• – (A/N – whenever you see this dot, that means the chapter will be set in the past – i.e. it’s a memory)

Also, for those who like music, I wrote the first half of this chapter to Pumped Up Kicks.

Enjoy!

OHHH also, an anime is mentioned here, so please avoid spoiling it if you’re up to date with it. Thanks!

—–

Hagen’s P.O.V

As I climb out the backseat of the car, I carefully close the door behind me, knowing exactly how psycho Damon could get when we slammed the doors.

“I’m leaving ten minutes after schools done,” he announces as he steps out and passes his icy gaze over all of us, “be here or walk home.”

“Like if you’d ever leave your favourite sibling behind,” Josey says with a smirk as she tosses her bag over his shoulder.

Damon raises a brow in question before he looks around with confusion, “That’s weird, I don’t see Levi here.”

Josey scowls while Damon and I don’t bother trying to keep our laugh short, even Peter struggles to hide his snort as Damon locks up the car with a satisfied smirk.

“I’m serious, Jo, I don’t want to wait for any of you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say as I grab Josey’s shoulder and lead her away, “we’ll be on time.”

“More like I’ll be on time and make sure you are too,” she mutters as we make our way inside the building that hoisted way too many of my nightmares.

New day, same hell.

“That’s why I love you,” I reply with a grin and a nudge.

Josey rolls her eyes and tries to fight a smile, but there’s nothing in all the realms that can stop her from grinning at me as she nudges me back.

“What do you have first period?” I ask while I scan the busy hallways for my friends.

“Martin,” she replies with a grimace, “you?”

“Conwell,” I mutter with a similar shudder. History was not my strong suit.

Yeah, but you’re passing so we’re going to take all the wins we can get – Zyair replies encouragingly.

Zyair was literally the only reason I was making it through this school year.

I’d never been the scholarly type, that was no secret, but none of the stuff we used to learn had ever been particularly hard. Then middle school happened, and well… my brain had been struggling to keep up ever since.

It took a particular hit this year though, 8th grade was no fucking joke but Zyair’s constant support was what was keeping my head above the water and I made sure to thank him for it every single day.

More like every other day…

As we turn down a new corridor and spot Josey’s friends, she heads their way but not without the same reminder I’d been hearing since last night, “Don’t forget, the first world war was four years long, 4 not 6,” Josey repeats, “that one was like 3 marks, so don’t mess it up.”

“I won’t,” I promise, not for the first time eternally grateful to have my own personal cheatsheet for a sibling. “Meet for lunch?”

“Obviously,” she replies before rushing off to join her friends.

While I pass by the group, I give them the usual salute but my eyes can’t help but linger on Radha for a moment.

Radha.

She was new to school, only transferred last month, but she’d somehow ended up friends with Josey’s group, despite her being not nearly as rowdy as the rest.

Radha was probably the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. I knew there were a lot of things to her that made her pretty, like her big brown eyes, her long perfect hair and that wide smile she sometimes shared, but you just had to look at her once to see how gorgeous she was.

I didn’t think I could ever have a chance with someone like her, but Radha sometimes smiled at me like she was doing now, and I was suddenly tasked with playing it cool while I tried to pretend my entire face wasn’t glowing red.

Awww, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about! – Zyair coos as I drop my head and speedwalk away from the group as quickly as I can manage – your first crush! This is a normal part of life! Monumental…but normal.

She’s not my crush – I reply while I grip the straps to my bag just a little tighter.

So then why is your heart beating this fast and why is your neck only getting hotter?

I don’t reply, focusing instead of dealing with the horrible blushing situation.

Hagen – Zyair says gently – there’s nothing wrong with a having a crush, or admitting it to me. I’m here to help remember? Best friends forever?

I snort a little as I stop at my locker and take the chance to breathe in and out deeply.

I’m not good with… girls – I mumble as I rest my head against the cold metal –especially the ones I like. I get all stuttery and then I say something dumb.

Another natural thing – Zyair replies, as confident as ever – let’s take this slowly, alright? There’s no pressure here. I’ll be your guide while you just enjoy it, and we’ll see what happens, okay?

Alright.

Just alright? – Zyair asks while he mentally nudges me – Come on, say ‘thank you my very best friend’.

I roll my eyes but a laugh slips out anyway – Thank you, Zyair, my very best friend forever.

That’s more like it. Now stop laughing to yourself, people are noticing and you look like a weirdo.

I immediately shut my mouth and stuff my head into my locker, not daring to make another sound.

───────────────────

“Okay, man. Spill,”

I jolt a little in my seat as Darius slides into the seat beside me just as Rubin steals the one on my other side, and the rest of the guys circle my desk like a cackle of hyenas descending on prey.

“Spill what?” I ask cautiously.

I’d scarfed down Ruben’s Doritos during break but I’d been careful this time, I didn’t think anyone saw.

“You know,” Darius says with a nudge and the type of smile that gave me the heebeegeebees.

“I do?” I question.

I wasn’t going to admit shit, they’d have to prove that I was guilty first.

“We’re not talking about my chips, Hagen,” Ruben says with a flick to my head, “but I will be coming back to that later.”

Shit.

“We’re talking about Radha,” Ruben finishes as he drops his voice to a low whisper while he wiggles his brows, “how the fuck are you getting that?”

Okay, so not the path we were heading down…

“Ben saw you two talking after math,” Dario explains, his eyes wide and frantic like he was on something, “said you had her giggling and twirling her hair and shit.”

I glance up at Ben who makes a show of twirling his hair just like Radha had this morning, but while Radha had me stumbling, Ben only made me want to puke in my own mouth.

“So, how the hell are you getting a girl like that?” Ruben presses, giving me another nudge that was just getting annoying at this point.

“I’m not getting anything,” I say while I scratch the back of my head, “we’re just friends.”

The guys don’t even entertain that, only scoff with obvious disbelief.

“Okay, keep your cards close to your chest, whatever,” Dario replies as he draws himself closer, “at least tell us what you’ve done.”

“We haven’t done shit,”

That was the truth. In the two weeks I’d been following Zyair’s advice, Radha and I had talked, shared a few laughs and maybe I did get her number today, but I definitely wasn’t sharing that with the guys.

The second they found out, they’d pry it from my cold dead hands after killing me for sport.

Honestly, I didn’t think Zyair knew what he was talking about when he said that ‘attentive and kind’ won the race, but everything he’d said so far had worked, so I wasn’t going to fault my new sensei, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to talk about Radha with the guys.

Zyair said that talk like that would make gossip that would spread and make things go bad, fast.

Very good, young grasshopper – I shove Zyair away and swallow my chuckle as I look around my friends, trying to appear lost so they’d back off.

They wouldn’t but thankfully, Mr.Arda walks in just then, yelling instructions for everyone to get to their seats for our Spanish class. They all listen, but it doesn’t stop all the guys in the class from staring at me from over their shoulders.

“We’ll get your secrets eventually, Calderon,” Dario whispers while he points both his fingers at his eyes and then me.

“Ignore that idiot,” Ruben says from my other side as he offers me a smile, “whatever going on there, we’re happy for you dude.”

I return the smile and force myself to nod instead of saying all the stupid things that were running through my head.

Like how I was happy for me too or how much Radha made me feel like the luckiest guy in the world when she just looked at me.

Maybe I shouldn’t be worried about the crazy static feeling I got in my chest whenever I thought of her, but I wasn’t. I kind of liked it, which was good because it only grew bigger and bigger the more we got to know one another.

Yeah, I’d seen just about every relationship in my year crash and burn into arachry, I knew how this shit went. But this was the first time I liked someone, and more than that, the first time they liked me too.

Usually, I couldn’t keep my foot out of my mouth long enough to get a girl to look at me, and when I managed not to, I always managed to mess it up somehow.

I hadn’t done that yet with Radha! So yeah, it might be new and barely anything yet, but I liked that crazy feeling in my chest that made me feel like I couldn’t breathe when I was around her.

I liked being into someone, getting excited to see them in class and hoping they felt the same way too.

I hoped Radha did, I mean, I think she did – if I was being extremely optimistic. She always went out of her way to say hi to me, she started waiting for me when we had classes together and sometimes when I tried to sneak a glance at her, I caught her doing the same.

Okay, settle down grasshopper – Zyair says with a gentle chuckle – you’re about to vibrate out of your seat.

I still, only then realising that I was tapping my leg like crazy.

Thanks, Z. Sending my love and appreciation through our bond, I smile to myself when I feel him send a flood of it back.

All in all, I liked this crush thing, a whole lot, and even if it was destined to crash and burn, I was just excited to see where it went.

───────────────────

“Don’t forget, t-”

“Ten minutes after school finishes, we know!” I say before Damon can make his speech again.

