Page 22 of Plus-Size Bullied Mate

She’s afraid of me, and while I can’t blame her for it, I still don’t like it.

That primal, possessive part of me stirs, and the beast inside me doesn’t like knowing the one who should be our mate is frightened. He wants to hunt down whatever made her this way and tear it apart with his teeth, except the thing that did this to her was me.

Mate…

I have no right to let that word bang around in my head still, but it’s coming from somewhere so deeply repressed in me that I can’t hold it back anymore.

It’s the same pull I felt as a kid, and the same one I tried to conceal ever since. But I’m not a kid anymore, and while the unknown surrounding what that means still taunts me, it doesn’t seem as impossible to believe anymore.

“I shouldn’t have raised my voice,” I manage, but the words feel clumsy in my mouth, and almost foreign.

I can’t remember the last time I apologized to anyone, or genuinely felt the need to. As easy as it would be to brush it off, this matters in a way I don’t fully understand yet, and I can’t just leave it.

Tessa’s eyes finally lift to mine, somewhat wide and still filled with that careful blankness she wears to protect herself. She nods once, and that’s all she gives me.

There’s no outright acceptance or forgiveness, just a flat acknowledgment that I’d spoken.

There’s so much more I want to say, like all the ways I can explain that I didn’t mean to scare her, and that the anger wasn’t even directed at her so much as at Hayes, the situation, at the delicate early growth of a bond that has the capacity to bloom into something bigger, regardless of what we think about it. Still, the words won’t form as they get stuck somewhere in my throat and caught behind years of conditioning that taught me to shove everything down. To protect myself, I need to bury it deep and never show weakness.

I lived by that lesson during the years I was away, when showing emotion could get you killed or compromise a mission. But looking at Tessa now, forced to watch the careful way she holds herself away from me, I’m starting to wonder if everything I learned was wrong.

“I need a minute,” I tell her, but if anything, it feels more like an automatic response.

Then I’m moving, pushing past her toward the door, while my inner wolf protests. Leaving her here and now feels like cutting a limb off, but I can’t stay in this room. I can’t think with her scent wrapping around me, or with the memory of her flinch replaying in my mind.

I need air, space, and the chance to figure out what the hell is happening to me.

The deck faces toward the stretch of coastline that comes up from Coldreach, and I plant my hands on the railing and stare out at it, letting the salty breeze clear my head.

It doesn’t help, even if I wish it would.

I can still feel Tessa, even if we haven’t initiated a true bond yet. Regardless, every part of me is aware of her, just like it always was before, and that fact made me feel insane when I was young.

I hadn’t wanted her then, at least, not in the way a mate should want their other half. I wasn’t old enough to even know what to do with it, but it sat heavily in my chest anyway, like the deepest form of longing that could plague someone at that age. As I got older, it only got worse, which made me push her away more.

Even if a mate bond is the one thing every wolf wants, our situation was too complicated. In all honesty, the thought of giving in to it scared the living shit out of me. I didn’t know how to reconcile the fact that my inner wolf was guiding me to her, the one girl I was supposed to hate on principle.

But now, I can’t stop thinking about the way she smelled when I pulled her out of Hayes’ reach. The rain mixed with something sweeter underneath made me want to bury my face in the curve of her neck and never let go. I can’t forget the fire in her eyes when she argued with me, the sharp edge of her tongue, and the way she stood her ground even though she was terrified.

She’s still strong, regardless of what I did to her, and after years of being treated like dirt by our pack. Even if she has been mostly surviving on her own, there’s something so appealing in that strength.

And I want her.

The realization hits me like a freight train, and I grip the railing tighter as my knuckles go white.

I want her, and not just because the bond is pulling at me, though it is. Not just because my wolf has decided she’s ours to protect. I want her because she’s the first person in years who hasn’t backed down from me, and who hasn’t let me intimidate her into submission. She looked me dead in the eye and called me out on my bullshit.

I want her, and I’m terrified of what that means.

Wanting her means facing what I did to her, rather than just acknowledging it happened and moving on. I have to sit with the knowledge that I broke something in her that might never be fixed again. The flinch, the fear, and the careful distance she keeps between us are all my fault, and if I want to make things better, then I can’t shy away from it.

She didn’t deserve the way I treated her, or anyone else, for that matter.

She was just a girl… an omega with no family, no support, and no one to protect her. I ruined everything because I could.

Shame rolls through me, and I bow my head beneath the pressure of it, squeezing my eyes shut. For the first time, I let myself feel it. Instead of shoving it down where it can’t touch me, I force myself to endure the discomfort of that truth.

I was a monster, and maybe I still am, but standing out here on this deck, with Tessa’s fear still ringing in my ears and the bond burning in my chest, I know one thing for certain: