Noah huffs, “When are we going to celebrate us graduating? It has been over a week now, and we haven’t gone out to have a drink with our friends. I want to go and have some fun. After all those years of studying, we deserve at least one night of fun. Come on.”
I continue to scan through the job postings online. It has been a week since classes have ended, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been busy. Besides making sure that the Dean has food every day, I have been looking for a job. However, I’m quickly finding out that it isn’t as easy as what I thought it would be. Most companies don’t want to hire someone with a doctorate degree. They are happy to hire someone with a master degree, but they don’t want to pay that additional money for the higher degree.
I’m actually starting to get a little worried. What am I going to do to if I can’t find a job right away? Do I move back home to my parents’ house?
NO!! I refuse to do that.
I shake my head. “No. I need to find a job first. I can’t be without work for too long. Plus, I don’t have the money to go out and go drinking.”
Noah grabs the laptop from my lap. “No. You can go out for one night. It isn’t going to hurt you. Don’t worry about the money. I’m going to pay for your drinks. Now, go get changed. We are going out and having some fun.”
I turn towards Noah and hold my hand out. “Give me back my laptop. I need to find a job.”
He slaps my hand away and huffs, “No. We are going out tonight, and I’m not taking no for an answer. Now, get up off this couch and go get ready. If you don’t start moving, I’m going to have to call our friends and we will force you to get ready.”
Oh, why am I friends with him?
After a few moments of a silent stare down between the two of us, I finally sigh and stand up. “Okay. I’ll go get ready.” I look down at Noah and huff, “You better not do anything too crazy. I don’t want it to turn into something that I’m going to regret tomorrow.”
A smile instantly pops out of Noah’s face. “Oh, don’t worry. You aren’t going to regret anything. Now, hurry up before we are late.”
Late. Why would we be late?
Confused, I look at Noah, but I quickly ignore the comment and head towards the bathroom. Oh, I hope I’m doing the right thing.
I glance around the crowded club as Noah and I push our way through. I’m not sure exactly what Noah has in mind, but I’m not liking it so far. I squint as the bright neon lights flash from the dance floor at the front of the club. However, the dim lights at the other end, where we are at, barely gives us enough light to see where we are going.
Noah knows that I don’t like crowds and being shoulder to shoulder with everyone is what I would call crowded.
I sigh and tap Noah’s shoulder in front of me, as the heavy bass vibrates through my body and echoes in my ears. My nose scrunches and the edge of my lip slightly raises as the strong smell of alcohol fills my nose.
Why am I here? I need to learn to tell Noah no, especially when he offers to pay for something. Free isn’t always that good. Tonight being one of the many examples.
My eyelid twitches as a new song blares through the sound system and my ears throb.
Why am I here? Oh, yeah. Noah is buying me a drink.
Noah glances over his shoulder and shouts, “What? We are almost there. The group is waiting for us.”
Group? What group?
Noah hasn’t once said anything about us meeting a group tonight. Ugh…
I open my mouth, but soon close it. There is no use in talking over all these people and the load music. I’ll wait until we sit down.
As the crowd gets thicker, Noah reaches back and grabs my wrist as he winds through the maze of people. After working ourselves all the way through the club, he stops and finally releases his hold on me in front of the corner booth. I glance around the table and only faintly recognize one, maybe two, people from our department. The rest are people that I’ve never met before.
Luckily, the music isn’t as loud here, but it still sends small vibrations through me. My ears have a faint hum, but I can’t tell if that is because of the music now or the load music blaring around me on my way to the table. It most likely is a combination of the two.
I turn my attention back towards Noah, as he points towards me and smiles. “Guys. This is Tyler. Instead of only celebrating my graduation, we are now celebrating both of our graduations. Let the party begin!”
Party! I thought we were going to come and have a few drinks and leave.
I should have known better than to trust Noah.
Before I can protest, Noah shoves a drink in my hand. With a wide smile on his face, he shouts, “Drink up! The night is young!”
The night is young? The night may be young for him, but I have a growing feeling that this may be a very long night for me. Plus, I may even end up having to take care of a drunk Noah. I don’t remember even once agreeing to take care of a drunk friend.
I glance at the blue drink in my hand. I don’t even know what this is. On the rare occasion when I do go out and drink, I usually stick to beer. It is usually safe.
I sigh. I probably don’t want to know what is in it.
Gulp.
This is definitely going to be a very long night.
My mind begins to run through a variety of ways for me to sneak out of here, but before I can decide on any one particular plan, Noah pushes my drink up to mouth. “Drink with me to celebrate the end of our college life!”
I raise my eyebrow and glance back down at my drink. Do I really want to drink this? How bad could it be right? It is blue with a cute little pink umbrella in it.
I lean a little closer and sniff. Ah, a fruity smell. Fruity drinks are good and don’t have much alcohol. Right? Well, I hope that I’m right.
I go against my better judgement and nod. However, before I can take a drink, a few of Noah’s friends dash around the table and stop me. One petite girl with long wavy black hair and a button nose holds her hands and her drink in the air as she scurries towards us. “Wait! I want to drink with you too!”
As few more people crowd around us, Noah raises his glass in the air and shouts, “It is finally over! We have finally graduated!”
I glance around the group and follow along with them as we raise our glass. I timidly shout with them. “To graduating!!”
Without thinking, I chug down most of the drink in one gulp.
Once again, I glance down at my drink and lick my lips. Berries. I love berries.
I wonder how much alcohol is in this.
