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Her hands tighten on me and she whimpers as the coppery taste of her blood fills my mouth. It tastes so sweet. I’ve been waiting for this my entire life and now it’s here. This girl is mine.
My mate is mine.
I slide my teeth out and kiss the wound as my bear slinks back down, satisfied that she’s now got our mark on her.
The wolves would never have pulled that shit they did earlier if my mark was on her neck like it is now. They wouldn’t have looked at her ass, they wouldn’t have made any crude jokes. Their eyes would have been on the table and they would have shown her the respect that Westin Wood’s mate deserves.
I pull away and look down at her. Tears start filling her hazel eyes and my heart breaks knowing I was the cause of each drop.
“Why did you do that?” Her eyes are full of betrayal as she grabs her neck and backs away from me.
I let her go even though all I want to do is hold her tightly against me. It pains me to see her backing away like this. Full of confusion. Full of fear.
“Kimberly…” I say as a tear runs down her cheek. “It had to be this way. You have to believe me.”
She shakes her head as she turns, still holding her hand to the mark. “I don’t want to see you again,” she says in a quivering voice. “Ever!”
She runs and I can’t help but follow her. I catch up to her easily, but I keep my shaking hands by my sides and fight the urge to grab her and pull her back into my embrace where she belongs.
“Let me explain,” I beg as we arrive back at the parking lot of the diner.
“No!” she shouts as she runs to her car. I don’t like the look of it. It’s too old and doesn’t look safe enough to be carrying around such precious cargo, but now is not the time to tell her that.
“I can’t let you go,” I say to her. I’m standing behind the car as she opens the door.
“You fucking bit me.” She throws it at me like a knife that sinks into my heart. Her hand is still on her neck, covering the spot as she stares at me in disbelief.
“I need you to understand.” I can hear the anguish in my voice. It’s crippling me. “I had to. You’re my mate and that’s something that—”
“I’m not your anything,” she says as she gives me one last nasty look.
She disappears into her car and slams the door. I jump out of the way as she backs up, nearly taking my legs out.
My bear starts snarling within. I can’t let her go. Not like this.
What if someone takes her? What if she disappears back to Canada?
My heart is pounding, filling me with a panicky feeling.
The white lights disappear on the back of her car as she throws it into drive. I leap forward without thinking and grab onto the bumper, holding her car in place.
The wheels start spinning into the dirt parking lot as she floors it, but I’m not letting go. Her front tires are screeching as they spin and throw dirt onto me as I lift the back of her car off the ground.
She honks the horn in frustration, but I hold on. My arms are burning, my whole body is flexed. My feet start slowly dragging along the dirt as I grunt and hold her back.
With a loud metallic crunch, the bumper rips off her car. I fly back with her metal bumper in my hand as her back tires hit the ground and her car takes off.
“No!” I gasp as I watch her squeal onto the road and take off around the corner.
I drop my head and curse under my breath, feeling like the biggest failure in the world.
Marking her was supposed to make her mine, but all it did was make me drive her away.
I look back at the diner and see everyone inside plastered against the windows as they watch me. Some are even filming me with their phones. I carry the bumper over to my truck and dump it into the back with my heart breaking.
This didn’t go as planned. At all.
When I arrive back at the fire station, I tell the boys what happened.
Carter and Ethan are deathly quiet as they listen. They have mates too, and they can imagine how horrible I must be feeling right now. I know they would die if Chloe or Aubrey left them.
Rylan is staring at me in shock. “You found your mate?”
“Aren’t you listening?” I answer back. “She left me.”
There’s jealousy written all over his face. “You’re so fucking lucky.”
I know how badly he wants to find his mate as well, but I’m anything but lucky.
Blake puts a hand on my shoulder and nods. “You’re lucky, Westin. She’ll be back.”
I wish I could believe him.
But I don’t…
Chapter Five
Kimberly
“What the hell happened to your car?” Debbie asks when I walk into the diner in the morning.
She knows what happened. I saw her watching in the window as that barbarian Westin ripped the bumper off my car.
“Fender bender,” I say as I give her a look.
“And what happened with you and Westin?”
This is what she really wants to know. I can tell that she’s very curious. She won’t leave me alone and is following me to my locker in the back.
“He’s a jerk,” I say as I open the locker and throw my purse inside.
Even as I say it, a part of me knows that it’s not true.
I’m conflicted and torn. For some reason, he fucking bit me. What the hell was that? But for some other reason, I’m still attracted to him.
“What did he do?” she asks as she hangs on my every word.
My hand goes to the tingling spot on my neck where his teeth sank into my skin. The weirdest thing was that it didn’t really hurt. It did at first, but once he removed his teeth, it felt good. It tingled and sent warm shivers racing through my body.
And I felt even more drawn to him. The pull strengthened.
It hurt to run away from him, but I had to. I didn’t know what else he was going to do.
He is a stranger after all.
“Well?” Debbie says as she waits for my answe
r.
“Don’t you have customers out there?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I laugh. “Don’t you have to go serve them?”
“Oh, they can wait,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Hearing this is more important. What did he do?”
I back away from her as I put my apron on. “Can you just… let me have a coffee first? I barely slept all night.”
“Because Westin was on top of you making you scream?”
No, because he was in my head all night making me twist and turn. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
I tried touching myself to put me to sleep, but that just made it worse. I couldn’t get any relief no matter how many orgasms I had.
Instead of imagining the warm, comforting presence I normally do, it was Westin I was thinking of. I kept picturing him kicking down my door with that same territorial look on his face as he stormed into my room, ready to claim his mate.
Even now, I’m getting all worked up thinking about the way it would feel to have him climb on my bed and hold me down. I shiver when I think how it would feel to have his tremendous weight pushing down on me.
“Why are you blushing?” Debbie asks as she gives me a knowing look. “Were you up all night mating with your mate?”
“Ugh.” I push past her and head straight for the coffee machine in the diner. “I can’t deal with this right now.”
I catch myself glancing out the window to see if Westin’s truck is in the parking lot before I grab the coffee pot. A hint of disappointment fills me when I don’t see it. I really hope he didn’t take it seriously when I said that I never want to see him again.
Debbie crosses her arms and stands beside me, waiting.
“Are you going to get back to work?”
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
We both stare at each other, waiting for the other one to crack.
“Are you going to be like this all day?” I ask her.
“I’m going to be like this all month,” she says with a firm stare. “All year if I have to. I’m not leaving you alone until you tell me.”
