Page 21 of Rejected Wolf Mate

But how much had I moved on, really? Because the more time I spent with her, the more I realized that I still had feelings for her. Which posed its own set of problems. The whole reason I had broken up with her in the first place had been to protect her. Getting back together with her in any capacity would just put her in even more danger than she already was.

I shoved those thoughts away. I had been right to break up with her, even if my method might have been questionable. I wasn’t going to let the mess of emotions that had come up since she’d shown up dictate my decisions or put her back in danger.

All of this went through my head in a fraction of a second before I crashed back down to reality as Astrid spoke again.

“But you did hurt me,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you meant to or not.” She paused, considering. “Actually, sometimes I wondered if it might have been easier if you had just meant to hurt me. Maybe it would have been easier to swallow than you doing it unintentionally.”

I winced. “Come on, Astrid. I don’t know if that’s really fair.”

She flapped her hand as she slid off the couch. “I don’t really want to argue with you about it,” she said. “Mostly because I know it’s not going to do anything. You think you’re right, and that’s the end of it for you.”

I opened my mouth to argue, to try and get her to understand that what I had done had been the right call. But before I could even formulate what I was about to say, she spoke again.

“I’m going to go take a shower.”

She walked off, and I watched her naked body move toward the front hall toward the stairs. Just seeing it and thinking about what had just happened was enough to make my cock twitch again.

I tried to push those thoughts aside. They weren’t going to do anyone any good. Like Astrid had said, this was best as a one-time thing. Anything else would add even more unnecessary complications that neither of us wanted.

Except neither my wolf nor I wanted that, and that was a problem.

***

I fixed dinner that night, trying to do something to smooth over the tension that had lingered between us throughout the day. Both of us still seemed to be reeling from the sex, though neither of us seemed to want to bring it up.

Astrid came downstairs as I was cooking. “Something smells good,” she said.

“I had some venison. I thought I might as well cook it up.” I looked over my shoulder at her. “It’s still one of your favorites, right?”

She blinked in surprise, then nodded. Something lurked beneath the surface, though, in her shoulders and eyes. I turned to get a better look at her.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She shook her head as though to clear it, then turned to look at me. “I’m okay,” she said. “Just worried about Thea. It’s been a while since I’ve been away this long. I know she can handle herself, but it still feels weird not having her around.”

“Do you want me to get her and bring her here?” I asked. “There’s a chance it’ll be safer.”

Something that looked like shock or alarm flickered in her expression, gone so quickly I was fairly certain I’d imagined it.

“No, no. It’s fine,” she said. “I think that would actually put her in more danger. The less interaction you two have, the less important that gang or whatever will think she is. But I appreciate the offer.”

I frowned. “Are you sure?”

She hesitated, biting the inside of her cheek, her old tell for when she was thinking hard about something. Then she shook her head.

“If this goes for much longer, then maybe,” she said. “But right now, I can still call her and talk to her. She knows the general gist of what’s going on, so she knows to play it safe.”

“Does she know I’m around?” I asked.

She snorted. “No. I don’t want her worrying about me any more than she already is. If it comes to going to get her, then I’ll tell her.”

I nodded. Still, something nagged at the back of my head. I had liked Thea quite a bit, how friendly and optimistic she was. I also remembered how protective Astrid was of her. The two of them had gone through a lot. I remembered Astrid telling me how responsible she felt for Thea after her parents had died. I would have expected Astrid to want Thea as close to her as possible with all of this going on.

For a moment, I wondered if maybe something had happened between them, or if there was more going on than Astrid was letting on. Or, I could be reading way too much into all of this, and it was simply Astrid wanting to keep Thea at a distance because of the situation. Hell, maybe even because of me. Maybe she didn’t want to bring me up again with her sister after all these years. Could I really blame her, if that was the case?

But the thought that she was keeping Thea at arm’s length rubbed me the wrong way, almost chafing at me. And I didn’t like the thought that I might be the reason she was avoiding her sister. Not when I knew how much they cared about one another.

My mind wandered back to the fight. It wasn’t the first time we’d had angry sex. In fact, with our stubborn streaks, it had happened quite a bit, though I also think that might have been because we both found it hotter than it had any right to be. But that wasn’t what I was thinking about. Instead, my mind was going back to what she’d said about our break-up. The more I thought about it, the more it nagged at me. It was one of those vicious cycles that fed on itself.

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