Page 27 of Defeated

It’s a Tuesday, and, as usual, I’ve taken to slinking around, head down, trying to avoid meeting everyone’s eyes. When I step into a room, I automatically brace myself for the laughter, never knowing what it is about me that’s so fucking hilarious.

Everyone is at dinner. I creep toward the kitchen so I can scrape some food from the pots still on the stove and save myself from more humiliation in the dining room.

I’m halfway down the hallway when Harlan steps out of the den, surprising me. It’s a dark hallway, and we’re the only ones in it, so of course, he immediately clocks me despite how desperately I wish myself invisible. “Oh, you.”

After that first humiliation when I took him breakfast, I keep my head down and don’t say a word as I move to go around him.

He doesn’t want words from me. All he wants is me quiet, in the dark, with my legs open.

His hand grips my arm and I yelp when he yanks me back so hard, I bounce off his muscled chest. “Ignoring me, hmm?”

I shake my head. “No, I was just?—”

“Creeping down hallways, avoiding your mate?”

I don’t respond. Any denial would be an outright lie, and Harlan is a pack enforcer. There’s no lying to him.

He studies me for a beat, his expression utterly unreadable, and then he swings toward the front door at the end of the hallway. “Come.”

I don’t know why he bothered with an order when he drags me along.

“Where are we?—”

“Did you know Tomas intended me to mate with Isabelle?” he interrupts, propelling me toward the front door.

Did I know the alpha, who doesn’t let anyone but his closest friends call him anything but Alpha, wanted to bond Harlan with his beautiful sister?

“No.”

How could I when I’m not important enough to know anything at all?

“I’m his closest friend.” Harlan shoves the front door open, revealing the empty porch with the wicker seats where my packmates like to relax on stinking hot days. I used to relax here too, before I started hiding.

Since it’s dinnertime, everyone is inside eating.

Harlan yanks me so hard my shoulder joint pops, and I wince. He neither notices nor cares. “I’m his confidante, being trained to take on the role as head pack enforcer.”

I know. Everyone knows. And if we didn’t know, five minutes in his presence would soon illuminate us to a piece of news Harlan would never let anyone forget.

He leads the way down the porch steps, still dragging me.

I stumble, nearly falling. But I don’t complain. Just because he hasn’t started hitting me yet doesn’t mean he won’t soon start.

“And instead of having a beautiful mate who is of the same caliber as I am, I have a girl who creeps around dark hallways and scrapes burned food from the bottom of pans.”

I nearly remind him I never did those things before he made the dining room a place which makes me break out in a cold sweat.

I got sick of walking in and overhearing all the ways I was ugly, as disappointing a fuck as I was a mate, and no one—not one person in the room—ever said a thing to defend me.

Before all that humiliation, I ate in there just fine, and I did none of the creeping I do now.

He snorts. “The future head pack enforcer mated to a nothing like Zoe Burton. Does that sound fair to you?”

Fate doesn’t care about fairness. I’ve learned fairness is sometimes a luxury not everyone can enjoy. Fate creates a bond between two people for some unknown reason, and that’s it. That’s all we know. He’s old enough to know it as well as I do.

I don’t dare say any of that. My instincts are screaming a warning that Harlan is dragging me out here for no good reason, and my nerves are so taut, they’re seconds from snapping.

“Where are we going?”

---