Page 46 of Betrayed Pregnant Mate

“Anyway,” Aris says, “I was going to ask—how are things going with Veronica?”

“With Veronica?” I ask, glancing up at him. This morning, things were going great. I woke up with her and had her first thing in the morning until I remembered that she still plans to leave as soon as she can.

“Yeah,” Bigby deadpans, “your mate?”

I swallow hard. I’m not a good liar, and the last thing I want to do right now is admit to these two that Veronica is a human right when it starts to feel like I’m part of the group again. I clear my throat.

“I don’t think she wants to stay,” I say, not looking at them as I throw a Skittle out into the brush.

“Oh,” Aris says, sounding genuinely sad, “so you’ll be leaving, then?”

“No,” I say, glancing up at them, then realizing what I’d implied. “No,” I say again, clearing my throat. “Veronica doesn’t want to be with me.”

“What?” Bigby says, brows furrowing together. “But the two of you are so good together.”

“Does she understand the mate thing?” Aris asks. “Linnea was saying she seemed confused by it.”

“Oh, she understands,” I say, thinking of the past few days and how we’ve enjoyed each other. “It’s just that—well, I think she’s still mad at me.”

They stare back at me like they couldn’t possibly understand why.

“For the kidnapping,” I supply, and they both nod in understanding. “And also because—I left her. Back before, when we were dating. I knew what I was doing was wrong, being with a human-like that, and I just left. It was mean.”

“You have to apologize,” they say in unison, before glancing at each other.

“Serious,” Aris says, clapping me on the shoulder. “Have you done that?”

“Yeah,” I say, glancing between the two of them. “Of course, I apologized,” I say on a laugh, cracking up at the idea that the two men in front of me didn’t do that the first chance they got or thought they were imparting some great wisdom on me by telling me that was the next step.

“But sometimes,” I say, “even when you apologize, they still don’t forgive you, I guess. At least not fully.”

“Just keep trying,” Bigby says.

“That’s easy for you to say,” I laugh, “your thing was a lot less severe than kidnapping someone and locking them in a basement for weeks, giving them lifelong trauma, claustrophobia, and making their tennis elbow flare up. Not to mention the fact that she lost her job.”

“You got me there,” Bigby says, right when Aris says, “I called Linnea a cow in high school.”

Bigby and I stop short, staring at Aris, our mouths open.

“What?” I sputter, while Bigby says, “Damn, I knew you were mean, but that was vile.”

“I’m just saying,” he says, pink touching his cheeks. “I know sometimes you have to apologize a lot before someone believes you.”

“But what if she forgives me,” I say, “and what she wants is just different from what I want? She doesn’t want to stay in Rosecreek, she wants to keep being a traveling nurse. She doesn’t want to settle down.”

We can’t keep up the ruse of her being a shifter forever. What if we get invited to a hunt on Aris’s property? We could claim she’s shy about the shifting, but eventually, something would give, and everyone would figure it out, and they would all go back to hating me like they did when I was the monster roaming Rosecreek, stealing all the humans from their beds at night.

“Then you compromise,” Bigby says, “you split the time. You find something that works for both of you.”

I think of him and Rosa, having just come back from California. Would Veronica even want to do something like that?

Suddenly, I feel a little tug on my finger, and when I look down, I see the cutest gnome staring up at me, it’s little eyes fixed on the Skittles in my hand.

“More,” it says, and when Bigby glances over at it, he lets out the loudest, highest-pitch, most blood-curdling scream I’ve ever heard from a grown man, let alone a man that size.

The gnome screams back at him, only calming down when I give it another Skittle and Aris and I laugh all the way back into town.

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