Page 52 of Bear's Rejected Love

Tavish and Kier gave one last, lingering menacing look before releasing the pair. They walked backwards, never turning around. Their van was beyond fucked. They’d been hit hard and the engine or the radiator had taken the brunt of it. Roan wasn’t sure which, but when Joan scrambled back inside and tried to start it, she got nothing.

Tavish and Kier quickly came around to help Tabitha. They each took an arm and got him into the truck. He was helped into the backseat. Tabitha got in the other side and supported him after Tavish buckled him in. He was still basically useless and any major demands to his muscles were met with resistance. Tavish jumped behind the wheel and Kier piled into the passenger side.

Their truck might be punched up the back and would probably earn them a ticket if they crossed paths with police on the way back home, but Tavish would turn off and take the back roads as soon as he could. He’d lived in Greenacre his entire life and Roan had zero doubt that he knew the entire area including every grid road or dirt trail far beyond the clan’s borders.

Sam was no doubt cutting through the woods, carving his own way home. He’d be okay. Tavish and Kier would never have peeled away without him if they had a single doubt.

Roan didn’t turn his head and watch the white van fade into the distance behind them. He clung to Tabitha’s hands, which were warm around his own. The manacles still hung uselessly at his wrists and ankles. He’d come so close to facing years in captivity again. If Tabitha hadn’t tracked him based on some crazy mated instinct, he’d still be stuck in that van. He’d be cut open once more, injected, tortured. He’d become a living experiment.

That was almost his fate.

Almost.

Destiny had other plans for him.

It was time he started putting some faith in it and learning how to show the people around him just how much they meant to him. Just how much he cared. Just how much he loved them.

Chapter 22

Tabitha

Even after everything, Sam and Lily were kind enough to offer to watch the kids for the night. Tabitha didn’t feel right about that, given that Sam had covered some thirty miles on foot and been involved in a serious rear-ender that involved all of them getting checked out by Josephine when they got back to Greenacre. Instead, Silver and Domhnall were waiting for them when they drove in. She’d offered to watch the kids and Tabitha said yes, but only because she needed to spend the night at the clinic with Roan. Josephine had wanted to keep an eye on him as she wasn’t sure what he’d been given as a sedative. Also, there was the not so small matter of the tracking device.

Greenacre’s small clinic didn’t have the kind of equipment you’d find in a city hospital. But given the tracker likely contained metal, an MRI machine wouldn’t have been able to be used anyway. Instead, Josephine had used an ultrasound first, and then once she thought she’d located the tracker, she’d taken an x-ray. The device was at the back of Roan’s neck.

The implant wasn’t located that deep under the skin. It turned out that the microchip idea hadn’t been very far off. He hadn’t even had to have surgery. She’d just numbed the area with a local anesthetic and made a small incision. The innocuous device looked a bit like a birth control implant. Tabitha had stared at it with hatred, knowing what could have happened.

They’d anticipated him having to stay overnight or maybe a few nights in the clinic, but after removing the manacles—which her mate, Trace, helped with and checking him over from the accident, they were discharged after a few hours.

Tavish, Kier, and Sam all got the same exam. Tabitha had initially refused, wanting to stay with Roan, but after Josephine said she probably just had nasty whiplash going on, she admitted she was a little bit sore and was given the once over. Despite what he’d been through, Roan looked okay, there were red marks on his wrists and ankles from the manacles that were removed. Shifters might be quick healers and she was already feeling better, but even if he’d been feeling any after-effects from his ordeal, Roan would pretend that he was invincible just because he thought he should be.

They’d gone right to the clinic and still hadn’t talked.

They went back to her cabin, where she collapsed on the couch across from Roan, too tired to even offer something to eat. “Do you want some tea?” she asked at least. “Or some water?”

“No, thanks. I had plenty of water at the clinic.”

“I think you should take something for the pain. Josephine said ibuprofen was okay, even if we don’t know what was in the sedative. I can’t stand the thought of you hurting.”

She could have about fallen over when he held out his hand. She grabbed the bottle of pills and shook out two. He put them in his mouth and swallowed them before she could get water.

“Ugh,” she shuddered. “You always could do that. I can barely get them down with a gallon of liquid.”

“Soda.”

“Yeah.” Her voice went liquid soft. “That’s right. I always did have to use soda because the bubbles disguised what was in my mouth.” She couldn’t believe he still remembered that. It seemed like the tiniest detail.

“Everything,” he said in response to a question she hadn’t asked. “I remember everything. All the things you think I didn’t notice. All the things you know I did. All of it.”

He was just as rigid and tough and closed off looking as he’d ever been. There was no softness about him at all, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there underneath, like that chip they couldn’t see. After studying it for a half an hour, they’d decided the best course of action was to smash it to splinters. They’d offered Roan the honor, but in the end, it was Trace who used some of the tools they’d had to get out to take the manacles off.

Roan was always filled with tension humming just under the surface. Tonight, Tabitha couldn’t sense it. She knew that nothing was ever easy with Roan, right from the start. If she wanted simple, she never would have picked him. She never would have allowed him to be picked for her. She wouldn’t have offered anything, not friendship, and not her hopes and her heart for most of her life. She wouldn’t have waited. She wouldn’t have tried everything to find him.

But she had.

She’d done all of that because she’d always, always wanted him.

“I thought that you were going to be taken from me,” she said, but it came out as a heartbroken whimper that was barely understandable.

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