Chapter 23 – Should I tell them?

Lucy’s POV

Unfortunately, when Monday morning rolls around, it would seem that both Jess and Amy have gone back to being completely against me getting my much-needed sleep.

“Hey, Luce, wake up!” Amy calls, barging into my room with Jess reluctantly trailing in behind her.

I groan and roll over, opening one eye to check the time, and resisting the urge to throw a pillow at the both of them when I see that it’s only ten to seven in the morning.

I repeat, TEN TO SEVEN IN THE BLOODY MORNING!

“Go away,” I moan, closing my eyes again, but Amy’s not having any of it.

“No, seriously, get the hell up!” she practically hisses, making me automatically realise that something’s not right. She sounds way too urgent for this to be just one of her usual morning barge-ins.

“What’s up?” I ask, sitting up slowly so my back’s resting against my headboard.

I watch in confusion as Amy turns to Jess and asks, “do you want to tell her or shall I?”

“Tell me what?” I ask into the following silence, not missing the way that Jess’s eyes quickly dart to the door.

Well, someone definitely doesn’t want to be here right now.

“Jess…?” I ask slowly, my confusion rapidly growing.

“Fine,” she sighs, walking over and plopping down on the bed next to me in resignation. “He may have come to visit me yesterday…” she trails off awkwardly.

What?

“Wait,” I say with a frown. “He as in…?”

“As in her goddamn predestined mate!” Amy finishes for me. “And she wasn’t even going to tell us!”

Holy crap!

“Because I didn’t think I needed to!” Jess argues. “Nothing happened!”

“So, wait, talk me through it,” I demand, sitting up straighter.

I’m fully awake now.

“Look, it’s really not that interesting,” she replies. “He just tracked me down on my way home and wanted to talk to me.”

“And?” Amy asks. “What happened then?”

“And…” Jess sighs, obviously not enjoying the spotlight. “Nothing. I told him to go away and he left.”

“What?!” Amy shrieks, staring at her sister as if she’s insane. “You told him to leave, just like that?”

“Pretty much,” Jess shrugs, looking between the two of us to judge our reactions.

“I find it hard to believe that he left so soon,” I say with a frown. “I mean, if he went to all the trouble to get here and even managed to dodge our patrols, then he wouldn’t just give up straight away.”

Jess doesn’t answer, she just shrugs again.

“That’s true,” Amy agrees. “What exactly did he say to you?”

“I don’t know…” Jess sighs, frowning slightly. “He just told me his name and tried to get me to talk to him.”

“Which you wouldn’t,” I add on the end.

“No,” she agrees.

“Why the hell not?!” Amy asks in a mixture of exasperation and frustration, and I quickly step in before this can grow into another full-blown argument.

“What’s his name?” I ask.

“Devlin,” Jess replies. “Apparently.”

“Jesus Christ…” Amy groans, shaking her head. “Girl, you have some serious trust issues, you know that?”

“Well excuse me for not exactly finding it easy to trust a rogue!” Jess replies. “A rogue that I know absolutely nothing about, might I add.”

“And might I add that the only reason you know nothing about him is because you won’t actually let yourself get to know him!”

“Enough!” I call out. “This isn’t helping anything.”

“Well then tell her to stop being so difficult!” Amy replies, looking over at me, and I sigh.

“Look, I don’t want to take sides on this, guys,” I tell them honestly. “Let’s just get up and ready for school.”

They both turn to stare at me.

“What?” I ask, climbing out of bed.

“You’re actually getting up?” Jess questions, and I roll my eyes, throwing a pillow at her face.

“Shut up.”

“You are aware that it’s not even half seven yet, right?” Amy then asks. “Are you feeling okay?”

And, just like that, my best friends are back. Sure, it’d be nice if they weren’t using my amazing hibernation habits to put this little argument behind them, but I’ll take what I can get.

“I’m fine,” I assure them both. “Now get the hell out of my room so I can get changed.”

“Okay, okay,” Amy replies, holding her hands up in surrender as she exits the room.

“Hey,” I say once she’s left the room, making Jess pause in her tracks as she too begins to leave.

“Yeah?” she asks, sounding slightly unsure.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from this situation with Justin, it’s that it’s my decision. No matter what other people say or do, it’s still my decision. And that goes for you too,” I tell her, giving her a small smile.

“Thanks, Luce,” she says, returning the smile as she leaves my room.

Sighing to myself, I head over to my wardrobe and pick out some dark skinny jeans and a checked shirt, quickly changing into them. Then, I sort my hair out and brush my teeth, before putting on a little bit of mascara and eyeliner and heading downstairs.