Tyler knows that he shouldn’t have agreed to go out with Noah last night. Noah has kept giving him drink after drink and for some reason, Tyler isn’t arguing with him. However, this morning, Tyler’s head throbs as if the university’s whole marching band is inside his skull performing one for him. Not to mention, the dull ringing in his ears. Tyler stumbles out of bed. If he couldn’t remember all the events from the previous night, he would swear that he has run a marathon instead of him clubbing. Somehow, he manages to stagger his way to the bathroom and find some medicine. But his hands tremble as he drops a couple of pills in his hand that he almost drops them down the drain. He isn’t going to mention the fact that the room seems to be spinning or that everything is slightly fuzzy. He has to go back to bed. Noah is going to pay for this. *** This morning has been a good morning. F
It has been several days now and I’m not getting better. To be honest, I’m actually getting worse. My body aches, and I’m cold even with multiple blankets covering me. I can’t hardly get out of my bed on my own to go to the bathroom. There is no way that I can even think about going to a restaurant to buy myself a meal.However, even if I could drag my feet out of my apartment in the hunt for some food, I’m not hungry. Everything tastes bland. Nothing even sounds good.I shiver under the blankets as the soft click of a door shutting drifts into my room.My eyes drift across the room towards the window. However, instead of sunlight spilling through the glass, darkness is the only thing that I can see.What time is it?My eyes slowly drift back to my nightstand and my phone. I want to reach out and check the time, but I also don’t want the cold
I bolt through the trees and around some boulders. With each stride, I pound the ground a little harder.The wind whips through my fur as my claws dig into the ground. This is long overdue. I should have found a way to get out to the timber sooner and run for a bit. I wish that the timber around this university could be as expansive as the timber around SM University or even my pack. However, I can’t complain. I have to make by with what I’ve got.I still don’t know why I’m so upset and irritated. What I do know is that it has been a couple of days that the mysterious food lady has stopped bringing me food. To be exact, it has been 5 days. That is almost a week!Where is she?If she has decided to stop bringing me food, she should have given me a note the last time that she snuck food into my office. But she hasn’t brought me anything. No food. 
What has it been now? Almost two weeks.I’m starting to get really worried. I think something must have happened to my mystery food lady. My wolf now is constantly curled up in the corner of my mind whimpering, and I have finally come to the conclusion that this mystery lady is my second mate. No matter how much I don’t want to admit it, my wolf knows already that she is our mate. The thing that I can’t believe is that I still haven’t seen her, but I know that she is my mate.With me finally admitting that she is my mate, I have been able to get past my anger a little bit. I’m still not completely back to my normal cold self, but at least, I’m not biting people’s heads off now.Now, my overwhelming desire is to have my mate (yes, I’m calling her my mate) to come back to me. I don’t even know what she looks like, but I need her back. Now.
My hesitation immediately lets Wyatt know that I did find something. He quickly shouts, “OMG! You aren’t saying anything! That can only mean that you did find something!”At this moment, I wish that I’m actually talking to Wyatt on the phone instead of through the mind link. I could pull the phone away from my ear. However, I can’t do anything to block his loud voice as my head begins to throb.I huff, “Did you have to yell? UGH!! My head is throbbing now.”I walk back into my apartment with the empty beer bottles in my hand while I lightly shake my head trying to get rid of the dull throb.In a softer voice, Wyatt asks, “Well, did you find your second mate?”I walk into the kitchen and set the beer bottles on the container. I guess that even though I don’t want to tell Wyatt about this yet, I don’t have a choice. He a
I peak around the corner and watch the Dean as he stands frozen just inside his office door. Without seeing his face, I already know that he is happy. Shoot, I’m happy that I can finally move around. Granted, I’m not back to being 100% normal, but I still have managed to get up early this morning and fix the Dean breakfast.Besides Noah, Mint has been nursing me back to health. She knew something is off when I didn’t bring food in for the Dean several days in a row.It is a good thing that she had checked up on me back then. Noah was helping, but he didn’t help as much as Mint did to get me back up and healthy again. At the time, I was almost ready to call an ambulance and go to the hospital. However, with Mint’s help, I was able to stay at home and nurse myself back to health.What also has helped me to recover is the thought that the Dean isn’t getting any homecooke
She is back. She is really back.I’m so excited.I stare down at my lunchbox on my desk with the biggest smile that I’ve ever had on my face. I knew in the back of my mind that she didn’t leave me. But that can only mean one thing. She was gone or out of town for a while, or she has been ill this whole entire time. My gut is telling me that she was sick. I don’t know how I know, but I’m sure that she would have left me a note letting me know that she needs to go out of town for a few days, which I never got.If I had only known who she is, I would have gone to her place and helped her recover. Even now, that I’m excited to have her food again, I still can’t get rid of this underlying feeling that she is still not feeling the best. I don’t know why either, but I do. My wolf is wagging his tail and prancing around at the sight of the food, but
With everything happening these past few weeks, or you can say months, I can’t help but to feel guilty towards May. Part of me knows that she would want me to move on, and if the Moon Goddess has decided that I need another mate, May would be the first person to tell me to accept what the Moon Goddess has given me. However, there is another part of me which loves my late wife so much and doesn’t want to move on. I don’t know how Wyatt is handling this. I’m sure he has gone through some of these same feelings. How did he handle it? I glance down at the photo album in my hands. This is the only thing that I brought with me that has May and Matt in it. I wasn’t going to bring anything, but at the last minute, I just couldn’t come here without something for times like this when I really miss them. My hand trembles slightly as I open the cover. I haven’t looked through this photo album in a long time. Whe