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Chapter 15
Miguel
This chasing after Amelia was starting to get old. I caught up with her as she was closing the door. I grabbed the knob and held the door open, looking her straight in the eye. I could see the internal struggle as her face twisted with each emotion. She finally gave up and let go of her side, allowing me to enter. I closed it behind me.
"Give Niko time. He’s trying to come to terms with all this himself, and he doesn’t always think before he speaks.” I slowly walked toward her. “Your insistence that this isn’t real doesn’t help.” I motioned between us and then toward the door.
“You can’t always apologize for him, you know.” She grabbed a blanket off the overstuffed chair she had placed by a window.
"I'm not apologizing for him and don’t think I have yet. He’s a big boy and can do that for himself.” I also knew that her stubbornness and insistent rejection would bring out the Dom in him soon.
I looked around her room, taking in every minute detail that made it hers. Her king-size bed sat between two floor-to-ceiling windows. The bedspread was a swirl of muted fall colors. Her walls were a light amber, and the curtains had two layers. A layer of sunset muted yellow sheers along with a heavier set of burnt orange, black-out curtains you could pull closed over the sheers.
The floor was hardwood like the rest of the house, with a well-worn braided rug taking up a large section of it beneath the bed. She had two tallboy dressers, each painted along the fall color theme with a distressed look to them. A door on the right seemed to lead into a bathroom, and the one on the left, I assumed, led to the closet. She had no pictures hanging up. One corner had been made into a little reading nook by one of the windows. An overstuffed chair, a floor lamp, and a bookcase overflowing with well-loved books filled the area.
Amelia settled against her mound of pillows on her bed, covered up with the animal print throw blanket, and stared at me. “So, what do you want? “
I swayed side to side, feeling a little embarrassed. “I thought it was time for just you and me to talk.”
“No talk of Niko?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Not in defense, no, but he is part of who I am.” I took a deep breath. “May I join you?” I gestured to the bed.
She shrugged a shoulder. “I guess, but no funny business,” she warned.
“Yes, boss.” I saluted her before taking a running leap onto her bed. Her childlike giggle made my heart soar.
She laughed. “You goof.”
Niko’s voice floated along the bond, “I’m coming up.”
I quickly replied, “Wait, let me talk with her. Share my story before you join us.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. I knew he wouldn’t leave, and if he really wanted, he could listen in.
I rolled onto my back, tilting my neck in a sign of submission to the one woman who could break me. “Made you smile, though, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did.”
I scooted up and settled next to her, almost but not quite touching her, and took a deep breath before beginning. I tilted my head to look at her as I leaned back against the mound of pillows and her headboard and felt her trying to soothe me through our bond. That small gesture made me smile because I was pretty sure she didn’t know she was doing it.
“You said that you were broken, unfit for us,” I started, and she nodded in reply. “You aren’t the only one who has been broken. We all have. I want to share my story with you.”
She placed her hand on my forearm. “Miguel, you don’t have to.” I turned my arm over and laced my fingers with hers.
“For this to succeed, I do. Open, honest discussions are the only way we can make it through the rough patches.” I pulled her hand up to rest on my chest with mine, and I stared at the ceiling as I began.
“I haven’t always been a part of a pride. I was what you would call a late bloomer. Most shifters begin to shift as early as a year old but usually by the age of three. When I turned six and hadn’t shifted yet, my father disowned me. My mother couldn’t stand leaving my father, so she gave me to a family friend who promised to raise me as her own.” I paused, the pain from the next memory flowing through me.
“When the Alpha of the pride found out what they had done, he personally came to get me and called a pride meeting. He stood before all of them with me at his side and proclaimed that I was no longer a pride member. That I was to be cast out to either die or survive on my own. They had never and would never allow a broken shifter in their ranks. He yanked off the pride talisman that had been placed around my neck at birth and crushed it under his boot. That was the only way I could get in and out of the pride camp. There were protective spells in the woods that witches had erected, and without that talisman, I would never find my way home.”
“Oh, Miguel,” Amelia gasped. I squeezed her hand and kept going.
“I cried and yelled for my mom and dad as they carried me out past the pride boundaries and dumped me. I tried to run back, but the protection spell kept me out and actually pushed me farther away. Without my necklace, I would never find my way back to the only home I knew.”
“Oh, babe,” Amelia scooted closer and laid her head on my shoulder. I loved hearing those words roll off her lips.
“Hunger soon overtook all my other senses, and I had to move on and find food somewhere. As I walked, I found a few wild blackberries and a few plants my mother had taught me were edible, but that wasn’t enough for a growing boy. I finally stumbled into a small town. That’s when my life as a thief began. I stole my first set of clothes and figured out how to steal just enough food to not be noticed but enough to survive on at least for the day.”
