DING

Victoria jumped at the sound and stared back to her phone on the end table. Smiling she hopped down onto her bed and picked it up:

who is this?

Victoria, isn’t this Chanyeol?

No, it’s Baekhyun. He gets our numbers mixed up. Where are ya’ll going?

Victoria stared down at the phone and gulped. Rubbing her head, Vic tries to think of the best response.

Can you give me Chanyeol’s number then?

After you tell me where you’re going ;)

Shaking her head, Vic grins at the phone. “Alright you little .”

Hell. they have a nice buffet. :p number?

The text takes a while to come in and Victoria stares at the phone expectantly.

Sounds spicy, why don’t you try purgatory? Dogs gotta eat

Laughing, Victoria presses call and waits for Baekhyun to answer. The phone rings twice before he picks up. “Oh you didn’t like my joke?” he asks. Vitoria can hear him smirking through the line.

“I didn’t have a comeback,” she laughs. “Now come on, I’m embarrassed enough I sent the text to the wrong number, can I talk to Chanyeol?”

“It could have been worse,” Baekhyun says. She can hear him moving around on the other side of the line. “It could have been a or something y.”

Victoria shakes her head. “Can’t give it all away at once. You should know that by now.”

“Yeah, you’re a prude. How could I forget,” he teases. “But really Chanyeol isn’t here, he went hunting with our father and a few of our uncles. They won’t be back until next week.”

Victoria frowns and picks at her comforter. “Oh, okay… You didn’t want to hunt?”

“Nah, I have stuff to take care of here,” he says. Vic hears something crash and Baekhyun says, “, sorry. Hang on.” She hears him move the phone and yell something else before he comes back. “Sorry, my sister left her all over the house and I keep running into it.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Victoria smiles. Getting up from her bed she walks over to her window and sits on the ledge.

“I have two sisters and two brothers,” he says. “Chanyeol and I are the youngest, but my sister is only a few years older than us. She was in one of your classes freshman year, I think. Some art class or something. She was a senior.”

“How do you know what class I had in freshman year?”

Baekhyun laughs lightly, “Because I stalk you obviously.”

“Oh whatever.”

She heard him sigh. “After I told her about Marcus beating his girlfriend the freshman year she told me to watch him, make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else. You happened to date him and I told her who you were, she recognized you.”

“So when did the stalking start?” Vic laughs. Looking out into the trees behind her house, she shakes her head thinking about the wolves she compared Baekhyun to.

“About twenty minutes ago when you texted me,” he laughs. She can hear people talking in the background as well as Baekhyun shushing them. “So what makes you want to take my brother out?”

Although it was a question, Victoria heard something in his voice change. It went from light hearted to almost angry. She ignored it and cleared . “Nothing in particular,” she lied. “I just figured why not.”

“He’s not into you.” The blunt response caught her off guard a second. The hurt set in second. “Not the way you’d apparently want him to be,” Baekhyun continued digging the knife in. “Chanyeol isn’t looking for a relationship.”

Pushing down her hurt, Victoria let her anger show in her voice. “Well neither was I, Baekhyun.” She did all she could to spit his name at him. Standing from the window she began pacing in her room. “And either way how do you know what he could be looking for? You aren’t his keeper.”

“No, I’m apparently yours,” he snapped at her. “Whenever your bored or you see thing that aren’t there. Who has to come and comfort the child? I do. I’m the one dragged along every time. Great fun it is.”

“ you, Baekhyun,” she spit at him.

“Oh so now you’re just   going to switch between us, huh? Chanyeol doesn’t want you so now, again, I have to-”

Victoria threw the phone at her bed, not wanting to deal with him anymore. Red faced, she marched to her closet, she changed into her work out clothes in a huff. He’s such an . She thought to herself. Comfort my . Mentally cursing him, she snatched up her ipod and slipped it into her arm band, shoving headphones into her ears. Taking the stairs two at a time, she gave a wave to Maggie before jogging out the back door. Continuing to curse the cherry-haired beauty, Victoria jogged into the forest.

A few weeks ago, she would be traumatized at the thought of entering the trees. Reese had helped with that, tripling Vic’s training days and hours. He had insured her that she would become a lethal machine by the time he was done with her, and she quickly took his words to heart. In the beginning, he started her with laps in the pool. Three hundred of them. After the laps, she got a ten minute break before he took her down to the home gym for weight training. After that, she would spare with him for hours. He kept her on a strict diet as well. Currently, she wa in the process of Ketoacidosis, resting her body into burning all fats.

It had been almost a month since she graduated, and Victoria was becoming a physical warrior. At this point, the woods were nothing to her. Let the wolves come, she told herself. I’ll be sure they’ll never come back.

Blaring heavy metal into her ears, Victoria began a mad dash through the forest. Running became her outlet for anger over the last week. After her call with Baekhyun, she realized her anger had been spiking quite high lately. Every little thing would set her off. The running helped. She would run until her legs burned, and then run some more. Some days, she ran so long her legs basically gave out beneath her.

The further she ran into the trees, the more trails she discovered. At first, she did laps in the part she knew, but when those were not enough, she began to venture. She had come across a few animals, most ran from her, but she didn’t see any wolves anymore. Victoria was beginning to think she had imagined it.

Today was different for her though. That morning, she had gotten a call from her mother explaining that it would be longer than they originally thought. Her mother claimed it would be another month or two before they returned home. Victoria’s anger had spiked higher than before, and she ventured the woods blindly. She recklessly let the branches slap at her arms like whips as she tore down unfamiliar trails. Some partials over grown, forcing her to jump over logs that had fallen over and rip through briar patches.

Her arms and legs and scratches on the as she tore through the trees. Miss stepping over a root, Victoria tumbled to the ground, loud curses falling from her lips in the process. Standing and dusting herself off, Victoria let out a frustrated cry and turned towards the nearest tree, slamming her fist into the wood.

This was so unlike her. Victoria Drake was calm and collect, but the last month wore her down. Deep down, she knew she wasn’t really angry. She knew she was frustrated and depressed, and she knew it wasn’t because of her parents. It was because of him. Again, her fist slammed into the wood. What is wrong with me? She cried in her head. This wasn’t like her ot get so torn up over a boy, but this wasn’t just a boy to her. This was Baekhyun. This was the boy she was hung up on for years. The boy who treated her like , and she loved it. She wouldn’t trade the nicest boy in the world for Baekhyun.

“I hate you!” Victoria screamed as she drove her fists into the tree. Bark broke away in chunks and blood covered the bareness beneath it, but she didn’t stop. Her knuckles were broken and bloody, but she didn’t even notice. She took all her frustrations out on the tree, unyielding.

As her stamina drained and her rage cooled, Victoria stepped back and looked at her work. Tree was too fazed by her, but her fists were. Blood dripped onto the ground, some having splattered onto her clothes from the impact. Cursing, she shook them out. The pain was quickly coming to her senses, but she didn’t care. Walking over to a nearby fallen log, she took a seat, wiping off her knuckles on her gym shorts.

Sniffling, she glanced around at the trees. Through them, she could make out a trail not too far from her, but Victoria wasn’t ready to go back and answer Maggie and Reeses questions.