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I jerk my head up to his, my heart pounding so hard in my chest I can taste it. Kade might’ve survived a run-in with Nathan, but Aden is human and I know all too well what would happen if Nathan believed Aden was helping me. “No.”
When he searches my face, I know what he’s trying to do. Read me. I make my face a mask, but the sad smile in his eyes warns me that I’m too late.
“You have bites on your throat, and the first thing you do when you meet someone is search their eyes, as if you’re looking for the wolf in them. That means you’ve lived with them, at least for a while if you know how to identify them, something not many humans can.”
I remember what happened to the people who stumbled onto Rylan’s private pack land and saw more than they should have. The pack hunted me for sport and left me breathing at the end of it. But those luckless people? Their bodies are buried deep in the earth and their families will never know what happened to them.
If I could go back in time, I would be seventeen again, so I could be just as ignorant about the existence of shifters as everyone else.
“Shifters will only ever attempt to turn someone close to them. They don’t just pluck someone off the street. It’s only ever someone they love.” Now it’s Kade speaking. And he’s right. Rylan did love me once. Until he realized I was worthless to him.
Rylan used to tell me how rare it was that a human could be the mate of an alpha shifter. He would say that the leader of the pack needed a strong mate because an alpha could never be with a weak woman.
I was so happy, so unbelievably…proudthat the universe had worked its magic on me, even if, as a human, I would never feel the same pull toward him as he felt toward me.
Then I realized it wasn’t magic at all, but a curse. One Rylan will eventually break so he can replace me with the sort of mate he’d always wanted.
I turn to Kade because I know he will understand better than Aden will. “Shifters only ever have one fated mate. Is that true?”
Everything in me hopes the answer will be no.
The pause before he speaks breaks my heart. “Yes. It’s true.”
My gaze returns to the sheet. “The man who wanted to turn me is mine, or I’m his. So, he will never let me go, and he has a pack to make sure he gets what he wants. Me.”
“Saige, that doesn’t mean—”
I jerk my head up and meet Aden’s gaze. “It means I will never be free, no matter what. I will spend the rest of my life running, or I will die. There is no other future for me.”
Tears burn my eyes, and I shove myself to my feet, winding a sheet around me as I do. “I need to use the bathroom.”
But I’m running. Again. The way I always do.
Neither Aden nor Kade attempt to stop me as I leave the room and head for the bathroom.
First to deal with the tears sliding down my cheeks, and then to hunt out some clothes so I can leave before my presence brings Rylan’s pack down on Aden and Kade’s heads.
38
ADEN
My eyes don’t move from the fat tumbler of whiskey in Kade’s hand. I’d thought when he rose from the bed moments after Saige left that he was going after her. So I followed him… right past the bathroom door opened a slit, and right into the kitchen to the bottle of whiskey Greg keeps in a cupboard.
Kade’s hand tightens around the glass, but he doesn’t knock back the liquid as he leans against the kitchen counter. “He’s an alpha.”
I wait for more since I know Kade isn’t finished speaking yet.
“Alphas never give anything up that belongs to them.”
Saige.
“He might not be.” I fold my hands across my chest, tempted to take the glass from him because if there’s a shifter as possessive as Dariel somewhere out there hunting down Saige, suddenly the thought of a whiskey in the morning sounds appealing.Fartoo appealing.
After another long moment, Kade places the untouched glass on the counter and pushes it away from him before turning to face me. “She said he had a pack. He’s an alpha.”
“It could be a small pack,” I say. “There’s only you and Dariel in this one.”
“And you,” Kade says, barely a second later, “are a hound. Which makes three.”
