CHAPTER 56: 56-IAN THINKS I AM HOT?

Clementine:

I watched all their faces after I finished telling them exactly what would happen in the basement. I noticed their body language, it reeked of guilt.

"Now, if you believe you want to die, then you should die alone. I don’t want to be dragged into the death penalty with you," I said, looking straight at Ian, because he was the only one who didn’t look very guilty.

He slammed his hand on the table and left for the bathroom. I guessed he took his cigarette with him, planning to smoke there.

Now that we were all just standing around awkwardly, Haiden stepped forward, probably to say something that had been on his mind. I could tell he was pretty bothered.

"They are going to send warriors to look for Sadie?" he asked.

And although I was so angry at him that I didn’t want to speak nicely or even normally, the question was about an innocent girl. I could only imagine how anxious he must be, thinking his child was out there.

"Yes. They promised we can go to the station tomorrow to watch them leave for the north," I stated calmly, in a low and respectful tone.

"Oh," he said, nodding his head. "Then we must sleep so we can get up early. I don’t know what time the train will leave," he muttered, heading to his bed.

Watching him so lost actually made me feel bad for him. Nobody deserves to be away from their lover or their child.

Yorick and Troy held their heads low and crawled into their beds. I sat down on my bed and lay straight, staring at the ceiling with my arm resting over my forehead. That’s when Ian came out and sat on his bed. I began to smell the smoke of his cigarette, which is how I knew he didn’t want to smoke alone in the bathroom and had come out to give us all a headache. Usually, the others would also smoke with him, but I guess tonight nobody was really interested. Did that make Ian acknowledge that he could also go to the patio and smoke there? No. He continued to smoke.

"Can you please not smoke right beside my head? I have a headache and the smoke is making it worse." Haiden requested rather nicely.

Ian didn’t turn to look at him, and their beds were side by side, so I could only imagine why Haiden was getting bothered.

"Dude, I don’t give a fuck. You can go and sleep anywhere else then."

However, the way Ian dismissed his simple request got everyone’s head turned to look at Ian.

"I’m not going to ask you twice." Haiden warned him. At this point, the atmosphere in the room started to grow very heavy. Of course, I understood Haiden’s point, but who would actually tell Ian he was wrong? Sometimes it seemed like he wanted an altercation just to take his anger out, the kind he hid behind a smirking face.

"Good. Don’t ask me twice because the result will be the same." Ian teased him, but not in a playful way.

"Come on, Ian. Stop doing that. You know he’s hurting. Just put it out or go smoke on the patio," Troy said, siding with Haiden.

"You stay out of it," Ian snapped at Troy. "Just because you got to be intimate with Clementine, you think you’re the real deal? She’s not someone to be proud of."

As soon as Ian said that, Haiden sat up in bed, and so did I. I didn’t understand why Ian was dragging me into the middle of their mess.

"Hey, keep her name out of your mouth," Yorick said, getting up and pointing at Ian, who started chuckling.

"What? You two suddenly realized you want your friend back? Oh, sorry. She was your girlfriend. So do you want your girlfriend back?" Ian said to Yorick in such a taunting way that Yorick’s face clenched.

At this point, I had no clue what was wrong with Ian. He knew he was getting outnumbered, but he seemed completely unbothered. He couldn’t care less what anyone thought of him.

"You two were making out in the North?" Haiden, who had spent the entire week in the North with a pregnant woman, suddenly started pointing fingers at me and Troy.

"It was during a task. We had made a plan to fool the faun," Troy started to explain, but Yorick began to scoff.

"Yeah, and probably me as well," Yorick said, pointing at his chest.

"What?" I asked, confused. I didn’t understand what was going on. Who was fighting with whom? What was the real issue?

And then there was Ian. After sparking a fire, he had sat back to smoke. As my eyes landed on him, I saw him staring right back at me. That’s when I straightened my spine and stepped between the three alphas.

"Stop it!" I screamed, and they suddenly went silent. "Nobody has the right to talk about me. What I do, why I do it, and who I do it with is none of your business. And I will not tolerate you arguing over my actions or my choices." I hissed, warning the three of them one by one, the harshest look on my face.

"It is his fault. He always starts a fire and then sits back, enjoying watching everyone’s world burn." I pointed at Ian, and thankfully they all looked at him.

"He was the one who actually lied to Haiden." Finally, Troy remembered. But I guess it wouldn’t matter, because he had told Haiden before as well. So it was really Haiden’s fault for grabbing onto threads just to make me look like the guilty one.

"What? What are you looking at me for?" Ian asked Haiden. "You were the one focusing on Clementine back then. And now, because you’re not getting satisfaction from arguing with her just because she looks hot, you want to argue with me?"

Ian using that word for me was eerie. His actions never showed that he found me attractive. There were times when he’d actually call me an ugly duckling or say I was the ugliest. So for him to say that now, I didn’t understand what his mindset was.