on the quilt-covered mattress, I came undone. I wallowed knowing the guilt I had created about my entire situation. I cried over the loss of an amazing friend. I cried because I was potentially losing myself and I had no idea how to overcome that.

I wasn't sure how long I stayed like that, curled in a ball with my brown hair falling over my face. My knees were against my chest with my arms folded around them and my ankles crossed tightly, almost painfully. The tears slowed and the sobs stopped racking my body, letting oxygen finally flow into my lungs like it normally should. I felt exhausted, but sleep wouldn't come. So, I stayed there, staring at the bedroom door because that was where my face was pointing at.

My mind replayed the time I spent with Xavier. The weeks of classes together, the silent studying at the library (him insisting to just sit next to me even though we didn't speak), and the many lunches in the cafeteria. We had gotten to know each other a bit, enough that I knew both his parents were still alive, and that his middle name was Aatto. Apparently it was Finnish for wolf.

A few times we were close enough I could feel the warmth of our electricity cackling between us, and the shiver his fingers brought when tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. Close enough I was surprised he didn't kiss me. I didn't kiss him.

Maybe I should have.

They replayed over and over while my eyes dried and stayed fixed on the bedroom door. I couldn't see much of it, thanks to the strands of hair in my eyes, but because it was where I was looking I was able to tell when it swung open. If I hadn't been staring in that direction, I didn't think I would've heard it.

"A?" Amethyst's tiny voice whispered. "you 'kay? Should I go get Mommy?"

I didn't answer, which made me feel worse. She was only a child.

She waited several more seconds before she turned and ran, her little footsteps fading down the hallway. Less than a minute later, Emerald was coming through the open doorframe. The second she saw my state, she threw herself through the room to crouch beside my head.

She placed a hand on my shoulder, "April? Honey, what's going on? You don't look okay at all, so I'm not accepting some bullshitty answer."

Lifting my head slightly off the quilt, I met her eyes, knowing my own had to be swollen and red. I probably did look like a mess, she had probably seen that I was off like Ev had, even though I hadn't been avoiding her like I was my friend. And my mate.

The thought sent a jagged breath through me and I nearly choked on it.

"April, you gotta let me help, or at least let me call your folks." She fumbled with her phone and I finally spoke.

"Don't." I was fairly positive my mother would just make matters worse.

Thankfully, Emerald stopped her search for the contact. "What do you want me to do? Do you want me to sit and listen while you spill everything out? Do you need to go vomit and have me hold your hair back? Do you want me to go get my own mother and we can talk about what's going on?"

I didn't know Eirenae very well, but I knew what she had gone through as a teenager and it was very different than what was happening now. I had heard the story of how the former werewolf princess had been abused by the hunter that had raised her. Her mate had saved her, but it had been a long road to trust him and get used to the life of living in a pack. And just when she had, her mother showed up demanding her to drop everything and be the heir she wanted her to be. I knew Eirenae still didn't speak to her mother to this day, that her little sister Natalia was now Queen.

When I had arguments with my parents growing up, I felt bad thinking I hated them, because Eirenae's story showed just how bad parents could really treat their child and a small argument with my mom was nothing.

I wasn't sure how Eirenae could help me here. She had been saved by her mate, she hadn't been one to push him away. Not as far as I knew the story. But again, I hadn't really spent that much time with her.

"Is this about school?" Emerald tried again. I shook my head. "Hm. Friends?" I shrugged, letting her know she was at least on the right track.

She suddenly grasped my hand, the one visible to her from around my knees. "April, is this about your mate? Did you meet him?" She seemed excited, until she evaluated my current state: curled up in a ball with puffy eyes and tear streaks down my cheeks. "Oh Goddess, did he. . .did he reject you?" She whispered the word, acting like it was a curse word beyond all the other curses.

I shook my head and she let out a sigh of relief. "That's good. Wait did you reject him? Is this your wolf dealing with the breakage?"

I glanced up at her and she winced, "sorry. Not a wolf. I forget that."

I took my hand out of hers, and slowly sat up, grimacing when a bout of nausea swept over me from laying still for that long. "I-" sighing, I swept the hair from my face and met her gaze again. "I think I've ruined it."

"Oh, Honey don't say that!" She climbed up on the bed to sit across from me, her legs folded in a comfortable position. I mirrored it so we were truly facing each other. "What happened?"

I hesitated, thinking it through. What had happened?"

