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Chapter Three
TALIA
“I never would have thought this was possible.” I traced lazy circles across Galen’s bare chest with my index finger.” I was a fated mate, but the bond with Maddox was nothing like this. I mean, looking back there wasn’t really a bond at all. Of course, we never-”
“I thought Jamie was my fated mate. She never bore the mark, but we both woke up every day assuming that was the day it would appear on her arm.” Galen took my hand in his and brought it to his lips, brushing a kiss across the tips of my fingers. “It never did.”
“A mark?” I murmured, under my breath, though Galen would have heard it as clearly if I’d spoken up.
“You never received the mark when you and Maddox were together?” Galen snaked his arm over my hip and around my back, pressing me close as if he feared I’d try to run away from him and the conversation.
Not that I hadn’t given him reason to feel that way.
I had been keeping secrets. I’d been rejected once and had no desire to experience that pain all over again. There were things that I wasn’t ready to share - like the color of my wolf’s eyes or the visit from the Alaskan wolves, Valerie and Victor, before we left the summit.
As for my relationship, or lack thereof, with Maddox? There wasn’t anything Galen could have asked that I wouldn’t have been able to provide an honest answer for.
“No.” I flattened my palm against his chest, over his heart and took comfort in the steady rhythm. “I just, everyone said we were. My father, his father. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t Maddox’s fated mate. It was like part of the pack canon and I never gave the mark a second thought.”
“It’s unusual, given the Northwood alpha’s disdain for you, that he would be so certain you would be fated to marry his son.” Galen rested his forehead against mine, the warmth of his breath sent shivers down my spine.
“It is, isn’t it?”
If I had had any doubt about Maddox’s feelings for me, he made them clear at the summit. He never loved me. Anger, disgust, hate. All of those emotions boiled beneath the surface. It was no wonder, with the way his father felt about me.
Still, Maddox had given an award winning performance.
For years he led me to believe that he was head over heels in love with me. That I was his one and only, fated mate. But it wasn’t true. It couldn’t have been.
My life in the Northwood pack had been a lie.
I thought I was in love with Maddox, but I was too young, too naive to know better. With nothing to compare it to, it was all too easy for my ex fiancé to convince me that he was my destiny. Ignorance had been bliss.
At least for a little while.
But I wouldn’t trade the pain of being expelled from my pack, of being cut out of Maddox’s life or of learning the truth for anything. Every tear that I shed led me to Galen and the love we felt for each other.
I wasn’t sure why Maddox or his father had been so hell bent on marrying me into their family. I supposed it was another way to control me, and my father. When that didn’t work, they murdered him and cast me out.
