The Alpha (The Lycans 4)

I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, the shadows and lights flashing across the small room. I didn't have the energy to move, the depression of life pressing me down like cinder blocks on my chest. All I wanted to do was shut my mind off, flip a switch so that there was nothing there, a blank canvas. White noise.

I closed my eyes and rubbed the heels of my palms against them, my body aching not just physically but this bone-deep exhaustion that I’d accepted would never go away. The stress of not having a job, worrying about the money in my savings account, and now Darragh going radio silent, had me so on edge that I wondered if a person could die from stress alone.

I told myself if I didn’t hear from her today, I was draining my savings account—college courses be damned—and flying out to Scotland to find her, to make sure she was okay. Maybe it was drastic, definitely irrational, but she was my family, sister by choice, and she was across a vast ocean all alone with no help to find her way back.

It was those thoughts running through my mind in the middle of the night on repeat when my cell phone vibrated. My heart shot into my throat, threatening to suffocate me as I reached over and grabbed it. The pure relief I felt when I saw Darragh’s name flash across the screen, a goofy picture I’d taken where she was sticking her tongue out at me because I’d told her she was shit-faced, slammed so hard into me I felt even weaker.

I answered the call and let out an exhale as we spoke, and as I listened to her tell me about the crazy adventure she’d had over the last few days and why she’d been radio silent, how she’d found information on her father, I cried for how happy I was at that news. She’d gotten something out of her trip, a piece of information about the family she desperately wanted to find.

She told me that she’d met someone, that she was happy, but things were crazy, and she’d tell me all about it later.

And it was as I listened to her and heard the true happiness in her voice that I knew one thing so fiercely, so intensely that every part of me became painful.

I’d been latching onto our friendship like a lifeline, and with Darragh clearly starting this incredible journey with the man she’d met, with everything changing—for the better, I told myself—it was time I did what I had to in order to pave my own way.

I’d start living the life I’d always wanted. Today.

I hadn’t been able to go back to sleep after getting off the phone with Darragh, and so I lay there just going over the choices I’d made and the things I hadn’t done with my life. I cataloged what I’d do today, how I’d start things off on the right foot. I felt this hope in me for the first time that I was actually throwing caution to the wind and just doing me.

I was pumped, happy about the change I was going to make in my life, that first step for something different. It was like coming to that realization—an epiphany—that all my worries over her safety, over my choices were settled. But I couldn’t help but remember the tingling feeling in the back of my mind as I listened to her speak. She’d been pretty thin with details, clearly hiding things from me, and as much as I wanted to push, I told myself she’d divulge things in her own time and in her own way.

I made a mental list to run errands the entire morning, to pick up some applications at the fancier restaurants and stay away from the bars. I’d eat lunch at the park and people watch, making up stories in my head about who they were and what their lives were all about.

Then after that, I’d spend a couple of hours looking at courses at an online college, writing down all the classes I wanted to take, getting myself worked up with the hope of saying, Fuck it, to my worries and just diving right into all of this.

And then I’d look at different countries to travel to, all the history to be learned. The catacombs in Paris, Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, the pyramids in Egypt.

Yeah, it all sounded perfect in my head.

I crawled out of bed before the sun was even fully out for the day, and showered. I shuffled into the kitchen, the silence that filled my tiny apartment comforting for the first time in… ever. I stared out the small window above the kitchen sink, seeing a direct view into the window right across the way, a check cashing place that was dark except for the small EXIT sign above the door.