I must've taken too long, because soon, Emerald was speaking instead. "You know, I nearly rejected River."

Suddenly all my thoughts revolving around Xavier flew out the side of my head. She what? They seemed so happy, acting all honeymoon-in-love even though it had been years and they had two pups now.

She laughed at my dumbstruck expression. I quickly wiped it away. "I know, crazy. I was letting my pride get in the way of what we could do together. I was set on helping my mother get rid of Jack that I didn't realize accepting my mate would never get in the way of that. I was expecting him to be overprotective and possessive, and not let me go anywhere near a fight. But I soon realized that he was what I needed to have the strength to fight harder. It was a tough conclusion to admit to myself, but when I did, everything became so much clearer and the end of a terribly long fight was suddenly achievable."

I raised my eyebrows. I knew Eirenae's story about her fight with Jack, but I didn't know her daughter had played a huge part in it, so big that she tried pushing away her mate to win it.

"I haven't eaten in who knows how long, I feel like I've been eating myself up inside." It was the first time I had admitted that, both to myself and out loud to someone else. I knew I was weak now, succumbed to my guilt that I suddenly hadn't remembered to function properly. It was terrible, I knew that.

Emerald squeezed my hand, "Oh, April. Did he do something?" She seemed to have forgotten my original confession: that I was the one who had ruined it.

"No. He didn't do anything. That's why I feel so awful. I pushed him away because of a stupid deal I made with my parents."

"About the fox thing." I nodded. "Wasn't a big part of why you came out here in the first place in the hopes of meeting your mate?"

Sighing, I knew she had a point. "I guess we weren't truly expecting it to actually happen. At least not that quickly, anyway."

She nodded. "When did you find out who he was?"

I launched into the story, starting with when he helped me down from the truck and I realized what he was to me. What it meant to us. "But," I explained, "he definitely knew before I did. I'm fairly positive he knew when he was here, for that meeting you had a couple weeks ago."

Her brows furrowed in confusion. "You mean the one in September?" Had I been wallowing in self-pity for nearly a month? I looked at my phone, seeing the date as nearly the end of October. Oh, Goddess, what had I done? The guilt threatened to wash over me as I thought about what this must have been doing to Xavier. And Everlee too. But I shoved it away, no more wallowing, no more crying. Hopefully.

"Oh no," I muttered out loud, putting my face in my hands. "I've been moping for a while haven't I?"

Her smile was tight, "I'm afraid so. I didn't want to say anything, you just seemed a little depressed. I figured it was a bout of homesickness. But when Ames came bursting into the office, I knew it had to be something more."

"I'm sorry for making you worry. I guess I should've handled it better."

"Don't apologize for your feelings." She pulled my into a quick hug. "Now tell me, what are your feelings?"

I laughed — a small, one-breath kind of chuckle. It was the first time I'd even smiled in a very long time, apparently longer than I had known. "I pushed him away because I felt bad. He's forced to play it slow and cautious, trying not to scare me off."

Realization dawned across her forest eyes. "He thinks you're human."

"Yes, because my parents made me promise I wouldn't let the secret out to anyone but you two. When I met my mate we would discuss further."

"But you haven't called her yet? Why do you think she'll make it worse?" Emerald was starting to know me so well.

"I'm scared." My voice came out in a whimper. "Im afraid she'll say I need to keep up the act, that I can't trust him that soon."

"She's a human, right?"

I nodded to confirm. She hadn't been raised in this lifestyle, she still didn't understand the family wolves created with one another. What mates truly meant. I wasn't even sure if she felt any of the pull or the sparks with my father. Suddenly I understood where she was coming from.

Emerald watched me, waiting for me to come to that realization. "And you know you're an adult, right? You're your own person."

A smile broke through my chapped lips. Emerald was right, why did I have to keep that promise with my parents when I lived across the country from them? I was nineteen, not a child that needed rules and boundaries. I was an adult, my own person. It was up to me to make the judgement call with Xavier, not my mother's. Why hadn't I come to this solution before?

Xavier was my mate. And after I had spent time with him, gotten to see both sides of his personality — his mate side and his alpha side — I knew in my heart I could trust him.

I had to talk to him.

Waiting for Monday to roll around was agony, and he wasn't even in my first class. But when Monday came I was anxious again. I wasn't sure how he would react. Now that I had pushed him so far out of reach, would he even come back to me?