I was already out the door and didn’t have time to wait for him when Radha was waiting for me before we had to split for first period.

Damon frowns at me before he grins, “Is she waiting?” when I nod his grin grows even wider, “nice.”

“You literally could’ve picked anyone, Hagen, anyone, and you just had to go for one of my friends,” Josey complains in a low whine while Peter rubs at her shoulder comfortingly.

“Yes,” I reply with a chuckle. I barely manage to duck the pencil case she launches at my head.

Flipping her off, I glance between Peter and Damon, “See you guys later.”

“L-Love you!” Peter pipes in which makes me stop in my tracks so I could tackle him in a hug.

“Love you too, Peter,” I mumble against his chest, smiling widely while he pats my head before I finally dashed off.

I knew I looked like a lovesick pup, rushing into school so I could spend the twenty minutes before class with a girl I’d only been talking to for two weeks, but I couldn’t help it.

Radha wasn’t just some girl.

She was the nicest one I’d ever met and not just for show when the right people were around. She was genuinely kid, and sweet, but she wasn’t a pushover. She could stand up for herself whenever she felt like it, which explained why Josey liked her in the first place.

She was funny and smart, and just… Radha. But that wasn’t even the best part!

The best part about Radha was that she fed me.

And she loved doing it. Like fucking loved it.

She liked cooking and made her lunch meals for her and her siblings every single day, so she made little extra treats for me sometimes which just secured the hold she already had over my stupid heart.

Forget how pretty Radha was, she was everything any guy could ever ask for in a girl, which was exactly why I was going to ask her on a proper date after school.

I’d waited long enough and we messaged every single night, I’d even gotten Zyair’s official stamp of approval, so now, I just had to cross my fingers and hope she’d say yes.

“Radha,” I call when I spot her waiting for me at my locker.

Greeting me with one of her fucking amazing smiles, Radha gives me a little wave, “Hey Hagen. You’re in a good mood.”

“Well, good company tends to do that,” I reply which makes her smile grow even when she rolls her eyes.

“Whatever you say, but I’m not happy with you,”

My heart drops and even Zyair freezes with panic as he begins to cross-reference everything we’d ever said.

“And why is that?” I ask slowly as I struggle to keep the panic from my voice.

You haven’t said anything stupid since Friday! – he whines while he paces – and that was to Josey! Do you think she snitched?!

It’s Josey!

“You told me that I just ′had to watch Attack on Titan’, knowing exactly what kind of turn it would take and now I’m sleep deprived because I need to know it’s all worth it in the end,” Radha explains before I can start hyperventaliting.

I release a sigh of relief while Zyair takes a moment to reboot.

“I barely got to school this morning,” she says with a small smile as she rests her back against the lockers while I open mine.

“I’m sorry,” I reply sarcastically while I start filling in my books for the day.

“No, you’re not,”

“No, I’m not,” I confirm with a grin.

Radha’s heart skips a beat before it beats a little faster, but she looks away before it can show on her face, “Well, now I guess my entire weekend is filled in. I’ve got to finish it.”

Like if Radha was already amazing, her giving anime a chance and actually loving it was her basically securing an anchor on my heart.

There was no prying me away from her now.

“Well, I plan to rewatch it as well,” I say as nonchalantly as I can manage, “so maybe we can watch it together.”

Radha lifts her brown eyes to mine as she blinks at me, trying to read me carefully to see if she was reading me right.

“If you want,” I add quickly, “I like watching stuff on my own a lot so if you’re like that, that’s totally fine. We don’t have to do anything together. But I-I m-”

The bell saves me from swallowing my tongue as it rattles at the end of the hall.

When it stops, I keep my mouth shut and Radha smiles gently at me. Pulling out a small box from her bag, she hands it over and eyes me knowingly, “We had extra cupcakes at home.”

I was going to marry this girl.

“I’ve got to get to class, but after school, I’d love to hear more about all the things we don’t have to do together,” she says with a giggle that sends an arrow straight through my heart.

I nod my head dumbly, incapable of doing anything else as I watch her walk away.

Only when she’s out of eyesight do I do the excited dance I’d barely kept inside of myself.

People are watching – Zyair warns.

I didn’t care.

I had a crush on a girl who liked me back, and I was going to ask her on a date and she was going to say yes.

───────────────────

Gripping my bag straps tightly, I try to keep myself still so I didn’t pace around like a fool, but it was hard when my heart was beating in my chest like the wings of a humming bird.

