Page 15 of Exiled Mate

“I just like it,” I say in response to his question. “It’s just fun, Rylan.”

“It’s more than fun. This is homey. It reminds me of you,” he says softly.

Yeah. Well.

“Are you going to give me some answers or not?”

Rylan looks at me. His eyes are such an electric blue, they almost look like they’re illuminated from within.

I miss seeing them when he laughs.

The thought is startling. Yes, absolutely, I miss seeing Rylan’s eyes lit up in joy. But I didn’t expect it to painfully echo through me like it is now, lighting up the loss that I’ve felt around him again.

He sighs, which is good, because if he doesn’t move or do something, I’m going to lose my mind.

“I don’t want this to come back on you,” he says finally.

This is getting annoying. “Rylan,” I say firmly. “The cryptic, holier-than-thou, martyr stuff has to stop. Either figure your shit out or don’t. Trust me with what you need to say, or don’t, but just know that you’re not exactly in a good place with me. You owe me, at the very least, an explanation about where the hell you disappeared to.”

Rylan looks to the side. “It’s compli?—”

“I do not care if it’s complicated,” I interject, holding up a hand. “Assume, for ten seconds, that I’m a reasonably intelligent person, and I can figure it the fuck out.”

He stares at me for another second before continuing. “I… I was set up. Framed. For something I didn’t do.”

I don’t say anything but arch an eyebrow at him. Rylan continues. “Thorne believed someone else over me. I took the fall. He outcast me, banned me from talking to anyone in the pack, as punishment for what he thinks I did.”

It’s very cryptic, and I frown, because that doesn’t sound like Thorne at all. “And so you just, what… had to leave?”

“Two years ago, yes.”

“What have you been doing since then?”

His jaw clenches, and he shakes his head. He shuffles slightly, the angle of the lamplight catching on his chest, and I gasp.

He’s covered in scars.

I rush forward, my heart in my throat. “Rylan,” I breathe, my fingers barely brushing the lines as they cascade over his body. “These are… how did you get these?”

He doesn’t answer.

I let my fingers linger on one particularly gruesome scar that bisects his carved abs. Under my hands, his muscles jump and bunch, twitching at my touch.

Don’t touch him, my mind says. But my hands can’t obey. They keep tracing, sketching out the new marks on his skin that are so unfamiliar to me.

Shifters don’t scar easily. Small cuts and scrapes heal nearly instantly, and if they’re bigger, they disappear after each shift.

For him to have scars like this, they have to run deep, past the outer layer of skin, to the very bottom of the dermis, onto the subcutaneous tissue. Or deeper.

Some of these scars, like the one on his abs, look like they’re not just through the skin. They look like they cover places where his skin was ripped away completely, then had to be grown anew.

“Terra,” he grunts.

The sound is strained. I don’t dare look down at his sweatpants, afraid that I’ll find there the echoes of my own desire for him.

I look up.

Rylan’s looking down at me with an expression that’s so intense, it makes my chest ache. I want to hold him. To tuck him against my heart and tell him that everything’s okay. That as long as we’re together, we can figure anything out.

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