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I stared, taken aback at her words. Surely I must have misheard. “Would you repeat that for me?”
If she was upset before I said that, she looked downright terrified at my words, but I deserved to know. She said that she’d wanted me, that she’d protected me by staying away, but that was very,verydifferent from activelycursingme.
“I-I-I, uh… I performed a spell on you.”
Once again, even more things clicked into place, things that I'd been struggling to understand. “Why would you do that?” I said, wondering if I'd somehow been duped and Ayla wasn’t the woman I thought she was.
“Because I didn’t want things like this to happen to you.”
“What does that evenmean?”
I will admit, I lost my temper at that, my voice escalating despite the fact that we should be as quiet as possible while traveling. I saw the change in Ayla as soon as I did: her wide, guilty eyes shuttering as she turned cold.
Damn it, the ice cube was back, sitting right smack dab in the middle of our bond. It made my stomach churn something fierce.
“Look. You don’t need to know all the details. But things like this? They’ll keep happening to you if you’re close to me.” At that, she wiped her tears and straightened up, fully in her icy persona. “But what this tells me is that we need to nip this in the bud. Just forget it and let things go back to normal.”
She took a step toward me, hand raised, and, horrified, I realized she was trying to curse me again. She was trying to take our mating bond away.
No!
I wasn’t going to live that way anymore. I deserved the right to choose.
Rage built up in me, hotter than it'd been in quite a while. I’d never thought that I’d feel this way toward Ayla, but at the moment, her behavior was despicable.
I wouldn’t raise a hand against her, I just couldn’t bring myself to, but that didn’t mean I was going to let her manipulate my mind and heart like some… some puppet!
“I don’t consent to this!” I snapped, baring my teeth at her. I chose my wording purposefully, as I got the feeling Ayla picturedherself as a martyr who was doing what she had to do. But the reality was she’d been violating my bodily autonomy and mymind.
How dare she? I didn’t care what excuse she had, she couldn’t just dip into my mind and start fucking around with things because she was scared of…
Actually, I didn’t even know what frightened her so much, and that was one of the many things I wanted answered.
“You what?” The cold mask slipped slightly and revealed the woman that I was so very fond of.
“That curse—whatever it is. I don’t consent to it. I don’t give you permission to mess with my thoughts or memories.”
She frowned, and I could tell that she was thinking quite hard, steam practically leaking from her ears. “But it’s for your safety. It’s just supposed to make me not exist to you.”
“You think that’s for my safety?”
“Well, the trap you fell into—”
“Fuck that trap and fuck your curse. Look, Ayla, I want to trust you and know that you have the best intentions for me, but you can’t justdothat to people, and especially not to your mate. Because guess what, we belong together!”
I was getting caught up in my passion, but there was so stopping it. I felt such a potent blend of anger, attraction, shock, and hurt that something had to give.
“It would be one thing if you didn’t want me, but you say that you do.”
“I do. I’ve wanted you from the first moment that I saw you. But trust me, this is the better way.”
“Bullshit! You want me. I want you. I know you’re afraid but that’s okay. We can take it slow. We can end up just being companions who occasionally sleep together or even never do. But no matter what, I am your fated mate, and I will protect you. Iwilllove you until my dying breath.”
I took a step toward her, and the heat of the moment apparently had both of us forgetting that I’d just ripped off my leg, rapidly healed it, then ran a few miles as fast as I could. In a split second, it decided to go on a break and collapsed under me, sending me toppling to the ground.
Well, that was one way to kill my thunder.
Yet it was the perfect way to break our tension. Suddenly, Ayla was kneeling beside me, concern pouring through our bond, her pheromones beseeching me.
