Page 24 of Plus-Size Bullied Mate

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Tessa.”

“I heard something.” My voice comes out steadier than I expect, but I feel far from it underneath. “I’m asking you to explain it because you’re not making any sense.”

He crosses his arms and takes a breath, looking shockingly hesitant. “You’re staying here with me… as my mate.”

The room stays exactly the way it is, but the air inside changes, becoming pressurized and thin, as if you were experiencing a sudden change in altitude.

I stare at him, and he stares right back, but I’m the one at a complete loss for words. I can’t even register them in my mind for a long, almost painfully awkward moment.

“Is this a joke?” I finally say, not recognizing my own voice at first.

“No, it isn’t.”

“You…” I begin in a mumble before I force myself to stop and try again. “Are you serious right now?”

“I’m not joking. Not about something like this.”

The terrible thing about all of this is that I believe him.

My stomach drops all the way through the floor, and he’s standing there like an immovable force without a single flicker of amusement in his face, and no trace of cruelty. He’s completely, devastatingly serious.

For too long, I can’t speak. I just stand in shock at it, feeling utter disbelief wash over me in waves. Confusion comes in right after, followed by the dawning of something that would almost be wonder if it weren’t immediately overtaken by everything I endured throughout my life.

Anger rises so fast it surprises even me.

“No.”

Hunter’s expression drops, as if he expected me to actually consider it, for whatever reason. “Tessa—”

“No,” I repeat sharply, taking a step toward him. I watch the subtle shift in his expression as that flicker of surprise betrays him, given how I moved forward instead of back. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to just decide for me and have that be the end of it. That’s not how this works.”

“I understand that this might be too much—”

“You don’t understand anything.” My voice wavers, and I despise the way emotion bleeds in where I don’t want it to be. “Do you know what my life has looked like in this pack? The pack that you lead now, and the one you set the tone for?”

I’m close enough now that I have to look up to hold his gaze, and I do, refusing not to. “I was nothing for years. I ate alone, trained alone, and I sat in the back of every meeting and every gathering like I was furniture someone forgot to move until I had had enough. People looked through me; they talked around me, and you were right there. Every time. Sometimes, you even started it.”

Something close to regret moves across his face, and the usual sharpness in his expression drops. “I know.”

“You know. That’s all you have to say.”

“I was wrong to let it go on as long as it did, and I’m not going to argue that.”

“Then what are you going to argue? Why would I ever choose to bind myself to someone who looked the other way while I was treated like I was less than?” I fire back at him, feeling as my throat threatens to close, but I push through it. “You don’t get to decide you want whatever this is. You don’t get to come in here after everything and tell me this is how it’s going to be. I have never had a choice about anything in my life in this pack, and I am not doing this.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, letting every word settle in. Finally, he uncrosses his arms, and a resolve I wasn’t expecting from him sinks into his frame.

“I know what I owe you, and I intend to spend a long time paying it back. But I need you to hear me… what happened last night, with Hayes,” he begins, only to stop and clench his jaw. “That can’t happen again. I won’t let it happen again.”

“So now you suddenly want to protect me. How generous.”

“It’s about more than that, and you know it,” Hunter says, voice dropping lower. Hearing that tone from him does something complicated to my heart that I refuse to examine. “You’ve felt it, just like I have.”

Sensing that he’s about to cross into territory neither of us needs right now, I lock up.

“Don’t.”