the fuck out of here before we all get slaughtered by the Resistance while our guards are down.
Fuck, I can’t think about them right now.
Not without my hands starting to shake and my entire body breaking out in a sweat.
His eyes drag over my outfit, a little too much like he's assessing me for my liking, and then he says, "Better than the last time I saw you, I guess. How was your first night in the dorms?"
Fuck him, I'm not rising to the bait. Instead, I shrug. "It was fine. I've slept on the street before, it's much better than that."
He grimaces at me, his lip curling a little, and then jerks his head at me to follow him, as if I'm a fucking puppy. We walk down the hallway together and I notice all of the interest he gets from the other girls here. Now my mind doesn't care about this, I know he hates me, I know they all hate me, but it's like I can feel my bond in my chest protesting at the attention. The lack of concern he's showing me is like salt in the wounds, and I'd love nothing more than to rip the bond out of myself and watch it fade. If only that was my power. Instead, I do what I do best and shove my bond out of my mind and leave my face carefully blank.
Gabe doesn't notice this internal battle I'm waging. No, he's too freaking busy flirting his way down the halls, winking at girls on the staircase, and blowing a fucking kiss at the building TA. He's a fucking player, clearly having bedded half the girls here, and a plan already in action to do the rest later.
When we get outside I'm not expecting him to turn on me, all of the easy smiles and lit up eyes gone. "Do you even fucking care? Do you care about anyone else but yourself?"
I hold in a flinch and roll my shoulders back, looking around like I don't know which way we're heading, when really I obsessively Googled my surroundings last night. "If you have something you need to get off your chest, then you may as well do it now."
He grabs my arm and shoves a piece of paper under my nose. "If a guy shoved his phone number into your pocket around me, I'd rip his fucking throat out and yet you're standing there, unbothered and ready for fucking class?"
I blink at him like an idiot. Is he kidding me? "So you want me to be pissed off at girls flirting with you? It's not like you tried to stop them. Why should I give a fuck about where you're sticking your dick?"
If I thought he looked seriously pissed before, I had underestimated his rage. "Nox was right. You are just a selfish bitch. What the fuck did we do to get a Bond like you?"
He drops my arm like I'm diseased and stalks off, not waiting for me as he crosses the road.
I tell myself this is a good thing, that the more my Bonds hate me and want to get away from me, the quicker I can be on the move again, but my own bond inside me is freaking devastated by his words.
I have to run to catch up to him because I really don’t want North up my ass for getting left behind this early in the day. We make it to campus just in time for my first class, and it soon becomes very obvious that everybody at this college knows exactly who I am.
No one wants to look at or speak to me at all. It only gets worse as the day goes on, every time I take a seat in class, I find that all of the seats around me stay empty. Gabe has the exact same classes as me all day, something I know was meticulously planned, but he sits as far away from me as possible at all times, and every student here follows his lead.
It's as if I have the plague.
After five years on the run, I've never felt so lonely in all my life as I do here. It started as a nervous flutter in my stomach as we walked around, but by the time we let out for lunch, that flutter had turned into a cavernous void. I want to throw up.
I think about calling my Bonds out on it, telling them that I will