MALIDE (Modern AU)

She was sitting on their usual spot on the diner, waiting for Manon, when she noticed a group of boys checking her out from two tables in front. Elide was a pretty girl. Her hair as black as ink and eyes as dark as onyx. Her triangular face looked good on her despite people mostly prefering the oval shape. Trying not to meet the eyes of the green eyed boy who winked at her earlier, again, she drew her phone out of her bag and checked for Manon's text.

-
From: Manon
Abraxos needs to be fixed. Asterin will pick u up. Any problem.

-
Elide huffed, not confused with Manon not using a question mark even on text. She might as well shouldn't have asked her for her complaints since she couldn't give one, in the end. She raised her eyes from the phone when she saw the green eyed boy again, being urged by his friends to get up and talk to her. She even made another eye contact with him, boosting the boy's confidence to approach her.

She quickly panicked.

She couldn't be talking to him. Talking to a guy. Or any other except from the girls from her sorority, Blackbeak, because, it wouldn't have made a difference. She would just get hurt. With people asking things she couldn't give to them or them getting tired with her shortcoming.
She hastily texted Manon, fearing the guy more than Manon's slight irritation on her small demand.

-
To: Manon
Can u ask Asterin to come faster? Someone's approaching me.
-

"Hi," the guy greeted. Elide froze, her fingers hovered on her keypad, suspended in motion. She slowly set his phone down on the table and took her time looking up at the guy. The moment their eyes met, Elide's eyes beat triple times.

The guy was handsome, though in normal girl's standards and not in a Blackbeak member's. After all, Blackbeaks were used to handsome boys, immune to them and mostly the ones who made even the most renowned playboys cry in heartbreak. She wasn't hyperventilating because of his looks, or because of love at first sight. It was from huge panic. In the end, it appears now that she could see his face clearly, this wasn't the first time she saw this guy. The last time, he was still Elide Lochan, bound by the law to stay with his uncle Vernon Lochan, trapped on his old house and forced to do chores and earn their living. Though, in reality, she didn't really need to. She was left with a big land and a hefty sum of money by her deceased parents that she could have used for herself from the start, hadn't it been for her greedy uncle who spent half of it wasted on drugs, women, and gambling. He even had the nerve to gamble the land that was hers and lost it to a moustached man named Perrington. In anyway, she couldn't fathom whether to be thankful to the momentary loss of the land she originally grew up in because without that incident, she wouldn't have met Manon and turned her sorry life better. That, was a story for another time. But now, she needed to face this guy.

"I think it wouldn't be bad to ask to be acquainted to such a lovely girl as you," he started, pushing his blond hair back and tilting the side of his lips into a confident smirk.

Elide made a gurgling noise at the back of her throat, only raising the boy's confidence. Her hands were shaking atop her cellphone. She knotted her fingers tighter together, trying to hide her nervousness despite the guy's knowing look.

"My name is Valg, wouldn't you like to join our table right there," he proposed, pointing to his group of friends who were whispering and laughing quietly as if knowing and discussing a nasty secret they knew about her. Perhaps they did know something and were making fun of her, even taking bets.

"since it seems like, you are alone?" he added, raising an eyebrow as if daring her to say otherwise.

Elide bit her lip, only widening Valg's grin and making him run his tongue across his lips, as if he was a wild tiger waiting to pounce on an unassuming deer. She remembered two years ago, when she was outside in the farm, just coming back from milking the cows and limping her way through the cornfield, when said guy suddenly showed up in front of her, forcing her deeper into the field where no one ould see them, trying to take advantage of her. She was screaming, running her voice hoarse though thinking it was useless and trying to kick the boy in his groin despite her ruined foot which was also tied to her normal one, a sick idea by his uncle to prevent her from escaping. As if, she thought, she had anywhere to go.

Her useless protests didn't turn to be useless after all because luckily, Manon and Asterin were in the corn field that time too, being toured by his uncle Vernon for a business deal they were in. Something about the motorcycle trade, a business headed by Manon for the Blackbeak Sorority.

When Manon and Asterin heard her shrieks, they were irritated enough by it to come and check what it was about. When Manon saw her sprawled below the male, she had the bored look of a cold hearted that she was afraid she'd leave her be and go on her way to let the man debase her. She felt relieved when Asterin started shouting and helped her up and away from the unguilty looking man and stared at Asterin and her golden hair as if she was the living sun. But even that didn't last long when she saw his uncle and realized he didn't even care that she almost got raped and started talking to the guy with some other business, ignoring the three of them, to Manon's huge irritation.

She went out of her reverie when she felt Valg's grip on her forearm. She looked at the hand gripping her and at Valg's face with an emotion revealing his familiarity of her face. Elide's heartbeat went quicker. Doubled, tripled... she couldn't go back again. It was a few more months before she would be legally an adult and free to access her inheritance that were witheld from her uncle. She had the sinking feeling that Valg was willing to drag out of her will back to his uncle for another deal that could benefit him. She couldn't even start to think what other kind of punishments her uncle could stomach to do. Thinking of her bound feet even when she didn't do anything before... what more now...

The door chimed, signalling the entrance of a new customer. But it wasn't only once. The bell chimed 13 times, garnering the customers' attention. With it, came the sudden silence andd a few gasps of admiration from a table of teenage girls. Elide turned her look on the group of girls that filed in as if they owned the diner. She met eyes with Manon who briefly looked at the guy holding her forearm and Asterin who saw it and bared her teeth threateningly at Valg. He quickly let go of her, to Elide's shock and also his, based on the way he stared at his hand as if it betrayed him and at Elide as if asking him how it happened. She had no idea.

The only sound was Manon's boot heels clicking on the floor, no other sound from the remaining Thirteen's feet as if only Manon could claim the noise. When they were in front of them, Manon and Asterin in front and the rest behind them, the friends of Valg sitted from the table stood and joined him, as if bodyguards wary of the girls.

"They should be," Elide thought.

Valg stared at Manon who was ignoring him then at Asterin baring her teeth at him, as if asking for a fight, but his face remained impassive though he stepped a little distance away from Elide.

"Elide Blackbeak," Manon called her, ignoring anyone else.

Valg and his friends flinched.

Blackbeak.

Because she was a Blackbeak. And you couldn't mess with them. If you did, you'd be gone or turned to a whimpering baby before you knew it.

"Manon," she said and nodded at her.

This time, the group of guys and some of the people who knew what Blackbeaks were and what calling the Lead Rider by her name alone meant, had their eyes slightly opened in shock. This didn't go unnoticed by Asterin and Manon cocked her head to one side, already asking Elide what she would get in return later, when it was just the two of them in their room in the sorority house.

Onyx eyes met gold ones. Manon smirked in amusement.

"Let's go, newling," she said and walked away, not even looking back if she and the other Thirteen was following her.

She knew they all are.