This time, I don’t think it out of anger.
“It doesn’t matter how much we want her, she can’t—” Rory starts to say, but Vivian isn’t afraid to cut him off too.
“Oh, shut up,” she says half-playfully and half-serious. “You know you can’t bullshit me. The three of you want her to become a shifter, too. You can’t bear the thought of not being with her in every way. It’ll happen.”
I glance over my shoulder towards the door, sure Romulus is going to reappear in the doorway any second and put a stop to this.
“No,” Rory says adamantly. “It won’t.
“Don’t listen to him,” Vivian says to me, rolling her eyes at Rory. “If you know what you want, you can’t give up on it. No matter what they try to tell you.”
Vivian is the first one to ever really talk to me about this. I thought it would make me more uncomfortable, make me squirm in my seat the way the boys do now.
But it doesn’t.
Instead, it fills me with a strange new sensation.
It’s one I’m not very familiar with.
Hope.
The boys always shy away from talking about this. The very mention of it seems to pain them so much to even think about that I never really push the conversation with them.
And then there’s Romulus.
He won’t even entertain two words about it. Lydia always seems very approachable, but I don’t trust myself to bring it up with her. Not when she was the one to tell me the truth of the situation in the first place.
Not when she can read my every reaction, and certainly not when everything I say to her I’m sure will get back to Romulus before I’m ready to face him.
But Vivian didn’t give me a choice in the matter. She doesn’t seem to care what makes others uncomfortable. In fact, she seems to enjoy digging into places that others avoid.
She just dove right in and peeled away everything but the truth.
“It’s not good to get her hopes up,” Marlowe says, suddenly. I feel my heart sink as I look over at him. He’s speaking quietly, painfully. “Rory’s right, no matter how much any of us want to be fully together, turning Sabrina just isn’t an option.”
Vivian gives both boys a glare but I feel my heart sink further. As much as Vivian pushes, I know how this will end. I know, deep down, that this is a losing battle.
“She’s a part of us no matter what,” Kaleb says as he pulls me back up against him and wraps his arms around the front of my chest. “Shifter or not, we aren’t going anywhere, and Sabrina is with us. She’s a part of our pack now.”
“If you say so,” Vivian says. She doesn’t try to hide her own doubt from her voice.
The boys try to shift the conversation back to normal, talking about their upcoming graduation and the eclipse ritual. Vivian seems to have moved on from the topic of turning me as well.
But I haven’t.
Something has changed since she got here. At first, I thought it was just jealousy over a pretty new girl that seemed to be garnering the boys’ attention, but now I realize that it is much, much more than that.
I don’t realize what it is until later when I find myself under the cold sheets of my loft back at the cabin. Here, alone under the skylight looking up at the stars surrounded by their painted counterparts, I feel the conversation earlier reverberating in my very bones.
Vivian has made me realize what it feels like to truly NOT be a part of the pack.
As much as the boys can say that I am and try to make me feel welcome into their family, it’s an empty gesture.
I’m more like a pet than a pack member.
Without being turned, I will never be completely with them. They won’t be able to help but to exclude me. Even now, they can’t take me through the territories now that the other packs have started moving through. I can’t be by their side through the things that really matter. It won’t end with the eclipse.
Over and over, for as long as I’m with them, I’ll be excluded, whether intentionally or not.