The idea of asking Radha out had been all nice and dandy before, but now that the moment was actually here, I gave myself a good five seconds before I passed out.

What if she said no?

What if she just thought we were really good friends?

What if I made a fool of myself and she ran away?

None of that is going to happen – Zyair promises calmly while he encourages me to take deep breaths – Radha likes you, I know it and so does everyone else. Just like they know you like her. So we’re going to be calm, collected and she’s going to say yes.

Yeah, yeah. Everything would go fine and then I would be on my way to having my first girlfriend.

But what if it didn’t…

Before I could psyche myself out of it, Radha turns the corner with one of her friends, smiling and chatting to her easily while I tried to avoid a heart attack at age 14.

I wait for her to spot me but she doesn’t, almost walking straight past me as she carries on talking to her friend.

“Radha,” I call making her head shoot up.

I smile at her, rubbing my sweating palms off against my jeans as I take a shakey breath in.

Radha stares at me, but not in the cute way she did sometimes when I caught her off guard and she didn’t know what to say and fell into stammers. She just stares at me, almost blankly, her eyes narrowing as if she was trying to find something in me.

“Um, yeah?” She says carefully, sounding curious and almost guarded.

I frown, not understanding what game was going on here. If she was teasing, I was lost and if this was a test, then I was about to fail it.

“Can we talk?” I ask awkwardly, not knowing if this was one of those times Zyair warned me about where you didn’t want to push a girl.

Looking from me to her friend who just shrugs, Radha eyes me again. She looked confused like she didn’t know who I was, which was just making me even more nervous about asking her out.

I knew people said girls could be confusing, but this was the first time I was seeing it firsthand.

Oh Goddess, maybe this was a bad idea after all.

Don’t panic – Zyair warns – just breathe and take this slowly.

With a nod, Radha says bye to her friend before she steps in front of me, offering me a kind smile, “um, sure, but…” she frowns a little, “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

My eyebrows pull together as I tilt my head to the side a little, “uhh Hagen,” I reply with a chuckle, “and if this a game, you’re going to have to stop because we both know I’m slow.”

Radhs rubs at her arms a little, looking uncomfortable and a little lost, “You’re the one who wanted to speak to me.”

My frown deepens as I stare at her, trying to blink past my confusion as I pass a hand through my hair, “Yeah, like we agreed we’d do later,” I say with a wavering smile, “about all the things we won’t do. Well, about anime but you know what I mean.”

The way Radha stared at me said the complete opposite.

“I’m sorry,” she says as she shakes her head and backs away, “but I think you have the wrong person.”

“The wrong person?” I echo, my head hurting now the same way my heart was beginning to, “Radha, what is going on?”

“I don’t know,”

Maybe this was one of those girl moments.

“If I did something wrong, can you just tell me what it was so I can fix it?”

Radha takes another step back and her eyes turn angry as she looks around. Clutching her books tighter to her chest she lifts her chin, “Look, if this is some kind of hazing prank on the new girl, you’ve got me.”

“It’s not a prank,” I say rubbing at my forehead a little, “I’m… okay I know I can be slow sometimes, but we talked this morning and everything was fine. Now, you’re pretending not to know me.”

“I don’t,” Radha says almost pleadingly.

Only when she steps back again do I notice all the eyes lingering on us, others taking in the scene to the situation that surely must’ve seemed strange to everyone else.

With how much we talked, it was common knowledge now that Radha and I had a thing for each other, but when I looked around, everyone was looking at me as if I was crazy.

All eyes were on me, deep frowns mixed with humoured gazes, but nothing close to the confusion I felt raging inside of me.

“So you don’t know me?” I question sarcastically as I look back to Radha, “you’ve never spoken to me once? You’ve never messaged me after school or brought a cupcake to school for me?”

Radha’s gaze shifts from anger and confusion to a fearful one now as she looks around, seeming so scared as if she expected someone to jump out at her any moment.

“No, I do not know you and I’ve never done any of those things,” Radha says as she struggles to look at me, “now, please just leave me alone.”

Walking away before I can say anything else, Radha rushes down the hallway without so much as a glance back while I stay frozen in my place.

I wait, for those who still stared at me to announce that this was some prank, for someone to say something that would make me feel like I wasn’t going crazy in my own head. But they just keep staring and whispering, and Radha doesn’t come back.

