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25
“You look like you’re going to puke,” Naomi snarled.
Loren had to agree. In the rearview mirror, she looked sweaty. She was wearing yet another of Naomi’s old outfits—a pink sweatsuit that highlighted the alarming pallor of her skin. Her heart raced, her entire body jittery. Nausea wasn’t the feeling churning her insides, though. Just confusion.
So much she felt she might explode from it.
McGoven had lied to her.
Hidden her memories.
Made her his mate…
And then pushed her away, dismissing everything she’d ever felt toward him.
It was such a strange, intimate concept that her mind couldn’t fully process it. More puzzling was that he’d avoided telling her outright what he’d done all this time. A part of her wanted to seethe. Hate him. And why not? He made her feel so damn guilty for something that, for all intents and purposes, washisfault.
As she examined her emotions more closely, overall, she just felt… Lost. Buried beneath the recent trauma was a slew of emotions that remained intact. Her admiration toward him—and more. Her longing for his nearness, his reassurance, his touch…
While a mating bond explained her relationship with McGoven in many ways, in others, it fell short. Mainly his insistence that none of her attraction to him had been real. None of it.
That was what he wanted her to think, anyway. As she began to inspect the part of her mind that—ironically—he had helped open up, she wasn’t so sure.
If her feelings had been artificial, then…why did they linger? She could still feel that crippling mixture of longing and desperation and need. A gasp ripped from her throat, and she had to bite down on her lower lip to silence it.
Overall, his loss hit her harder than she would have thought. Harder than the death of her father and the despair that had followed. All of it felt so real again, as if she were reliving every tortured minute.
Strangely enough, like always, even the memory of him could distract from the horror. She could smell him. Feel him. Recall his soothing presence, as reassuring as the very first day she woke up in his protection.
But the horror of her recent past wasn’t all she had to contend with. McGoven had been right—that figurative box in her mind was now unlocked, allowing old, forgotten memories to seep out when she least expected them. One unfurled in startling clarity, and she sucked in a breath, transported from Naomi’s convertible to a small, warm room bathed in sunlight.
It had been one of those lazy weekends she still cherished. Gentle fingers slipped through her hair, belonging to the beautiful woman nestled beside her. Faint remnants of emotion taunted her, just beyond her reach. She couldn’t feel them fully—not yet—but she could recognize the sentiment well enough—love. So much so her heart threatened to explode from it.
Then guilt followed as she returned to the present. While he might have taken the bad memories away, McGoven had intentionally given her back a childhood she never realized she’d forgotten.
But he wasn’t there to watch her relive it. If anything, he seemed determined to wipe her away for good. His excuse for returning to Black Mountain was supposedly to challenge Lukka, but she knew the truth. He wanted to get rid of her again. Run away. Hide.
Ironically, he’d swapped her for the pack, using her as a way to punish himself for some unspoken crime. That was it. She wasn’t a burden to him as much as she was a tool.
A way for Bill McGoven to deny himself any ounce of pleasure or happiness.
He’d rather suffer.
Realizing the extent of his self-hate stung more than the fact that he’d penetrated her mind without permission.
If his motives had been selfish, she could understand that.
Not this.
“I swear to God if you puke on my leather seats… Here—” Naomi struck a button to lower the window on Loren’s end. “Just stick your head out or something.”
Loren was more than happy to oblige. The fresh air did some good, though mainly the beauty of the landscape whizzing by distracted her from her thoughts long enough to get her bearings.
This place was beautiful—she could admit that much. Rugged and wild, though they had to be hours away from Black Mountain. Still, the truck ahead of them pulled off the road, turning down a winding dirt path where a set of rickety signs led to various public campsites.
“Please don’t tell me he plans on us staying out here,” Naomi muttered under her breath.
As she turned her gaze to the windshield, Loren suspected that was exactly what he had in mind. This time of year, there was no one else in view, and they had their pick of the lot. Even so, she wasn’t at all surprised by their final destination—the most remote area bordering a wild section of forest.
