Wrong Way, Wrong Mate Chapter 05

The backstage area falls into complete silence.

Paxton’s first reaction is disbelief. His voice shoots up an octave.

“What the hell are you talking about? She can’t be gone!”

“Her luggage is still in the dorm, and she just added five hundred dollars to her campus card yesterday!”

Mrs. Orsello, the academic advisor, walks over from the side of the stage and slaps a printed withdrawal application against Paxton’s chest.

“She moved out at two this morning.”

“She was determined to leave. She didn’t even finish the withdrawal process. She must have already made arrangements with a school in the Lycan Realm. By the time I saw the email, she was gone.”

Nathan’s face turns deathly pale.

He frantically pulls out his phone and opens his chat history with me.

At three this morning, he sent me a message.

[Stop making a big deal out of this. We’ll apologize to you in front of the entire school tomorrow. That should be enough to make you happy, right?]

He has yet to receive a single reply.

Lacey stands beside him, forcing a faint smile as she reaches for his sleeve.

“Willow’s just trying to scare us. She’s always been such a homebody. She can barely tell north from south. There’s no way she’d leave the werewolf realm all by herself.”

“She’s probably hiding somewhere, waiting for us to go comfort her.”

Paxton suddenly freezes.

He remembers that last night, a wolf doctor at the campus health center mentioned in their group chat that I’d needed three stitches in my hand.

But he’d been too busy consoling Lacey after her prank livestream backfired and left her in tears. He hadn’t even bothered to step inside the health center.

Nathan yanks his arm out of Lacey’s grasp and rushes toward the dorms. Paxton drops the bouquet and hurries after him, with Zane following close behind, his expression dark.

When the dorm supervisor unlocks the single room I used to occupy, they find it so spotless that it looks as though no one has ever, lived there.

The bed is empty. Not even a scrap of paper remains on the desk.

The only thing left is an old compass sitting alone on the windowsill.

Nathan gave it to me for my tenth birthday.

He told me that with it, I would never get lost in the woods again.

His hand trembling, Nathan picks up the compass. Beneath it lies a yellowed note written in my familiar

handwriting.

Even this couldn’t lead me back to you.

Nathan grips the thin piece of paper, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently. For the first time, even breathing feels impossibly difficult.

Meanwhile, back at the Darkhowl Pack House, Mom signs for a delivery.

She opens the paper bag and finds the dress that was once pristine white, its hem now stained with yellow

mud that will never come out.

A faint trace of blood still clings to the fabric.

At the bottom of the bag lies a note: [You don’t have to show me the way anymore.]

Mom’s expression shifts.

Dad sits on the couch in the Pack House living room, reading the newspaper without even looking up.

“The girl’s grown up, and now she’s got a temper to match. Maybe a little time out in the world will do her

good. Once she runs out of money, she’ll come home on her own.”

But Mom suddenly clenches the note in her fist.

She remembers the group photo they took on the first day of school. Lacey had worn this very dress, standing in the middle of everyone with a radiant smile.

Meanwhile, her own daughter had stood there in wet, old clothes, half her face blocked by Paxton’s shoulder, looking like a stranger who didn’t belong.

Just then, Paxton calls back.

His voice trembles, panic barely contained.

“Mom… Willow withdrew from school. She’s left the werewolf realm.”

Silence stretches over the line for a full minute.

Mom doesn’t scold me for being unreasonable, as she usually would. Instead, the first thing she asks is something none of them expects.

“Can she… find her way on her own?”

With his back agains

“It’s not that she can’t find her way.”

“It’s that we’ve been leading her in the wrong direction all along.”