Page 38 of License to Kill

Jake frowned. “Can we talk?”

Hope was a funny thing. I hadn’t realized I had been clinging to some vestige of it until his words hammered the last nail in the coffin that had been us as a partnership. “There’s nothing to talk about. You like Amelia, and she’s the right species. Be happy with that. Just give me the papers so I can sign them and leave.”

“That’s not what I want.”

Well, I gave the point to Mellisa; she’d figured Jake would want to salvage something. Unfortunately, all time in the wild had done was convince me I was better off alone.

Being alone hurt a great deal less.

“That’s the bed you made, so lie in it alone.” I knew all about being alone. The memory of the hospital hadn’t faded, not even after so many months. The deep cuts hadn’t healed, either. While there was nothing wrong with my body, nothing about me felt well. “I don’t care what you want anymore.”

Jake sighed. “I made a mistake. I was wrong.”

Once upon a time, that sort of confession would have signaled the start of a talk to rectify the real issue. I stared at him for a long time before shaking my head. “It doesn’t matter. You made your choice. Live with it. I was living with it until you and your pack hunted me down.” The words tasted bitter in my mouth, and Jake’s cheek twitched at the venom in my voice.

“I want you to come home.”

Before our last fight, I would have given my right arm to hear those words, to feel like I actually belonged, to feel wanted. Too much had changed. He had been seeing women at work, work he’d never talked to me about. He had wanted a proper bitch over me, and no pretty speeches would change that.

It was easy to forgive Amelia.

She had been honest with me from the start and had needed the same exact thing I did. She wanted a mate and a pack.

“There’s a proper bitch waiting for you, one who is the right species, who won’t bother your precious pack. I’m not some damned safety net for you to come back to when you go sniffing some bitch’s tail and it doesn’t work out for you. Did you think I’d just be sitting around waiting for you?”

Judging from his expression, that’s exactly what he had thought.

“I’m sorry.”

“Go make a home with a proper bitch. We’ve determined I’m not it, or have you forgotten already? I haven’t.”

There would be no kits, no cubs, no puppies, no children, and no mate in the den I had built for a skulk I would never belong to. Maybe he hadn’t taken our vow seriously, but I had.

Maybe other women would have snatched for a chance to take back what had been lost, but I wasn’t one of them. I could put one foot—or paw—in front of the other and keep moving forward, but I’d never been very good at turning around and changing course.

I wasn’t very good at forgetting, and I was tired of being abandoned.

“I was wrong. I should have done better. I should have been more considerate of what you needed. I should have found a way. I never said the right things.”

“That changes nothing. You still would have thought the wrong things. You still would have believed them. Not saying them doesn’t change how you feel. It won’t change the future, either. We’re through. We were through when you decided you wanted a proper bitch for a partner. We were through when you abandoned me like everyone else. We were through when you decided to bench me like everybody else. We were through when you came home smelling of other women. I hate you. I hate your wolves. I hate everything about all of you. Leave me alone so I can get on with the rest of my life already—a life without any of you in it.”

When I refused to say another word, they eventually left, locking the door behind them.

I didn’t care who had sent the psychologist, but I hated him the instant he walked through the door and invaded the cell thinly disguised as a suite. He wore a suit, the type many within the FBI liked to wear, and he stared down his nose at me. Thumping a briefcase onto the table, he sat and made himself comfortable while I watched him from the armchair where I spent the vast majority of my time.

“You have a very interesting file.”

He viewed me like an interesting challenge and a curiosity. I wondered what he had been hired to accomplish. It didn’t take me long to decide it didn’t matter. “Was it the highlighting, the underlining, or the psychotic break that you found interesting?”

The way he hesitated told me more than I thought he wanted me to know; he hadn’t expected such an answer from me.

Mellisa had been right about a lot of things, and I wondered which way my story would end. Would I endure until I withered? Would I go for a long swim when I finally tired of everything?

How long could the numbness stave off the inevitable?

“All of it. Before your psychotic break, as you call it, you were a highly accomplished field agent. For your gender, that’s a remarkable accomplishment. I’m Dr. Howards, and I have been assigned as your psychologist.”

“Ah. You’re old school.” He seemed young to have developed the mentality.