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“Whoa. That, uh… that’s some kind of gift.”
“It’s not a gift.” She’s already shaking her head slowly before I finished my awed statement. “It’s a curse. It’s brought me nothing but trouble. I had to leave my home pack because of it, and I swore that I’d take the secret to the grave.”
Yeah. I know all about that one. “What happened? How did you even end up in the Wolf District?”
“It was an accident. I was a lone wolf that wasn’t really meant to be alone. When I stumbled on a shifter territory, I thought I could start over.” With a sad sigh, she admits, “I was wrong.”
Because the Wolf District isn’t just any shifter territory. It belongs to Wicked Wolf Walker.
“He said he wanted you to be his mate.”
She gulps, a shadowed look falling over her face. “He did. As soon as he realized I was different, he tried to make me choose him.”
That’s right. Because the mate always chooses.
“I told him that I couldn’t. That, with my ‘gift’, I can never bond with another soul. He stopped pushing it after that, but I sealed my fate anyway. To you, this is a cabin,” she tells me, gesturing around the living room. “But to me? It’s nothing but a gilded cage.”
“You don’t have to stay.”
A hollow laugh. “Of course I do. He’ll kill me if I don’t.”
She says it so matter-of-factly, I hate to know how many times he threatened her with death in order to make her so beaten down. Something tells me it wasn’t just once or twice. When he called her his ‘pet’, he wasn’t kidding. He domesticated Elizabeth long before I was even on his radar.
As if I needed a reason to hate him any more than I already do.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but I’ll tell you this: I am a female alpha. If you want to leave with me when I go, I won’t let him stop me.”
“Gemma—”
“You heard him at dinner. You heard him talk about my mom. He kept her trapped here for three years. Do you know how disappointed in me she’d be if she found out I left you behind?”
“Three years?” echoes Elizabeth.
I nod.
A wistful sigh. “I’ve been here for two already.”
“Twenty-four more days,” I point out. “I’m walking out of here in twenty-four more days. You want to come, I’ll make it happen. But, until then, it looks like we’re both stuck in here together. I hope you’re okay with that.”
She casts a wary look over at the door to my bedroom. I know what she’s thinking. It’s what a lot of shifters who don’t know me very well think.
I’m small. Tiny. Breakable. For Luna’s sake, throw me a mini-skirt and a pom-pom, and I could pass for a high school cheerleader. No one ever guesses that I can be as vicious as I am. I’ve used that to my advantage one way or another my whole life.
Now she knows it, too. To Elizabeth, I’m probably as dangerous as the Wicked Wolf of the West is, even if I’m offering her freedom.
I hate thinking that I have anything in common with him. I can’t do shit about my genes; as much as I want to deny it, he is my birth father, so short of dying my hair and wearing colored contacts, I’m destined to be his twin. My level of dominance is something else I can’t change. I’m dominant. I’m an alpha. It is what it is.
But I’m not heartless. I’m not cruel.
I’ll never hurt someone for the sake of seeing them in pain. I protect myself and what’s mine. That’s all.
“Promise me.”
Her head whips toward me, her expression haunted. “Promise you what?”
“Promise me that, no matter what, you won’t do anything to my bond. The one I have with my mate.”
“I told you. I can’t. It only works if either or both of the mated pair want it dissolved. I’m Luna-touched, Gemma, not the Luna. I can’t create bonds, and I definitely break them if they’re truly meant to be.”
