Under the Giant Oak

Ronnie and I lounged around his bedroom doing nothing in particular for an hour and a half before he gladly reminded me we had somewhere to be. We had to dress in formal attire which meant basically that you needed a nice dress shirt and to not wear your ratty old tennis shoes. Well, being me broke ass self I only had t-shirts and guess what, a pair of ratty old tennis shoes.

I would've worn one of Ronnie's shirts, if Ronnie wasn't around six inches taller than me and had a bigger build. So, he mad me borrow one of Monte's because he was the closest to my size as they could get right now.

After Ronnie and I were both dressed in dark dress shirts, dark pants a.k.a skinny jeans, and shoes that weren't ratty, we were on our way. We took a separate car from Pete and Patrick for some reason. Ronnie told me I just wasn't really paying attention at that time.

"So, why are you dragging me to this again?" I asked when we were in the car.

"Because I have to go, and my mate has to be with me at every possible moment. Besides it might be fun. You never know."

"Yes, because every event where the only people attending are council members is always a blast." I said sarcastically.

"In defense, it isn't just council members. It's all important people in town which means there will be council members, torture industry giants, professors, other people i can't remember, and plus all their mates."

"Great, even better." I muttered.

We drove up to the place, and let me just tell you, this place was so nice I'm sure queens didn't live in locations like this. It was huge and inside there was a ball room, chandlers, gold everywhere, everything you could think of that you can't afford, was there.

People were standing around talking with champagne in their hands that waiters brought around along with appetizers that looked complicated. There was dancing in the center where everyone was dancing around elegantly without a care in the world. It was absolutely beautiful and terrifying, especially for someone like me who has had very limited socialization in the past.

"Calm down. It won't be as bad as you think." Ronnie muttered in my ear, so no one could hear but me.

"I am calm."

"Then why do you look like you just saw a ghost?" He asked wrapping an arm around my waist. I could guarantee you not one fertile in this room was not attached to their dom in a similar fashion.

"Let's just get this over with."

Ronnie apparently knew lots of people here, which he never told me about, so it was basically the same for about an hour of this event. Honestly it went like this:

"Oh, Ronnie you grew up so much. Why, the last time I saw you, you were about this tall." Said person would say with their hand about a foot shorter than his height now.

Then Ronnie would say, "It has been quite a while. This is Max, my fertile." and then I would be introduced to said person.

"Oh, well aren't you quite the charmer." They would say and then go into explicit detail about when they got matched.

Then there was some small talk like how are kids? how's the house? how's the job? nice weather we are having, etc.

There would be a pause for a second, and then the person would bring up Ronnie's parents and then would talk about how they meet and how sorry they were. This was the part of the conversation that had seemed to get to Ronnie because after him talking to about five people, when this part came up he would tighten his grip on my waist. No one but me could really notice. It probably just looked like he was re-situating his arm.

He was about to go start another mind numbing conversation with some body that I would probably never see again, when I had to stop him.

"Ronnie, can we just wait to talk to another one of your apparent old Friends?" I asked pleaded.

"God, yes." He groaned. He obviously was enjoying this has much as I was.

"You want to go dance?" He asked.

"Uh, I don't know how to dance." I mumbled. He just smiled, actually smiled.

"I can teach you."

"No, it's fine. Besides, I don't think the best place to learn how to dance is in a ballroom full of people."

"Oh, come on, please. It will be fun." He tried to persuade me. I bit my lip he was doing that weird puppy dog eyed thing that just makes people say yes to anything.

"Fine, but don't let me make a fool of myself." I sighed. He had a full blown grin on his face when he lead me to the dance floor.

He grabbed my hand and put the other one one his shoulder. He then snaked an arm around my waist.

"Just follow my lead. Okay?" He asked.

"How do I do that?" I honestly don't have one single clue about how to dance at all.

"Just where you feel my feet go, follow them." He said. I nodded, and we started dancing.

It took me a while to get a hang of it, and I stepped on his feet multiple times. I apologized every single time, but he just smiled and kissed my forehead.

After multiple songs, I still didn't want to go talk with more boring people about boring things with my boreing fake interested face about their boring subjects. I mentioned this to Ronnie who seemed to agree, and let me go sit in eye shot of him in the corner.

