Page 117 of UNAwere

What’s the initiation?

It’s just a trial. To make sure we have it in us to fight for Warner. To give our lives for his.

Would you? I can’t help but ask.

Hannah hums, her voice vibrating pleasantly across my brain. Good question.

You’re meant to, aren’t you?

Yeah.

Would Jude…?

He’d die for you, Sybbie. And I think that’s all you need to be concerned about.

That is concerning to hear. But not in a good way. I don’t need the validation of knowing Jude would give his life for mine. I just need to know that it won’t ever have to come to that.

He’s known all along… that I’m his mate, I tell her. But he was so mean.

Hannah laughs. Do you not think that’s why? So he could convince himself he didn’t like you just as much as he was convincing you?

He’s so grumpy.

She snorts. You don’t know the half of it. I bet you’ve never seen him at his worst, simply because he never would have shown it to you.

I dunno, he was pretty bad.

We come over a rise, and I see the town below us. It’s massive, way bigger than Vallis, and I see rows of houses and a large building in the distance with a parking lot that surrounds its circumference.

Welcome to Primrose’s capital, Helios, Hannah says, watching me sidelong. Come on. Let’s see how well you fit in down there.

We shed just as we reach the mall’s parking lot.

In a secluded place, so we can get dressed. And when we’re heading towards the front doors, it’s easy to see the differences to Luminaire. Here, Weres walk around while Turned, their large forms taking up footpaths and their howls and yips sounding out across the din of traffic noise.

Hannah takes me inside, and we browse several stores. Some people seem to spin and stare at me, their eyes drifting up and down my body, as if they know I don’t belong. That I’m an outsider.

‘Don’t worry,’ Hannah murmurs next to me. ‘It’s just because your smell is unfamiliar to them.’

‘Do they really go off scent that much?’

‘Don’t you?’ she asks, sounding genuinely perplexed. ‘You have it. Why not use it?’

‘I guess when you’re around humans a lot, you learn pretty quickly that sniffing people is weird to them.’

Hannah huffs. ‘Humans are pathetic.’

‘There’s not much difference,’ I say, shrugging. ‘When you take away the biology… Personalities, complexities, hierarchies… They’re all the same. We’re all just bending to the will of society. Desperate to show a form of ourselves that we’ve warped, thinking it’ll appease the ones we want to appease.’ I lift my eyes to her face. ‘And leaving behind the things that really matter.’

Her brow slowly raises, and she puts down the top she was admiring. ‘Sounds like you know from experience.’

‘That’s why I’m here.’ I steel myself again and grin. ‘Forever a slave to the turning cog of society.’

Hannah shakes her head and takes my hand. ‘Come on, weirdo.’

Hannah buys me a new dress, even when I tell her not to. It’s green and flowy and cinched at the waist, and when I saw it on the rack, I immediately went to it. Hannah told me to try it on, and when I did, she pulled out her phone and jerked her chin towards the tills.

‘I’ll pay you back,’ I tell her as we leave the store.