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Too bad I can’t do that, either.
* * *
Three days passand I refuse to answer the door.
The first night, I caught a whiff of pine and I panicked. I’m not proud of it, but I bolted from my living room couch to my bedroom and slammed the door shut, putting some space between me and the front porch. Duke would know I was still inside my cabin, but I hoped he got the hint and backed off.
Based on the nightmares that haunted me each one of those nights, he did.
I can’t sleep. I’m barely eating. My wolf is still angry at me, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
Then, to top it all off, four days after I slipped out of Duke’s arms and left him on his own, Gemma Swann shows up at my cabin.
These days, she doesn’t look like the pretty, porcelain doll she was when she first arrived in Accalia. Her blonde curls are usually slicked back in a long ponytail, her sundresses traded for a tank that shows off her muscular arms and a pair of black jeans that match her alpha aura. Her honey-gold eyes are clever and shrewd, and the gleam brighter than the golden fang she wears on a chain nestled between her boobs when she glares over at me from her place on my front porch.
“Alpha?” I blink over at her. When I caught the dominant aura approaching my door, it never occurred to me to keep it closed. In the back of my mind, though, I guess I thought it would be Ryker out there because I’m shocked to discover the blonde alpha female standing on my porch. “What are you… I mean, can I help you?”
“Actually,” Gem says, “I’m here to help you. Can I come in?”
She doesn’t have to ask. She’s the Alpha female. While I’m at the bottom of the pack’s hierarchy with the rest of the deltas, she’s at the tippy-top with Ryker. Even with her containing her dominant aura, I could never refuse.
“Of course. What’s this about?”
“About you being Duke’s fated mate.”
CHAPTER9
FOREVER
Gem takes advantage of my stunned silence to march right inside, kicking the door closed behind her as she says, “Figure you want privacy for this chat.”
She isn’t wrong.
It takes a second before I’m able to come out of it. “Duke’s fated mate?” I echo. “I’m not his fated mate.”
“Sure you are. Just because you don’t feel the same way and you rejected the mate bond, that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.”
I don’t… I don’t understand. “I didn’t reject him. I…” This is your female Alpha, Trish. She won’t think any less of you, and to be honest, she probably already has an idea—if she doesn’t already know. “I fucked him. How do you reject a mate after you fuck him?”
“Easy. By making it a point to tell him not to mark you, then avoiding him while you stew away in your cabin, bringing down the rest of the pack.”
Ouch. I’m not supposed to admit that I preferred Gem when she was a sweet and innocent-acting omega, but I was able to walk all over her back then. Not only is her dominance off the charts, but she’s not holding back on me now.
What makes it worse is that… everything she just said is true. I did tell him not to bite me. I did mark him, though I never, ever expected he would take my claw marks and turn them into scars on his body on purpose. When I went to him on the night of the full moon, I’d hoped that maybe he might choose me. Even if only for that one time, I needed someone to chooseme. I was willing to let him go to his intended when I was done—
—but, if what Gem is saying is true,I’m supposed to be his intended.
“I wasn’t avoiding him,” I lie. “I just… I had to figure out some stuff.”
Gem snorts. “For future reference, babe? It’s true that an alpha can sniff out a fibber. And you are a big honking liar. The only reason I came all the way down here to talk some sense is to you because no one else dared to bother precious Trish Danvers while she was moping. Not me. It’s time everyone stopped protecting you.”
“No one’s protecting me!”
“And that’s two. You want to lie to me again? Just because my mate let you back in the pack, it doesn’t mean I forget what you put me through. I can forgive, Trish, but forgetting isn’t something I’m too good at. Ryker made me promise I wouldn’t challenge you or anything because he knows how much you still get under my skin. I want to prove to my mate that I’m better than that. Like it or not, we’re both Mountainside. You and me… we’re packmates. Fucking sisters, alright? So stop lying, and start listening.”
I am. I heard every word of what Gem said—and, again, she isn’t wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I begin. What else can I say? “I’m so sorry.”
