HAVEN
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Wesley said. “I won’t lie to you, Haven. I won’t ever lie to you again.”
“You better not,” I muttered, leaning back against the pillows and crossing my arms.
A flicker of amusement hit me, but his face stayed stoic and blank as he kept leaning against the wall, not showing his reaction on the outside. Probably because he didn’t want to piss me off. A little late for that.
“I won’t,” he said again. “Which is why, before we talk about anything else, I want to be upfront with you about something. And I want you to hear it from me and not from someone else.”
I swallowed but nodded. I knew whatever he was about to say would just piss me off even more, based on how he looked and acted.
“This alpha from another pack—that’s what we call ourselves, all of us werewolves who live together in one group—well, my dad has been trying to get access to his business accounts because he felt that not everything
was on the up and up with his funds. He’s been making different offers to him over the last year or so to form an alliance so we’d have access to his accounts as we merged some of our businesses. But Alpha Timothy turned him down every time.”
I frowned but nodded. I didn’t really understand his world—business or werewolf—but I could make sense of most of what he said.
“What does that have to do with anything? With us?” I asked. He grimaced. “A lot, actually.”
“How?”.
“After you left last week, I went to the packhouse to talk to my dad, and when I got there, he was in a meeting with Timothy. Timothy had brought a new offer, a new proposal to my dad. And it involved me.” He blew out a breath and ran his hand through his hair as he prepared himself to say whatever he was going to say next. “It involved me and his daughter.”
My eyebrows shot up into my hairline. That was not what I expected him to say. “What do you mean it involved you and his daughter?”
“He wanted us to form an alliance with our packs by having Nicole and I take each other as mates.”
“Mates?” I repeated.
That word again. The one I kept hearing.
“Basically, we’d unite the packs through marriage. Still separate packs, but tied together by the mating alliance.”
“Like a contract marriage. Or a political marriage. Like what rich people or royal people or other cultures do?” I asked, and he nodded. “So, what did you say after you heard this proposal?” I asked, my heart pounding in my chest and my stomach boiling.
“I said yes. But I had no intention of actually going through with it. I only pretended to agree to it so we’d get what we needed and could finally take him down, then the contract would be void.”
“So you were pretending.” “Yes.”
“Did this ‘other girl’ know you were pretending?”
“Yes. She wanted to help us. She and her brother wanted their father gone too.”
“Why?”
“He cheated on their mom. A lot. It basically killed her,” he hissed, his face a mixture of disgust, sorrow, and anger.
“That’s awful,” I murmured, and he nodded his agreement. “So you were pretending to be engaged?”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s why you didn’t call me back when I called you?”
“Yeah,” he repeated, quieter this time, glancing down at his feet. “I had to convince Timothy I was serious about his daughter. He could… he could smell you on me when I came to the meeting.”
I wrinkled my nose and furrowed my brow again. “Smell me? How—?”
“Werewolf? Remember?” he said, tapping his nose. “We have enhanced senses such as sight and smell.”
“Oh.”
“He didn’t want his daughter to be someone’s side piece. Ironic when you think about how he treated his own mate. My dad said I should wait until it was all done with before contacting you. I thought it would all be done by the end of the weekend.”
“But it wasn’t,” I finished for him.
“No. It wasn’t,” he admitted. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
I didn’t respond. I wasn’t ready for that. I still had questions, and I still needed answers about this whole fake engagement thing. I just stared at him, waiting for him to continue his story.
He waited, but when he realized I would not respond to that, he pressed on. “Timothy wouldn’t agree to give us what we needed until I agreed to schedule the mating ceremony with his daughter. So we scheduled it for Friday. Once we had what we needed, we sent it to the king so he could look over it and make his decision. We kept the ceremony set for Friday even when the king informed us he would be coming to arrest Timothy because we didn’t want to make him suspicious by backing out.”
“So you’re not married? Or mated or whatever?” I asked, looking down at my fingers.
“No!” he exclaimed, standing up straighter. “No, of course not. I never intended to be. I only agreed so we could get the information that we needed. And Nicole found her real mate while pretending to be at her bachelorette party.”
“But what if the king hadn’t convicted Timothy? Or what if he hadn’t gotten back to you in time? And what if Nicole hadn’t found her real mate? What would you have done?” I asked.
