Page 24 of Alpha's Rejected Mate

“Do I even want to know what you two are conspiring in here?” Silver asked, stepping into the room. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.

“I’m trying to help Harper come to terms with the fact that she might want to do something crazy and have sex with her mate. Mateo isn’t happy with my methods.”

“You shouldn’t be interfering with either Mateo or Harper.”

“I’m not interfering. I’m helping. There is a huge difference.” Franny jumped off the counter. “Look, if you think you can do a better job than her best friend talking to her, be my guest. I’d love to see the two of you come up with an ideal plan to, you know, make sure all hell doesn’t break loose.”

“All hell won’t break loose, if Harper and I end up together.”

“Not during the night,” Franny said. “But I’m thinking about how Harper will feel the day after. You hurt her, broke her heart, and nearly crushed her spirit. You know what she was like when she came here, Dad. She lost a lot of weight, and even you were worried that it might start a war with the Fox’s pack if she died of malnutrition. Lover boy is only seeing her now, when she is healthy and happy. Before that, she was struggling.” She turned on her heel and walked away.

Silver wouldn’t look at him.

“Is what she says true?” Mateo asked.

“When Harper first arrived, it was hard. She didn’t try to be a burden on anyone, and in all honesty, she wasn’t. There were some who didn’t trust the banishment and feared what her presence would do to them. It took a long time for her to settle in. She didn’t want to live. It was like watching a mate who had one die. Between Franny, and I like to think myself, Harper started to want to live.”

“I caused that.”

Silver sighed and pulled out his cell phone. For several moments, he was clicking away, and then held up a picture. “That was taken the first year she was here with Franny. The two began to be friends.”

Mateo was shocked. Harper had lost so much weight that Franny’s arms around her looked like they were lead weights on her shoulders. Her face was gaunt, and he saw the odd angles of her cheekbones. She looked close to death. He hated the sight of it.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Yeah, she was in a bad way. A lot of the pack worried, and then she started attending beauty school at the local community college with the humans. She stayed to herself, didn’t bring any notice to us, and slowly found her path.”

Mateo felt like a fucking bastard. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

“Mateo, I didn’t tell you this to make you feel guilty.”

“I know, you showed me this for me to realize how I’ve been fucking up, and I know I’ve been fucking up bad.” He shook his head. “And I’ve got to fix this.”

He shook Silver’s hand and made his way out of his home. They didn’t need cars, so he took off, running toward Harper’s place. He didn’t pass many people as it was quite late.

Once he got to her house, he took a moment to catch his breath, and then he walked up to her door and knocked. Standing on her doorstep, he waited for the door to open. Seconds passed, maybe a minute, before Harper opened the door.

“Mateo, what’s the matter?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What?”

“For everything. For what I did to you. I am sorry. I had no idea that’s how you were going to … be.” He had no idea what to say or do.

The woman before him now wasn’t dangerously thin. Her curves were back. She’d been a fuller woman, even when she transitioned.

“They told you?”

“Silver showed me one of the pictures of you the first year you were here.”

“You’re not supposed to know about that.”

“I should have known,” Mateo said. “You could have been hurt.”

She shrugged and pressed her lips together, and he saw the tears glisten in her eyes.

“Does this mean you’re going to leave?” Harper asked.

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