Page 31 of Rejected Wolf Mate

I stood for a long moment, knowing the decision I had to make, and knowing I couldn’t make it.

When my legs finally began to move again and I made my way back to Brixton, I still didn’t know what the hell I was going to do.

Chapter 12 - Rand

I frowned as I watched Astrid push her food around the plate. Deep bags hung under her eyes. She looked like she’d lost weight in only a handful of days.

“You need to eat,” I said.

“I am eating,” she retorted, but her voice was hollow.

“Pushing your food around the plate doesn’t count as eating,” I growled. “Don’t make me force-feed you.”

I expected her to fire back at me. Instead, she mechanically stuffed a single piece of steak in her mouth and pushed away from the table.

“I’m going to go upstairs,” she said, turning to leave.

I stood and cleared the distance between us before she had gotten out of the kitchen. I took her arm and pulled her back toward me.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just tired.”

I snorted. “That’s bullshit,” I argued. “I know you well enough to know when something is bothering you.”

She pulled her arm away, eyes narrowing. “We’ve known one another for a couple of weeks,” she said.

“Oh, so all those years of dating didn’t mean anything?” I asked.

“People change,” she fired back. “I don’t think I need to justify myself to you.”

“I’m trying to help,” I argued.

“Well, don’t.”

She turned to walk away. I reached out again, this time taking her shoulder and spinning her toward me. Reaching out with my free hand, I tilted her chin so she was looking at me.

“Is it Thea?” I asked. “Are you worried about her?”

Life flared back into her eyes as they filled with rage. She shoved me away. I could smell the anger radiating off her as she glared at me, her limbs trembling.

“Shut up,” she said. “Just shut the fuck up. You aren’t allowed to ask those types of questions anymore.”

“I’m asking because I care—”

“You gave up your right to care when you walked out the way you did,” she spat. “Because you sure as hell didn’t care then. You didn’t care about how I felt about you. You didn’t care about how you running off to hunt monsters and leaving us alone might affect us. You didn’t care that maybe breaking up with me by trying to sneak out like a one-night stand would feel like a knife to the chest. You left us and walked away like I was an old toy you weren’t interested in anymore.”

“That’s not true,” I said, my own anger starting to grow. “I left because I cared.”

“And you were so fucking short-sighted that you didn’t think about the long term,” Astrid spat back. “Like maybe, oh, I don’t know, how it sent me into a massive spiral of depression because you’d abandoned me? How basically it felt like a replay of when my mother walked off without so much as a goodbye?” Her voice rose and quavered as she built up steam. “The one person that I cared about besides Thea just walked out and left me in the lurch.”

“You knew I was going,” I argued.

“And I supported you,” she said. “Because I knew you thought it was the right thing to do. You wanted to help people. I didn’t think that would mean you would throw me out of your life. Based on all our talks, I thought we’d come to an understanding that we’d be long-distance. But no. You tried to sneak off.”

I opened my mouth, but she held up a finger, cutting me off. Her eyes blazed with a cold fury I had only ever seen her have on a couple of occasions. I could smell the hurt and rage wafting over her.

“And it really messed me up,” she said. “The only reason I was able to crawl myself out of the hole I’d fallen into was because I knew Thea needed me. I wasn’t going to abandon her like everyone else. But by then, it was too late. I’d lost my job and basically had to start from scratch.”

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