His face went white, and I could almost feel his heart skipping a beat and sticking in his throat. Of course, he hadn’t thought about that when he made his plan.
“Neither of us wanted it, Haven,” he breathed out. “I guess we would have gone through with it, pretended to be mated until everything was finished, and we could annul the union. But I wouldn’t have marked her. I would never have marked her as my mate.”
I didn’t understand what he meant by that, but I just nodded, still staring at my fingers. I could add that to my list of questions.
“Okay,” I muttered. “I can kind of understand what you were trying to do. Trying to help your pack and your dad and your king. I mean, I don’t really get it, but I get it.”
He sighed, and I felt a brief twinge of relief from him. “I know. I know it’s a lot to take in and understand and you’ve sort of been thrown into it, and I’m sorry.”
He kept apologizing, which was good because it was what I wanted, but I wasn’t done. I wasn’t ready to forgive him. I still had more questions, more things I needed to address.
“So, if a mating ceremony is like a wedding, then a mate is like—like a husband or a wife?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” he replied. “There are different types of mates. Chosen mates and fated mates. A chosen mate means you pick each other and agree to be together, even though there isn’t a mate bond. Nicole and I were pretending to be chosen mates.”
“And a fated mate?”
“A fated mate is a soulmate. Your other half. Your perfect match. There is no one more important to a werewolf than their fated mate.”
He stared at me with the same intensity he had the night before, the way he had when he first entered the hospital room and when he’d held me after my panic attack. The words he left unspoken hung between us, daring one of us to acknowledge them. To say them out loud.
“And I’m yours?” I whispered.
I was terrified to hear his answer. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to say yes or if I wanted him to say no. If he said yes, it would raise so many more
questions and insecurities I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with. But if he said no, I knew that would hurt more than I wanted to admit to myself.
“Yes,” he replied. “You’re mine.”
“Your soulmate,” I added. He nodded. “And there’s some sort of a magical bond between us? Tying us together? The… mate bond, Dr. Russo called it?”
“That’s what we call it, yeah.”
“Is that why I can sense your emotions?” I asked, and he nodded again. “Can you sense mine?”
“I can.”
“What am I feeling right now?”
“Hurt and confused and overwhelmed. Hurt because I ignored you after you asked me for space. Confused because you understand why I did what I did, and you respect the choice I made to help my dad and our pack, but it resulted in you getting hurt. Both physically and emotionally. And overwhelmed because you don’t know what to make of all of this and how you feel about it.”
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat and blinked against the wetness in my eyes, tilting my head to the ceiling to hide it from him. I had cried too much already.
I hated that he not only could feel my emotions, but he even understood where each of them came from. I didn’t know if that was from the bond or because he knew me that well, understood me that well, but either way, I did not like it.
But he was right. I was hurt and confused and overwhelmed. And I still had more questions. I just wanted to rest—both my body and my brain—but I needed to get everything out in the open between us first.
“I have two more questions,” I said, looking at him again. “I’m listening.”
I thought for a moment—thought about which question to ask him first. Which answer I wanted to hear first. They were both significant questions, both questions that the answer could make or break me.
“How long have you known I’m your mate?” I muttered, deciding that question was better to ask first. His answer would determine whether I asked him the other question I wanted to ask.
Blossoming understanding hit me from his side of the—the bond—and I held my breath as I awaited his answer.
“I didn’t know until I saw you last night in the hospital. I smelled you on Sebastian, and my lycan recognized your scent as the scent of his mate. And once I saw you, the bond between us fell into place,” he explained.
My held breath came out on a shaky sob, heavy relief sinking into every fiber of my being. I didn’t realize how much I needed that to be his answer until he said it. How scared I was of the other option.
My trembling hands wiped the tears that fell from my eyes. “So you weren’t just… you didn’t just… just—”
“Didn’t just what, Haven?” Wesley asked, taking a step towards me, finally moving from his pose against the wall by the door.
“I just wanted to know whether you wanted to be with me because you wanted me or because there was some… some magical thing connecting me to you, saying you had to be with me,” I choked out.
He crossed the room in long, hurried strides and sat on the edge of the bed, his hands cupping my face. “No! Shit, no, that’s not it at all, Haven. I wanted to date you because I wanted to. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done because… because I love you, Haven.”
