Page 103 of Rejected By the Winter Wolf

“Why?”

“When she learns I’ve defiled her daughter?” He’s amused—laughing. The noise that comes out of him goes straight to my heart.

Damn you, heart.

“You haven’t completely defiled me,” I mutter.

He rolls off me, back to his feet. “And I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“So many questions.”

He’s not saying it like a bad thing, so I wait him out. He places my bag on the bed and meets my gaze.

“Sex will spur on the mating bond.”

“And that’s bad.” I look away, my cheeks heating. Of course it’s bad. A witch and a wolf can’t mate.

“It’s already there.” He sits back down and presses his hand to my sternum. “But it isn’t too late to stop it.”

My throat is dry. I try and fail to swallow. “It would be bad to complete it?”

“Yes, Astra.”

So he wants to stop the bond. Somehow. I knew that in the back of my mind. The rational side that isn’t caught up in him.

I miss the warmth of him. He balls his hands into fists over and over, until he finally seems to come to some decision. About the truth, maybe. Finally.

“The bite triggered the beginning. Sex is part of it. Stalking you, dominating you.” His eyes flash. He might be imagining it now. After a beat, he continues, “The farther we go, the more wrapped up in it we’ll get. The more we’ll feel it. The lead up to the final piece is all-consuming. That’s how it works. It wants us to mate, because it’s wolf instinct. It drives us to procreate, even–”

He stops talking.

“Even what?” I rise, too, ignoring that I’m naked. “And what’s the final piece?”

Nudity can be its own form of armor, judging by the way his gaze sweeps my body before returning to my eyes.

“You can’t become my mate,” Kian snaps. “It requires you to be a wolf, and you’re not. You’re a witch. The type of witch who can endanger my entire pack.”

I scoff. I unzip my bag and dig for some clothes. Fabric suddenly seems like a necessary barrier right now. He’s so fucking infuriating.

There are more clothes in here than I had before. I touch items with tags on them, and my brows furrow. This is not the time to get into that, so I bypass them for something familiar. Shorts and an oversized t-shirt.

I shrug them on in a hurry and am even more pissed to discover the shirt smells like him. Did he wear it before packing it? What the fuck?

He can’t go on and on about not mating, and me endangering his pack, and whatever other bullshit he’s selling, and put me in clothes that smell like him.

“You’re the one who won’t tell me a damn thing about this curse,” I retort. “How am I supposed to help you break it if I don’t know what I’m dealing with?”

“You’re missing the point.” He glares at me. “You want to get so sucked in to being my mate, but I will not turn you into a wolf. Which means you can’t bite me and complete one of the steps to finishing the mate bond. We’d be left in limbo forever. The pull of it would kill us. Do you understand me?”

I throw my hands in the air. “You’re being dramatic. You’ve never had a mate before, right?”

“Don’t be cute right now,” he warns. “Don’t try to glaze over this. Think. How long did it take you to master your magic? Weeks? Months?”

“Years.” I brush off his words. I see through his tactic. “I’m not asking to be a wolf shifter, Kian. I don’t want to become the thing that has haunted me for years. And guess what? Every time you call me little nightmare, it reminds me that your kind has been at the forefront of said nightmares since I was four.”

I yank my boots on and head for the door.