Angel Johnson never dreamed of being anyone's mate. She wasn't like the rest of the girls who dreamed of a man coming to save her or who spent hours of her life daydreaming about her future wedding. She had been through more in her life than she ever wanted anyone to know and closeness with anyone wasn't exactly in her plan for her future.
At the age of 14 she watched her parents' marriage fall apart in the face of difficulty. Until that point she lived her life believing that love was real and a pack of werewolves was like family. Then the alpha of her pack decided to separate her family and to steal her mother away despite her parents being mates. The whole thing changed her life significantly, but the real tragedy came when her alpha decided he would have to take her if he couldn’t have her mother. She endured nearly a year of being on the run until finally being pursued by a rogue wolf, who she later found was only using her to get to her pack. In a matter of weeks everyone that she knew was dead except her sister. The two girls spent years running from what they thought was certainly death. They made a point to never get too close to anyone and Angel did that very well with it. They built a life on the foundation of secrets they had kept so well in a small town with the presence of a very large pack. They blended in perfectly. Angel's sister, Amber even found a man that she loved in her boyfriend, Jason. But Amber even allowed him to believe that her parents had been killed in a car accident. No one could know the truth about where they had come from. They had plenty of money from their pack's supply after they were all murdered but they did not escape without heavy emotional baggage.
Angel had the hardest time making connections following her past. She suffered from many undiagnosed mental health disorders including anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder from being held captive by her alpha and watching her family and friends be murdered. But she had no one to help and, because of keeping everything a secret, she never would. So she coped with her pain the only way that she knew how, by keeping busy. She never let a weekend pass by without going out, she rarely turned down a guy asking her out, and she never let people stick around too long. She was absolutely terrified of letting anyone see what she had been through. She feared judgement, or worse, a label. She couldn't stand the idea of people thinking that she couldn't handle herself in any situation. But her sister, Amber wasn't quite the same. She handled her grief differently and was often very emotional. In the beginning the two girls clashed because Amber didn't approve of Angel's ways. But what could Amber do? She needed Angel. Even though Amber was older, it was Angel who made the bulk of the decisions. The two girls had a very special connection formed by the trauma they had been through together, despite all of their differences.
One thing both girls did have in common though was their ideas towards trusting people. It was simple; no one could know the truth. The sisters had honestly never even given much thought towards finding their mates after seeing how unhappy their parents were in their final couple of years. They viewed men more as support rather than mutually submissive and trusting. The two had each other and that was all, but even still, they gave each other their distance. They had been through a lot and didn't need to explain themselves to each other, they both understood that.
Both Amber and Angel were gorgeous, but damaged. Their lives, however, would never reflect their horrific past from the outsider's perspective though. Amber worked at a clothing store where she could put on whatever persona she wanted. She typically played the role of the optimistic "got it all together" girl at work, but she knew she didn't have a thing together and she was okay with that. Angel was studying world politics at the university nearby that she commuted to and life was sufficient for both of them the way it was. Despite their lack of feelings or enjoyment in most things that they did. They had decided that remaining guarded was the best way to go considering what they had witnessed. They made a pact together to take each day, week, and month as it came, never trying to plan too far ahead, for they didn't know what could happen tomorrow. It never crossed their mind that they were in a unique situation; they thought that any time that love was brought into the situation, it ended badly. Angel usually tried to live by whatever could keep her mind off the pain in that moment. During the day she was fine, especially on the weekends. It was the night that bothered her. A hopeless insomniac with reoccurring dreams of the m******e she watched at such a young age, she spent most nights running through the forest in wolf form. She developed a close relationship with herself and often questioned if anyone would ever be able to understand if she couldn't even understand herself.
So in the moments where she was being honest with herself, she came face to face with the reality that she didn't care much about the feelings of too many people she knew. She was constantly covering up her brokenness by looking for different people. When she left a man, she felt nothing. When she used a friend to get something she wanted, she felt nothing. All she wanted was to avoid pain and she did whatever she needed to do to achieve that. She was the epitome of a misunderstood girl, but she didn't care. She let people believe the rumors about her and used the judgments in her favor to keep everyone at arm's length. She enjoyed her life doing things that she wanted to do rather than things she was supposed to do. It was the way she had chosen to do her life and sometimes the society around her couldn't handle that, but she didn't care. The world had taken so much from her, she was on a mission to take back her share without ever being hurt again.