Page 12 of Cage Me

He looks up at me and grimaces. “Good luck. I’m out of here.”

The boy runs back toward the house, giving his sister a wide berth as she charges toward me. When she’s within touching distance, her palms shove at my chest. “I asked you a question.”

The growl in her words doesn’t bode well, but I stick with honesty.

“I was disposing of the body, so you didn’t have to worry about it.”

“By digging him a grave and giving my baby brother the memory of digging it himself?” She flings the words accusingly at me. “What is wrong with you?”

I might be desperate, but I’m not an idiot and she’s going to learn that one way or another. Steadying my stance, I lean over her, encroaching on her personal space as I bring my face as close as I can get to hers while still looking her in the eye.

“I was thinking that maybe giving his father a proper burial might ease some of the guilt he will undoubtedly feel later,” I say, seething with quiet rage. “And to remind him that no matter how bad of a person his father was, we can still show our humanity.”

“Well…” she starts but doesn’t finish.

“Well what, Spencer?” I taunt, my tone still dark. “Well, maybe I’m not the worthless man you wish for me to be? That if you’d quit being so fucking stubborn that you might see I’m a worthy mate instead of judging and rejecting me without giving me a chance?”

“I didn’t judge you,” she says, crossing her arms and maintaining her defiance.

“But you did reject me for no reason.”

Her lips thin and her eyes narrow, but I refuse to back down, even when she says, “I’m right and you know it.”

I start to shake my head as she throws her hands up in the air with a huff. Spencer seems intent on running from me again, but I’m not letting her go. Not yet.

“We’re not done with this conversation,” I tell her as I move to block her steps. “You need to admit that you have no reason to reject me.”

“I have every reason,” she screams in my face. “They’re right there in that house. My family needs me, and I’ve spent the last three years fighting to give them something better than this!”

“And you think you have to do that by yourself?” I ask, because if that’s her only reason, I know all is not lost.

“I don’t have to, but I want to,” she says, her voice lowering back to normal. “You aren’t part of the plan, Drake.”

“But I’m your mate.”

“And we see how well that worked out for my mom.” This time she sounds defeated, and all I want to do is hold her in my arms, promising that her mother’s experience isn’t normal—at least not where I’m from—but I’m learning more about my mate with every word she speaks.

She doesn’t need promises. She needs actions.

“Give me a chance to show you differently,” I say, reaching for her hand. The moment our skin touches, an energy passes through us, and for the first time in nearly one thousand years, I hear a growl in my mind. One that is not my own.

Without thinking, I release her to rip my shirt over my head with one hand and press the other over my chest where the magical tattoo of my wolf rests. Heat rises from the black ink, and I close my eyes, but whatever brief connection I just felt to him, it’s gone as swiftly as it came.

“What the hell are you doing?” Spencer asks. When I look back at her, confusion mars her perfect face.

“My wolf. I felt him.”

Her eyes roll. “Do you think you deserve praise for that?”

“If you knew what I’ve been through, then you wouldn’t have to ask that question.”

The back door of the house opens and closes loudly, the noise causing both of us to glance that way.

Spencer’s mother is walking toward us and her light-blue eyes, much like Spencer’s, are glowing.

“Mom? What is it?” Spencer demands but doesn’t move from where she’s standing next to me.

I slip my shirt back on, then watch as her mother doesn’t stop until she’s standing in front of me and placing her hand over my chest, right where I’d just been touching. “So much pain,” she murmurs softly.

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