A girl was sitting there who was chugging down a glass of what I assumed was alcohol, but I couldn't be sure. She had long, pin straight, thick, black hair that went down her back. Her skin was pale white which made her florescent green eyes stand out. She wasn't a twig and wasn't heavy, she was a perfect in between. She also seemed like every dom's type in a female fertile.

I sat next to her at the table, and she barely acknowledged my presence. There was a small awkward silence for a minute. What was I going to say to a complete stranger? I don't talk to people, at all. I don't enjoy it. It makes me feel weird.

"This thing is a drag. Isn't it?" She said randomly.

"Uh, yeah. It's pretty bad."

"Pretty bad? Pretty bad? Ha, that's a good one. I've been to plenty of these events, but I have never, never been to such a boring one. I swear these people fell off the boring tree."

"This is my first one, so I don't have anything to compare it to." I explained.

"Well, if you continue to go to these, people usually know more than just basic small talk."

"How many of these do you go to?"

"At lease once a week." She stated.

"Why would you want to bore yourself so much?" I asked shocked.

"My dom has to go to these things every time he gets invited. I don't know why. I can think of a million things that we could do on Friday nights that would be a lot more fun then this."

"Is he part of the council?"

"No, he's like the head honcho of the torture industry in the state and the top three in the county. So, he gets invited to boring business meetings from everyone."

"Does he own the company or something?"

"Yeah, his name is Oliver Sykes. He owns Judas Cradle Torture. He got bored one day like a week after we graduating high school, and was like 'darling, I'm going to start my own torture place today, don't wait up."

"Wow, that's like, wow. No wonder you go to these things all the time. I mean, I barely listen to anything about torturing, but I even know who that is."

"Yep, that would be the man I'm mated with. He's quite the dom." She said.

"Doesn't like every fertile just love him or something? I know kids at my school said that they wanted a guy like that."

"It can get a little weird having a dom with his own twisted way of fame, almost left him for it one time, but we deal with it. He always comes home at night, so I don't really care what all the other bitches think. But, enough about me what about you? I don't think I ever got your name, but unless I didn't say it. I'm Linda."

"Max."

"Well Max, you know my dom, so which one of these gentle men is your fine fellow?" She asked looking at the crowd.

"That idiot right there." I said pointing over to Ronnie. He saw us and smiled over.

"Oh, Ronnie. Oli was friends with his dad. They played poker or whatever together. He's a nice kid, causes wicked pain though. I can tell by your neck that you seemed to experience that earlier." She said smirking. My hand flew to my neck that I seemed to forget about all night with a blush covering my face.

"Um, yeah, there was this guy at school and he was being a jerk and Ronnie got mad and . . . yeah." I scrambled.

"Calm down. I've been there. Don't worry." She laughed.

"Sorry. It's still a little weird you know." I practically whispered.

"Been there, too. Let me guess, you weren't very excited about getting mated were you?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"Yeah, you got that feel to you. I can always pick out people like us."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The broken ones. The fertiles that were hurt so bad in their life that they can't trust anyone again. The ones that refuse to ever love again just because they think love only gets you hurt in the end. Those type of people."

"What makes you think I'm like that?" I asked a little shocked. I'm good at calling people, but this, this was just scary.

"The way you don't look people in the eye when you talk, but when you do it's for a brief second. That look in your eye when you pointed to Ronnie and he smiled at you. It was that same look that I used to look at Oli. That look of admiring someone but denying that you could ever feel anything but hate for them. Plus, you aren't marked yet. Only fertiles that are broken know about the loop holes, or at least want to use it."

"Um. . ." I was at a lose for words. What could I say to that? That I wasn't like that. I said it before I wasn't a liar, and that sounded pretty damn similar to my life.

"You should go. Ronnie is trying to get your attention." She said bringing me out of my thoughts. I looked over and he was trying to get my attention.

"Um, right. I'll see you when I see you I guess." I mumbled.

"Here. It has my house on the back, and Oli's work on the front. Though you don't really want to call that one if you are trying to reach me." I took the card from her hands and said my farewells.

I walked over to Ronnie who apparently just wanted to drag me in the hell of boredom with him. Then, I saw something. I saw something that I never in my life wanted to see ever, ever again. Something that shook me to my very core and made me want to just die now to get it over with. I saw my parents.