For the rest of the morning, the three of us just sit watching TV until it’s time to leave for school. Thankfully, the subject of this Devlin guy seems to have been dropped for now so I don’t have to worry about any more surprise arguments for a while.

Pulling up into the school car park, we all pile out of the car and head for our lockers, wanting nothing more than for this school day to just be over and done with. However, as I open my locker I can’t help but pause, quickly taking in the folded piece of paper that rests on top of my maths textbook.

“What’s that?” Amy asks curiously, suddenly standing behind me and making me jump a little.

“I don’t know,” I reply honestly, confusion starting to settle in.

Since when do I get notes?

Cautiously reaching out, I grab the note and slowly unfold it… and I immediately know who it’s from, I’d recognise the handwriting anywhere. It reads:

‘Luce, Pack training’s been cancelled today. There’s a meeting tonight that you need to be at, I’ll explain later. Get to mine for around six? – J’

“Ooh, look who’s getting notes from our hot future Alpha…” Amy teases, reading the note quickly from over my shoulder. “And no training tonight, even better!”

“You’ve certainly changed your tune,” I grumble, shouldering her lightly. “I mean, I know for a fact that you hate him.”

“And you’re completely right,” she agrees as Jess makes her way over. “But that doesn’t mean that he’s not hot.”

I roll my eyes, folding the note back up and slipping it into my pocket.

“What’s this about training?” Jess asks. The hallway’s starting to fill with other students now, so it must soon be time to head to first lesson.

“It’s not on tonight,” I reply.

“How come?”

“Not sure exactly,” I admit with a shrug. “All it says is that there’s a meeting at Justin’s at six.”

“Or,” Amy adds, “It could just be an excuse to see you without the rest of us.” She winks.

Ugh.

“Okay, and on that note…” I reply. “No pun intended. I’m heading to class.”

***

At quarter to six I trudge up the steps leading to Justin’s door. I press the doorbell once and wait. Today has not been a good day.

Justin wasn’t in today, meaning that every single Pack member going to our school has had at least one opportunity to mess with me. Apparently, not everyone is as happy with me being so involved in this rogue problem as I’d like them to be.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I knew this wouldn’t be easy. However, I wasn’t exactly expecting practically the entire of my Maths group to gang up on me either. Or for my History teacher to give me double the amount of homework as the rest of my class, due in for tomorrow, or for Melissato purposely trip me up at lunch, but it happened. It happened, and now I am officially drained. Constantly having to look over your shoulder to make sure that no one’s about to throw something at you is a tiring job.

The door in front of me opens, revealing Justin standing on the other side.

“Are you okay?” he asks cautiously, obviously taking in my extremely pissed off expression.

“Peachy,” I reply tersely, before inhaling in a deep calming breath and letting it out again. “It’s just been a very trying day is all,” I relent slightly, deciding that being in a bad mood during this meeting probably isn’t going to help anything.

“Anything I can do to help?” he offers, opening the door wider for me to pass through.

“Nah,” I reply, giving him a small smile before changing the subject. “What’s with the note?”

“I got Dean to drop it off this morning for you,” he says with a slight smirk. “He wanted an excuse to drop one off for Amy.”

“Wait, seriously?” I ask.

She seems to have left out this little piece of information.

“Yeah,” he answers.

“Huh, I’ll have to ask her about that later… Anyway, what’s going on?”

His smile falters slightly.

“We’ve got a bit of a problem,” he admits, and I can instantly tell that something’s wrong.

“What kind of problem?” I ask as we enter the office. We’re the first ones here. Well, apart from David, of course.

“Sam and John came across an unknown scent when they were patrolling earlier,” he explains, looking grim.

It takes a few seconds for his words to sink in… and then a feeling of dread slowly starts to creep in.

An unknown scent?

“A rogue?” I ask, not liking where this is going. “Where?”

“Yeah, a rogue, down by the local library, meaning they got all the way into the middle of town without us noticing.”

Oh, God; the library. Something tells me that this isn’t exactly news to me. I know exactly who this certain rogue is. What was his name…Devlin?

This entire meeting is being held because Jess’s predestined mate managed to slip through our patrols.

Oh, crap.

The question is… Should I tell them?

I promised Jess I wouldn’t, but if this guy keeps showing up then they’re bound to find out anyway, right?

“Um…” I say, but quickly stop myself.

Jess has been such a good friend to me; I can’t betray her like that.

“So what happens now?” I finish off, looking over at Justin just as the door opens and Dean and Wayne walk in, accompanied by Wendy.

David waves them over; presumably they already know about what’s happened.