I lifted my eyes to his, holding his stare, inhaling sharply. “You love me?” I whispered.
He nodded, his thumbs swiping at the tears streaming down my cheeks, leaving little tingles in their wake.
“I do,” he said. “I love you so much, Haven.”
“Why?” I asked. “Because of some magical bond?”
“No,” he replied, shaking his head and moving closer to me. “I love you because you’re you. I love you because you’re my best friend. You are the only person who truly calls me out on my shit and doesn’t sugarcoat it, and you’ve done that since day one. You’re the first person I think of every day and the last person I think of at night. I can’t imagine my life without you in it, because you are my life. I love everything about you, from your fiery red hair to your matching attitude when you don’t listen to me. I love you, and I think I always have. I was just too young to understand it, and then too stubborn to realize it.”
I could sense the honesty behind his words, sense his sincerity, his love for me. All of it was there, in the bond and in his confession, laid out for me to see, hear, and understand.
But it didn’t change what he did. It didn’t change how he’d ignored me.
Lied to me.
I didn’t even care about the fake engagement thing. I could look past that and understand he was helping his people.
But ignoring me. Not communicating with me. Especially when he knew my biggest fear, my biggest insecurity.
It would have been so easy to fall into his arms and profess my love back to him. To let him hold me and love me and kiss away the pain of the previous days.
But he needed to know how much he’d hurt me. He needed to understand I wouldn’t let that slide. I needed to know for certain he wouldn’t do something like that again.
“While that was a wonderful speech,” I said, bracing myself, steeling myself to do what I didn’t want but needed to. I wrapped my fingers around his wrists and pulled his hands from my face. “It doesn’t change the fact that you ignored me.”
“I know,” he replied. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“You could have called me. Or found some way to contact me and explain,” I said. “I would have understood and stayed hidden and pretended with you. We could have been a team, but instead, you chose to ignore me and make me feel like I didn’t matter anymore. Like I was just a fling. Like you used me and tossed me aside.”
“I couldn’t, Haven.” He sighed. “Yes, you could have.”
“No, I couldn’t! I literally couldn’t. My dad ordered me not to.”
“Oh, and you just do whatever Daddy says still? Even at twenty-four years old?”
“When it’s an alpha command, yeah, I have to follow it.” “What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s an order that we have to follow. It’s literally impossible to not follow an alpha order. The only person who isn’t affected by one is an alpha’s mate,” he explained. “And, as I said before, Timothy smelled you on me. He asked me about you. He threatened you. Not outright, but the threat was there. I was protecting you. I couldn’t let him know how much you meant to me, or you could have gotten hurt.”
A dark chuckle escaped my lips without warning. “And yet, by you protecting me, I got hurt anyway,” I threw back at him.
He flinched, and his chin dropped to his chest, his hands pulling away from mine. “And I’ll never forgive myself for that,” he muttered. “As soon as I heard you were hurt, I realized how badly I’d fucked up. And I know there is nothing I can do to fix it or change it. I just hope that someday, you find you can forgive me.”
I felt guilty almost right away for throwing that in his face. I didn’t blame him for what Lennox did. It wasn’t anyone’s fault except for Lennox.
But in my pettiness, I wanted him to hurt, too. Even though he was already beating himself up for what happened to me.
I stared at him for a long moment, thinking about what I wanted to do next. I would forgive him, of course. If I was honest with myself, I had already forgiven him. But I was still going to make him work for it.
I narrowed my eyes at him and then tossed the covers aside, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and standing up.
“What are you doing?” Wesley asked, standing up and following me to the door.
“I’m going for a walk.” “Why?”
“To think,” I answered, walking into the living room area.
Nolan sat on the couch with a mug of coffee in his hands, finally out of his wolf form, staring straight ahead pretending he hadn’t heard our entire argument.
“Go on a walk with me?” I asked him. He raised his brows, then set his mug down on the coffee table and stood up.
“Sure,” Nolan replied.
“Are you going to reject me?” Wesley murmured as he followed the two of us to the door.
“What?” I asked.
“Are you going to reject me as your mate?”
I turned and looked at him, my eyes scanning all of him, taking in the desperate and pained look on his face.
I swallowed, guilt already eating my insides before I even spoke the words. “I don’t know,” I said.
With that, I turned and walked out the front door, Nolan hot on my heels.
