Page 44 of Defeated

He stops breathing for a split second, and although his hand on my left hip briefly tenses, he doesn’t let me go. “Your mate?”

I look away, shame and pain so bitter I swear I can taste it. “I’m not free, and I wish I was.”

Chris doesn’t respond for the longest time. When he slides his palm around the nape of my neck and angles my head up so we’re eye to eye, I don’t fight him.

He stares down at me, and I’m surprised at the anger hardening his jaw. “Did he hurt you? Because if you need someone to kill him, I might be your guy.”

Why does he care about me? And why is he determined to protect me?

“He didn’t…” And then I stop. What am I doing defending a man who took the Zoe Burton I used to be and ground her to dust beneath his boot?

He literally had me creeping around the packhouse like I was scared of my own shadow.

My mate.

I hadn’t thought—or ever believed—my mate would be capable of being so hurtful. And he truly was. Over and over again.

“Harlan killed every single hope I ever had,” I whisper, staring at Chris’s chin and barely able to see it with my vision so blurry. “He made me leave my home and everything I knew to get away from him. I am not free. I am tied to a man I hate.”

Chris’s lips touch my forehead, and his left arm squeezes me, holding me close as he whispers, “I killed the person I was supposed to protect, and the guilt would have strangled me if I stayed in Iowa a day longer. I am tied to the past.”

I lift my head, still blinking tears from my eyes.

He said he killed his mate. This isn’t the first time he’s told me this, but every time he does, he says it with so much sorrow, I can’t believe he would. I still don’t.

“I don’t want to be tied to a man I hate anymore,” I admit quietly.

I wouldn’t be if I found the courage to do what I should have done two years ago. A thing I’m so terrified of, I don’t know that I will ever find the strength to do it.

My mate is the enforcer and childhood best friend of the Pack Burton alpha. If I go back, even if I found the strength to reject our bond, no one would let me leave. I’d be walking right back into the cage I ran out of, and I might not be able to leave it again.

And if Harlan learned about me kissing Chris, I wouldn’t survive his anger.

Neither would Chris.

Harlan might not have wanted me, but he wouldn’t want anyone else to have me.

Chris tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his gentle touch returning me to the present. “I don’t want to be tied to the past.”

Even though it’s an impossible thing to wish for, I wish this is the life I was supposed to live. With Chris. Not in Washington with Harlan.

“You’re very easy to be around,” I tell him instead.

“According to my packmates, I’m a hermit,” he says with a smile twitching his lips. “But I find it very easy to be around you.”

We smile at each other, and then his gaze dips, lingering on my lips. “I’m going to kiss you,” he says, with so much heat in his eyes, my body ignites like it never has before. “If you don’t want?—”

Swallowing around the dryness in my throat, I grip the front of his T-shirt. “I do. Don’t you care that I have a mate?”

“I care,” he bites out as he presses his forehead to mine, “that your mate made you so miserable they were no true mate to you. I care that you have the most beautiful smile that I don’t see nearly enough.”

We stand there, leaning against each other in the hallway.

“I’d like you to come to Winter Lake with me,” he says quietly. “You’d be safe.”

I shake my head. “It’s your home. Not mine.”

“Where will you go?”

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