“Dad wants to boost up the patrols,” Justin explains. “And we six are going to figure out a new schedule tonight, which is why this meeting’s been called and training’s not on.”

I nod. “Fair enough. So… did Sam and John try and track down this rogue?”

“Yeah, but he was long gone by the time they reached the end of our territory.”

“So they didn’t catch him?” I ask, feeling slightly relieved. God, how awful would it be if I had to go home and tell Jess that her predestined mate was dead? I mean, I know she wants nothing to do with him, but it’d still be pretty shitty news.

“No…” Justin confirms, looking slightly confused. “They decided it’d be better to come here and tell my dad about the breach.”

I nod. “Okay.”

“Um… we should probably head over…”

“Right,” I agree, walking over to where the other four are waiting for us with Justin following behind.

***

In the end, it takes just under an hour to complete the new patrol schedule. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded, especially with the training and school having to be taken into account as well. In order to have more people patrolling at a time, even some of the less trained pack members have to help out and, as it turns out, Justin and I also have to do a few of the night patrols as well. That should be… fun.

“Hey, I’ll walk you out,” he offers quietly as the other four still talk amongst themselves about training tomorrow.

“Um… okay,” I agree, waving a quick goodbye to Wendy as she looks up in our direction before heading for the door.

We walk in silence until we get out into the hallway, and then I decide to speak.

“You in school tomorrow?” I ask, kind of hoping he’ll say yes to prevent today from repeating itself.

“I think so,” he nods, glancing over at me with a small but slightly sad smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure no one messes with you.”

I frown and shake my head, slightly taken aback. “I didn’t-”

“You didn’t have to,” he cuts me off. “Your face earlier said it all.”

“Whatever,” I sigh, rolling my eyes as he opens the door for me. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then, I guess.”

“Hey, wait,” he says hurriedly, grabbing hold of my arm as I walk past. Turning back around, I take in his slight frown before responding.

“Yes?” I ask, raising my eyebrows at him.

“If… if you knew something new about the rogues… something I didn’t… you’d tell me, right?” he questions slowly, his eyes studying my face intently.

Crap, was I really that obvious?

“Sure,” I reply, keeping my face as blank as possible. “Why’d you ask?”

“Um… no reason, really. You just seemed to be acting different tonight.”

“I’m just tired is all,” I say with a shrug, which is kind of a half-truth. “So I should probably get back as soon as possible. I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” he agrees. “Night.”

“Night,” I reply with a small smile before turning away and making my way home.

Huh, for some reason I thought that lying to Justin wouldn’t be so… difficult.

(Hey guys! SORRY!!! I know that this update is EXTREMELY LATE! What’s it been? Easily over a month now :(

The thing is, I’ve now officially STARTED COLLEGE, and I have been receiving a lot of homework recently. I mean, I know that homework comes part and parcel with A-Levels, but it’s kind of just ridiculous at the minute. As a result, this update has taken frickin' YEARS!!! Well, not literally but you know what I mean. Anyways, as I’ve been having to spend so much time working towards my A-Levels, my writing time has been limited to practically none, which seriously sucks :( But I promise I am NOT giving up on this story, I am determined to finish it even with college. However, my updates obviously aren’t going to be quite as often as I’d like them to be, so I’ll probably only be able to update once a week (most likely at the weekends). Obviously, I might not be able to keep to this schedule every week but I promise I’ll do my best!!!
Anyways, on a better note I’VE STARTED COLLEGE!!! It’s really great so far and I’ve met some really cool people and made some really cool friends :D

Right… now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, what do you actually think of this chapter? I know it’s not my best chapter but I need to get back into the swing of writing this story so I wasn’t really expecting it to be super amazing. But, if you think that it’s still worth a Vote/Comment then it’d be much appreciated :) Loads of people have carried on supporting OMEGA even when it took so long to update and THANK YOU for that!!! :D

Next chapter will be another Lucy POV and it’s also gonna be a Lucy/Justin one. I’m really looking forward to writing it and it will HOPEFULLY *fingers crossed* be up by Sunday. Oh, wow, this is becoming an extremely long A/N so I’m going to try and wrap it up slightly.

SORRY FOR ANY MISTAKES WITHIN THE CHAPTER! Hopefully there shouldn’t be any major ones, I’ve quickly proofread but I also wanted to get this chapter up as soon as possible. Thank you for reading this chapter, and thank you for sitting through this painfully long A/N, you deserve a medal if you have managed to read this far ;)

So, yeah, I think that’s everything. Sorry again for the late update and thank you again for being so patient, I’ll try and get on top of my updates soon :) Um, right, okay, byee!)