“I’ve literally never seen someone fail to take a hint that badly,”

“I know I zone out a lot, but I’ve literally never seen them even talk before,”

“What a weirdo,”

“I heard she was bullied in her old school, to try and fuck with her hair is such a dick move,”

“If he wasn’t Damon’s brother, I would’ve said something, but I like my jaw unbroken.”

“Hagen,”

Through all the voices building around me, my mind zones in on the one I knew best as I raise my gaze to meet Josey’s. Identical brown eyes stare back at me, filled with worry as she rests her hands on my shoulders.

What happened – she asks through the link, knowing ears were tuned in.

I-I don’t know – I reply as I try to keep my eyes on her and only her, but I can’t help but dart my gaze around to all those whispering about me – I was talking to Radha and she just… she acted like she never met me.

Josey frowns, finally delivering the confusion I’d felt in abundance – Why the hell would she do that?

I don’t know – I reply, real panic starting – I don’t know if I made her angry, but s-she just didn’t want to talk to me.

Josey’s gaze turns murderous as she looks off in the direction Radha went – I’ll go talk to her. In the meantime, can you…

Josey’s words fade to nothing in my head as my gaze snaps to a glint in the nearby trophy glass, the shine of it drawing my attention but its not what holds it.

It’s the lingering purple hue that taints the glass just a little, turning the normally clear surface to something new that I recognised down to the marrow in my bones. Magic.

My confusion evaporates in an instant, disappearing like all of Radha’s memory of me the longer I stare at the glass casing.

There was no need to wonder, to contemplate or search for answers when they sat as clear as day right there.

“Nikola,” I whisper numbly as I force myself to look back to Josey, stopping her mid-rant about what she’d do to her friend if she hurt me.

“What?” Josey repeats dully.

“It was Nikola,” I repeat as I sniff the air for magic, finding it all around me now that I thought to look for it, “he did this.”

Josey’s mouth falls open as she looks around, her shock nothing compared to what I felt inside.

It was more than anger, more than hurt and pain from having something… someone I cared about snuffed out in an instant, it was that heavy weight of knowing there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

“We’ll tell dad and Aunt K, they’ll make him fix this,” Josey says quickly, but I shake my head. “Come on Hagen, you know they will. And if they don’t, then we’ll go fuck him up. I don’t care if he’s nine, he can’t just do this to you. We’ll make him leave you alone. We’ll-”

“He won’t,” I say, cutting her off before she could get herself worked up, “He won’t stop. No matter what we do or say, he’ll do something to me or to Radha, literally anything to keep her away from me.”

I knew that as a fact. There was no talking to Nikola, no getting through to someone with a skull that thick, who refused to see things through any other gaze but his own.

He must’ve found out about Radha and I, and because I was his in his fucked up little head, he’d decided to do what he thought was necessary to keep me.

He wouldn’t undo this. He’d sooner die.

“There’s nothing we could do,” I grind out as I grip my back and push past Josey.

Even if Aunty Kat overpowered Nikola’s magic and fixed whatever he’d done to make Radha forget me, he’d find another way – he always did.

No matter what anyone did or said, he’d keep forcing his way into my life, altering it until it suited him and only him, never me. Because that was the type of person he was, a selfish piece of shit.

I don’t know why I’d ever thought this would be different.

Of course, he’d take this away too, Radha, my first crush… the first person to ever like me back just gone because he decided that I was his.

Hate couldn’t ever hope to describe what I felt for Nikola Amorenia.

—————–

So… that was rough…

Thoughts???

Thoughts on the memory?

Thoughts on Hagan having a crush and Nikola’s actions???

Honestly, I did not think this would be the first type of memory chapter I wrote, but I was stuck on where to go next and way too many people were worshipping Nikola as if he didn’t fully torment Hagen growing up. And I realised, a scene like this was vital before we carried on with their current state so people could understand why Hagen is still resistant to Nikola being his mate, beyond the cases of him being straight and older than him.

Does that make sense?

Even so, that last bit really fucked me up. I think I teared up cause I’m PMSing, but it’s also cause I remember what my first crush was like, all those emotions and feelings and to have that snuffed out when it was lucky enough to be reciprocated. PAIN.

Anyway, leave all your thoughts and comments! I’d love to hear them.

For those asking for my update schedule – chapters come when they come.

Next up, is either a Patreon extra or a Master chapter, we’ll see how I feel.

Until next time,

Byeeeeeeeeeeeee Humansssssssssss