Lyra & Kael
Lyra
“I’ll find my own way.”
Kael pulled his head back and looked at me as if I’d just told him that I was going to sprout wings and fly to school. “What, do you intend to walk or something?” he scoffed.
I shrugged and grabbed my suitcase, making my way out the door and down the driveway toward the road. “I’ll hail a car.”
“Lyra, we’re in the middle of nowhere!”
Indeed we were. The Draven estate was exactly the same as it had been in my past life; beautiful and sprawling, all tall ivy-covered brick walls and manicured gardens, but it was surrounded by trees on all sides.
The only route connecting us to the rest of civilization was one main road that passed by the front of the estate, which led into the main town of Sagewood, where the estate resided and which was also the central region in the Northern Territories.
Beyond that was miles upon miles of quiet forests, various territories, and finally, the small city of Ravencrest at the edge of it all—where we would be attending university.
Needless to say, hailing a car wasn’t going to be easy out here.
But I would much rather take my chances with that than let the same thing happen to me now that had happened to me in my past life, which was being abandoned at a gas station midway to Ravencrest with no way to get there myself.
Before, Cassidy had convinced Kael to leave me there when I took too long to use the bathroom. The only thing I saw as I emerged from the restroom was a cloud of dust and Kael’s license plate fading into the distance.
I’d had to hitchhike with a random truck driver—dangerous, I know—and had wound up being late to my first day of classes, making me the first freshman of the year to be reported and punished.
Even now, I still recalled how my lungs had burned from being forced to run laps on the track until the sun went down. How my legs had finally given out and I’d thrown up all over the ground.
Everyone made fun of me after that. They called me names, said I was weak, that I didn’t belong there if I couldn’t even follow the rules on the first day. And who could blame them? I was the wolfless freak who had puked in front of everyone.
No. I would not let that happen again.
My suitcase bumped along the pebbles as I wheeled it down the driveway, where the wrought iron gates cut off the estate from the road. Kael called after me, but I ignored him and shoved the gate open, then stepped out onto the road and held my thumb out.
Someone was bound to drive by at some point.
In fact, within moments, I heard the sound of a car approaching. I grinned and stuck my thumb out further as a green sedan came around the bend, but the driver whizzed right past without even looking at me.
Dammit.
“Lyra, come on! You’re going to make us late!”
“Go without me!” I called back as I flagged down the next car.
But that car didn’t stop. And neither did the next, or the next.
“Lyra, no one is going to stop for a wolfless girl on the side of the road.” Kael’s voice was closer now, and I realized that he had pulled up beside me in his sleek black sportscar—a gift from his father on his sixteenth birthday.
Cassidy was sitting in the passenger seat, touching up her lipstick in the mirror. They both sneered at me.
I turned back to the road. “Someone will stop.”
“Trust me. They won’t. I made sure of that.”