I tried to sort of patch Everlee and my friendship back up, but that would take work too. I had essentially shut her out just as much. At least I had still attended the class we shared.

When I sat down and waited for her, I suddenly connected the dots for the first time. She had mentioned her love for bio, and that she was excited for this class and more like it. She was eighteen, but already studied with a "family-friend" doctor. Everlee wanted to be the Pack Doctor. I wasn't sure how that worked if she was mates with Andrew and he was in an authority position. Wouldn't her first duty be that position too? I wasn't sure.

Everlee came to her usual seat, but didn't spare me even a glance. I was hurt, but I knew I had been doing the same thing to her for weeks. I deserved it.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I know I shouldn't have basically ignored you for the past month."

"I'm glad you know." She was giving me a taste of my own medicine, keeping it clipped and short and indifferent. I wasn't sure how that had changed over one weekend, but I supposed she had had enough of my game. I was three days too late to apologize. I just hoped it would go better with Xavier.

I paced around the sidewalks of campus as I waited for it to be the time I could go sit in the math classroom. I probably looked strange, walking around campus on the same sidewalk in circles, at least to anyone actually paying attention to me. Finally the numbers two, four, and five showed on my phone's screen and I started into the building and down the hall.

He wasn't there yet, but I sat at our regular table anyways, knowing he probably sat there twice a week waiting for me to show. I hoped that now I did, he wouldn't have given up and ditched himself.

Relief flowed through me when he walked through the door. He was dressed in solid black pants and a black t-shirt, making his blue eyes as vibrant as ever. When he looked up and met my eyes, he did a double take, his steps faltering on his way over. I expected him to make some snarky comment about how I decided to finally show my face in class, but he was quiet. But this was different than the quiet he portrayed that first day in the library. That was a poking-fun-at-me sort of silence, joking around with just his eyes and body language, speaking every once in a while as if just to see how I would respond to him. Today was not that silence. Today was a painful, choking silence, suffocating me every time I met his eyes and he was the first to look away.

He was stone. A stone I needed to melt in order to see the him he had started to show me. Right now he was just Alpha Xavier Black of the Rising Moon Pack. He wasn't the sarcastic, charming, attractive and funny man, the mate I had grown to fall for.

Until I had to crush it.

I winced to myself, driving the thoughts away to focus on him across the table from me. He was staring at me too, as if he wasn't sure what to make of me. A few times I noticed his mouth twitch, as if he was physically fighting the urge to say something. I knew I was fighting the urge to say something too. To touch him, feel the sparks that were my only source of the pull that tugged on our hearts; the soulmate force that pushed us together. I craved the electricity between us that had been there last time I saw him. I needed him, and he needed me; but we both were unsure of how to go about it.

I managed to not hear a single sentence from the professor's mouth that entire lesson. When he dismissed us, I grabbed my things — after what happened with Xavier in the hallway, Everlee had given me my bag back the next day in bio since I had left them in math — and walked next to Xavier on our way out of the building. Our hands were dangerously close and every time we swung them to the rhythm we walked, I could feel the satisfying crackling of the lost buzz between us. I smiled every time, but it was still painful how close it was to being real sparks, but we weren't touching so they still weren't fully there.

When we got outside, Xavier didn't seem to have any intentions of stopping to talk. Finally, I grabbed his arm and pulled him to a halt. I had to force down the giggle of excitement when the electricity I had been craving jumped up to my elbow. A flash of emotion crossed his eyes, but it left before I could be sure of it. I knew he had missed it too. Probably even more than me from what I knew about myself.

"Xavier, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I've been avoiding you since. . .since I broke down in math. I've been destroying myself over it every day for weeks now. I—I didn't know what to do about it and so I shut myself down instead." I didn't want to beg for his forgiveness, but I wanted him to know I wasn't okay with what I did to him.

His blue eyes were piercing as he stared me down. I held my breath, but finally they softened as they scanned me from head to toe. "Are you okay?" His voice was still stony, but the words alone had me blinking back my emotions.

After everything, all he cared about was that I was okay.

I couldn't keep down the sob that escaped as I spoke, "no, not really."

Hesitantly, he reached for my hand, and just as slowly, I gave it to him. The sparks that surrounded our touch was enough to make me smile through the tears.

I met his eyes again, seeing they were a lot less hard and much more emotion filled than they had been the entire math period. "I push anyone away that could possibly care about me. That I could possibly care about."

He opened his mouth, but I wasn't done. "Even my own mate."