Page 27 of Betrayed Pregnant Mate

“I’m not sure now is the best time—”

“I was in love with you, Percy,” Veronica says, her voice cracking. The hallway is dim, the only light coming in through the curtains over the window, but I can see her perfectly. I can see her pink-painted toenails, the stitching on the bottom of her nightgown and the way her fingers play with the tips of her hair, her tick. What she does when she’s anxious.

“I was in love with you,” she continues, when I can’t find it in myself to speak. “And you were my best friend. And you just—you disappeared without a trace. Do you know I spend days calling every hospital in the area, giving them your description? Do you know that I filed a police report that you were missing? That’s how much I trusted you. That’s how much I thought there was no way a man like you could hurt me that bad.”

“Veronica, I—”

“I practiced cooking molcajete because I thought you would come back. I thought it was all a big misunderstanding. I made it over and over and over again. I went to the Hispanic food store every day, buying cactus for the dish, and I could see they thought I was nuts. But I wanted to have it nailed for you.”

“I didn’t—”

“Were you even in love with me, Percy? Did it even hurt you to leave?”

“Of course it did!” I say, louder than I meant to, swinging the door open. When I meet her eyes, there’s this look on her face, this flash of terror, and all at once, I feel like I’m going to be sick.

Because I recognize that expression.

Veronica is scared of me. At my sudden, abrupt movement, the way I stepped toward her and raised my voice. I startled her, and reminded her of what I’d done to her when under the effects of the serum.

And the worst part is that it brings it back to me, all at once, like a set dropping in around me, making me the unsuspecting actor in a show for which I’ve never read the script. I feel the cool, damp summer’s night air on my skin, hear the soft crunching of the forest floor under my feet. I can smell it—the soil, the plants, the fear and sweat and blood of someone near me.

I smell her, and I remember her, and for some reason, I have this terrible, pressing idea that something terrible is going to happen. Varun is going for her, specifically, maybe even running after her in this moment. It’s why she’s out in the woods, so scared and trying to get away.

Then, I see her eyes, the way they widen, and in a moment of lucidity, I remember that the thing she should be afraid of is me.

“Run,” I hear myself say, trying to imbue every ounce of the words meaning, and all my feelings, into that single syllable. I’m trying to say don’t trust me, and you are not safe. In my lucidity, the searing, terrible pain of not being able to shift rolls through my body, and I let out a groan, doubling over, thinking I’m going to be sick from the feeling.

Like being filled with maggots that are eating you alive from the inside. Like watching your body slowly plump, filling with a gas or liquid you can’t drain, waiting for the inevitable moment that you finally burst. A tear slips down my cheek, and I wish that I could just shift into my other form, my truest form, that I could just, for even a second, stretch those muscles.

Then, that cloudy, impermeable fog descends over me once again, and I watch, suspended, like a spectator to my own body, as Veronica runs from me. I see myself twitch, then launch into a sprint after her.

I don’t move gracefully. It looks like I’m in pain, because I am, but even in this terrible state, I’m a highly trained special ops agent. I track her, predict her next move, and predict correctly. She doesn’t have a chance to escape me when I jump out onto the trail in front of her.

“Oh, Gods,” I say, snapping back into the current reality, remembering I’m in my apartment, and jolting when I feel something warm wrapped around me.

It’s Veronica, and she’s crying, her arms thrown around my shoulders. I’m stooped to be able to bury my face in her chest. Our bodies are pressed together, so, so warm and inviting.

“Percy,” she whispers, her tear-strained cheeks shining in the low light when she looks up at me. “I saw it, too. I don’t—I don’t know what just happened, but I could—I could see it from your perspective. The pain—it was horrible, grotesque. I am so sorry that happened to you.”

People have been saying that for months. Showing me sympathy that I’ve never wanted. But for some reason, hearing it from Veronica feels different. The fact that she just witnessed it, got a taste of what it felt like for me the past few months, was able to leave sympathy behind and empathize with me for a moment, and the fact that it brought her to tears—

It makes me feel loved. It makes me feel valid. It makes me feel whole for the first time in years.

“Percy,” she whispers, and I wonder if she could feel those emotions, too, and hear those thoughts, but then I don’t care because she’s reaching up and pulling my head down, pressing her lips to mine.

Chapter 13 - Veronica

The kiss starts out slow, soft, gentle, and full of emotion. The kinds of kisses we shared before, back in New York. The kinds of kisses made me think Percy was in love with me, like I was the only woman he would ever look at again.

His hand comes to my chin, grazing the skin there, tipping my head up. He lets out a sigh against my lips. He smells like deodorant, soap, laundry soap, sweat, and blood, and it’s like I can separate everything happening in this moment down to the tiniest detail.

I hear the rasp of his clothes against his skin. Feel him swallow like it’s happening in my own body. I’ve been aroused before, but I have never, ever felt this way in my life. It’s like my senses have been turned up to high, sensitive to the tiniest changes around me. I feel like I could sense a change in the barometric pressure.

When Percy was remembering the night he kidnapped me, the memory entered my head like it had been there all along. Which, of course, it had—from my perspective. But this was like looking at a video of what it was like for him, like stepping into his body for a moment, and it was pure torture.

I’m not a shifter, have never even thought about what it would be like to be in anything other than a human body, but being in his body, feeling the pure agony of the wrong bones, the wrong skin, the wrong shape, it was the most painful thing I’d ever experienced in my life.

The fact that he even managed to warn me and snatch that lucidity for a moment is a miracle. The fact that the worst thing he did was take me and put me in a basement and feed and water me for a few weeks.

---