If there was a world record for the longest time spent not breathing, I probably broke it somewhere between the fourth and fifth time my phone vibrated against the hardwood floor. I'm sprawled on my stomach, face buried in a pillow that still clings to the scent of cheap detergent and something softer, some thin thread of home, and all I can do is listen as calls pile up, one after another, a relentless cascade of buzzes and the distant, hollow knock-knock-knock echoing in my room. I don't answer any of them. Not once.
My mind keeps circling back to last night, unable to escape Alarick's words. Fated mates. No one said it straight out, but I heard it anyway, felt the truth of it crawling over my skin, a prickling static that clings and chafes and refuses to be ignored.
The corridor outside reeks of stale coffee and scorched microwave popcorn. In here, there's no sanctuary, just an artificial lavender haze pumping from an overworked plug-in, and the cold blue light of my laptop screen, the cursor blinking, waiting for me. The room is a disaster: duvet tangled on the floor, loose-leaf paper scattered and curling around the wastebasket, the sad remains of a protein bar glued to the carpet by a hardened smear of peanut butter. I belong in this mess. I am this mess.
The knocking started up again.
"Lina? You alive in there?" Sarah's voice, muffled but persistent.
"I'm fine," I said, to no one. Sarah wouldn't hear it. I didn't want her to. The self-pity gnawed at me, raw and relentless, twisting deeper with every heartbeat. Reaching for something so far beyond my grasp—it had never even crossed my mind, not in dreams, not in desperate wishes. Now here I was, trembling at the edge of the impossible. I was a luna. Me. The word echoed inside, cold and unfamiliar, as if I'd stumbled into someone else's story and couldn't find the way out.
My phone, wedged between mattress and wall, vibrated again.
Sarah, probably: Don't make me call Melissa.
I thumbed out a half-hearted emoji and set the phone facedown on the nightstand. My stomach turned, like my insides were a set of gears someone had jammed a pencil into.
I needed a distraction.
I reached under the bed and pulled out a battered paperback After weeks of sneaking chapters on my phone, always alert for prying eyes, I finally caved and bought some novels in print from the campus bookstore. At least now, if someone glanced at my phone, they wouldn't stumble across my guilty pleasures. Midnight Moon: Book One of the Lupine Covenant. The cover looked like it'd been illustrated by a particularly moody eighth grader: a howling wolf superimposed over a bleeding moon. I'd meant to read this one ironically, but now I was up to chapter nineteen, and I'd stopped pretending I didn't care. Holding the book, I felt a strange feeling.
I propped myself against the radiator and flicked to my bookmark.
"'Sasha's blood ran cold as the pack encircled her, each pair of golden eyes glowing with a hunger that was both beautiful and deadly. She could feel the bond, pulsing between herself and the Alpha…'" I read aloud, voice dry as dust.
I shut the book. Even my cringiest escapism wasn't safe from real life.
My throat tightened. I pressed a palm to my sternum, half expecting to feel something new, some secret switch that had been flipped by the fated mate bombshell. Instead, it was just bone and muscle and the slow, heavy thump of my heart. Ordinary. Disappointingly so.
I should have felt relieved. Instead, I felt like a puzzle with half the pieces swapped out for someone else's. Was it supposed to feel like this? Shouldn't there be fireworks, or a sense of cosmic fulfillment? If so, mine was defective.
After an hour of staring at nothing, I made the mistake of checking my email.
From: Coco Anderson
Subject: Touching base
Hi Lina,
I know you may need space. Please let me know if you'd like to talk, or if there's anything I can do.
Best,
Coco
It had been sent at 2:13 AM. Who writes emails at 2:13 AM? And why was she writing to me at all? Had Alarick told her to? The questions circled, restless. I paused on the memory that I'd once called him Mr. Lowell; yet now, somehow, the name "Alarick" slipped from my lips as if I'd always known it, as if the formal boundary between us had faded, barely a shadow at the edge of my thoughts.
I scrolled down to Sarah's messages.
9:45 AM: Girl get up I'm making eggs
10:02 AM: You okay?
10:05 AM: You have class in 20
Then, as if summoned: another knock. This one was less polite. Joey for sure.
"I'm not coming out," I muttered, too quietly for the door to absorb.
The hallway fell silent again, but the tension didn't dissolve. It just spread, thin and oily, over every surface in the room.I thought about Joey and Joy, how their lives must have been flipped upside down too. I had wanted to help them not long ago, but now it felt like Joey was tiptoeing around Sarah, careful not to set her off. With Melissa spending most of her time at Leon's and me holed up in my room, they must feel so isolated.
Eventually, after all those heavy thoughts hunger won. I cracked the door open and snatched the plate Sarah had left: scrambled eggs, two burnt slices of toast, and a note written on a napkin.
You can count on us.
I winced, caught in a tug-of-war between her eagerness and her uncanny ability to read my thoughts. I needed my friends; they were the only ones who could pull me from this spiral. Talking to my parents felt like an impossible task—I wouldn't even know how to begin..
But there was only one person I could ask, and she'd already emailed.
I opened my phone and started typing.
Me: Coco. Are you around?
I deleted it. Typed again.
Me: Can you explain what being a "fated mate" actually means?
This time I hit send before I could regret it. The three dots appeared instantly, which either meant she was glued to her phone or had been waiting for me.
Coco: Would you like to meet? I can explain everything.
A small, hollow laugh escaped me. "Everything" was a lot to promise.
But at least it was something.
I sat down at my desk, pushed aside the stacks of half-finished problem sets, and tried to picture what came next. I saw myself walking into a ordinary coffee shop, ordering something with too much sugar, and letting Coco lay out the rules of this world I'd stumbled into. I saw myself getting answers, maybe even finding a way to opt out of whatever cosmic contract Alarick had drafted me into.
I closed my eyes and let the fantasy play out. But when I opened them, the only thing staring back was my own reflection, caught in the black mirror of my laptop screen.
It looked just as lost as I felt.