Page 9 of Bear's Rejected Love

Honor gave him the most adorable baby laugh.

After dealing with the toxic waste, he cranked open a window to air out the cabin bathroom.

“All done kiddo, we good to go?”

Honor kicked in his arms and grabbed his nose when he walked out the door. He sang a happy, babbling song as the sunlight hit them. Sun, not rain. It was a nice change.

Just past the corner of the cabin, he stopped dead.

What are the chances? There she was, walking up the road in a knitted cream sweater, and black leggings her dark hair tangled around her face. Roan tried to look at the trees or the dirt or the sky, but he could only fix his eyes on her. Even after fifteen years she still had an effect on him, and once more he regretted what had happened between them. Scrap that—what he’d done. He’d run off like the coward he was.

He bit down on his inner cheek. Tabitha had never been bland or boring. She was like the sun up there in the sky. She’d always been gasoline to a fire that should never have been set. Natural Tabitha was a sight to behold. Time should have worked some kind of ravages on her, but if anything, it only made her more alluring. His stomach flipped like he was little more than a kid again, finding out that he was going to be mated to the one woman who should always have been off limits.

Tabitha crossed her arms like she wanted to ward off the cold as soon as she spotted him. She’d always been far too direct, and she wasn’t going to pretend now that she’d just been out for a walk and happened to run into him.

“Roan.” His name on her lips shouldn’t sound like that. It shouldn’t scald his blood and make him instantly hard in his jeans. He was old, damn it.

She looked immediately at the baby, not at him and cooed, “Hello, mister. You’re so handsome in your red sweater on this beautiful morning. Goodness, you’re cute.” She didn’t pinch his cheeks or reach out, but she gave him a silly smile that Honor rewarded with a giggle and a double fist shake.

Her eyes tracked to his face. “Even in the past, we were always eerily connected.”

The walk. Their meeting out here. She was right, but it pained him to admit it. “Probably a product of us being raised together since I was fourteen.”

She scrunched her nose and called his bullshit. “You never saw me as a sister. Denver wasn’t your brother. He was your best friend. My parents weren’t your parents. They were good people that you loved and loved you too, but they weren’t ever mom and dad to you.”

That was true. He’d always called them by their first names.

“I didn’t have to think of you as a sister to not want to be mated to you.”

She studied him and he knew he’d said the wrong thing. Obviously. How was that for a peace offering? Something flashed in her face, something dejected and sad, but then she shook her head, twirled her hair into a bun, and gave him a side profile as she shifted away.

“I suppose not, but I’m here now and we have bigger things to worry about than what either of us used to want. We’re not those people anymore. And now you have a son.” She smiled at the baby and let her hair drop back down in a honey rich maple cascade. “Two sons.”

“I’m raising the baby because a friend of mine thought it would be good for me and the girls. She arranged everything.” Wow. Be more of an asshole.

“Uh… alright. Sure. And about Corbin…”

“Corbin doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Not yet, but that’s going to change. He’s curious. He’s angry at the way you treated me.”

“He would be because he’s only heard your side of things.”

Her nostrils flared that time and finally, she looked at least a little bit pissed. “Jesus, Roan. Do you really think that’s true? I always wanted you to be in his life. If you knew how much effort I made trying to find you. This isn’t just some cushy vacation spot that I’ve picked for the remainder of Corbin’s teenage years because I decided I was tired of working two jobs to try and make ends meet out there. All the assholes who copped a feel and all the other jerks who thought they could be rude to me aside and all the other crap about life—this was entirely for Corbin’s sake. I have never said one bad word about you. He did ask me where you were, and I told him that we were mated and it didn’t work out. That you left the clan, and I couldn’t find you. I never made you out to be some dude who abandoned his family because that’s not how it happened. You left me You didn’t leave your son. I have put my feelings aside about that, day after day, for years in order to be the bigger person.” She waved her hand at the end, not pissed at all. She looked like she was fanning him away from her like a bad smell.

Probably was because his attitude left a lot to be desired.

He wasn’t going to be able to act like a brick wall out here. Not with her. Tabitha had always breezed effortlessly past that.

“So.” She turned and motioned for him to fall into step beside her. Walking with her through the clan wasn’t something he wanted to do, but then, he had been going to talk to her. It was silly to try and avoid her, as the girls pointed out to him.

He grunted and took a step forward. Soon, they were walking, and it wasn’t even as painful as pulling teeth. Not that he’d ever had that done. Those bastards left his teeth alone. It was everywhere else they touched.

He rocked Honor as he walked, keeping a big arm around the baby’s back. He was no match for the swaying motion and a full belly. He was asleep within a few minutes.

“He’s adorable,” Tabitha whispered. “Super sweet. You’re a very lucky man.”

“He needed someone. They hired a PI to find shifters out there, with no one to raise them. A lot of the time those kids have no idea what they are. They’re in care. They definitely need to be brought here or taken into another family before shit gets real rough for them.”

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