Page 15 of Unwilling Mate

We stay that way for a few moments until my stomach releases a loud rumble. I snort and shake my head as he pulls away. “I’ll go hunting. You put away your new clothing. I cleared a drawer out for you in the dresser.”

Again, I hide the sheen in my eyes and turn to survey the clothes.

When the door closes behind him, I focus on neatly folding everything he’d haphazardly flourished at me while he unwrapped them. Each piece is more lovely than the last. I can’t believe he did this for me. It must have cost him a fortune, let alone to get it out here in the middle of the woods on the side of a mountain.

I get everything neatly folded in the empty drawer and smile at the idea of my clothes being with his. My belongings mixing and mingling with his belongings. Like we are starting a home together, a real home.

I smile as I tidy up the bedroom. He’ll grumble about me cleaning when he returns, but then he’ll have to show me who is dominant, and I like the way that turns out in the end. Once I gather his laundry from where it’s scattered all over the bedroom floor, everything is perfect. I make the bed and then head into the kitchen for some coffee. He’ll like it when he returns. Even though he stays pretty warm as a wolf, he gets chilled when he turns back to human, and the blood flow in his body changes.

It takes a moment to make the coffee, and I marvel at how content I feel. The doubts are gone. And while I still wonder what he could want with me, a nobody, I’m not going to question the gift I’ve been given any longer.

I deserve to be happy. I let the words flash in my mind again. I deserve to be happy.

The living room takes longer to tidy up, considering how he likes to throw all the pillows in front of the fireplace and fuck me in front of the warm glow. There are pillows from one end of the house to the other. It takes a good ten minutes to round them all up and get them back on the furniture.

I’m feeling pretty good about myself when I hear knocking. A low knock on solid wood. I glance up at the open rafters, hunting for birds, but don’t see anything.

Then I spin to check the porch and freeze. Two men are standing on the other side of the door. One of them is the naked man who approached me before. Apparently, he hadn’t learned his lesson. At least they are wearing clothes this time.

He points at the door handle and then gives me a sheepish grin. I shake my head. No way in hell I’m letting them inside.

But that doesn’t deter them. I stumble back a step against the kitchen counter when the other man, taller, broader than the first, opens the door and steps into the cabin like he owns it.

I point behind them, mouthing at them to get the hell out. Of course, they ignore me, the smaller man closing the door behind him. I don’t want to risk getting any closer to them, and the only other exit to the house is off the balcony in the bedroom, but it leads straight down to a ravine, easy for a wolf to navigate, not so much a human.

The smaller man smiles. “Remember me? I’m Levi, and this is my brother, Westin. We belong to the pack up in the village. I told you I wanted to keep you safe, and I’m going to repeat myself. You don’t know anything about Thorn or what he’s done, and I promised myself I wouldn’t let him do it to another human again.”

I frown and grab the notepad on the table. What other human?

He studies the words and then scans my face. “Oh, you don’t speak?”

I shake my head and stab the pen at the paper.

The brother—Westin, did he say?—picks up the conversation. “You aren’t Thorn’s first human target. He pursued someone before. He followed her, telling her that she belongs to him, but she was scared, and that’s when he killed her.”

No! I freeze, my heart climbing my spine like a ladder. When I don’t respond, he continues. “That’s not the important part, Abigail. The woman he took as his mate, the one he chased down until she died, that woman was your mother… Lily.”

Levi cuts in. “That's why he targeted you.”

No, no, no. That can't be true. None of this is true. What we have is real. He loves me. I weakly scribbled on the pad. You are wrong. My mom died in a car accident. I hold on to the pen so tightly I’m worried I might break it in my hold. I’m his mate.

Pity enters Levi’s eyes. “Did he tell you that? That’s what he told your mom too.”

Do you have any proof?

Levi and Weston exchange glances before Levi pulls out a stack of pictures from his pocket. He hands them to me apprehensively. “Are you sure you want to see this?” He questions with a frown.

I nod. I have to know the truth. Taking the pictures I stare at them one at a time. The first one is my mothers car, I only recall it because she is standing next to it. I barely remember that time, only a few happy vague memories buried behind a million bad ones. I try to think back, my head aching as if my brain is trying to pull something out of the depths of my memory. My head is nothing but a jumbled mess. I can’t remember much before my stepmother and her daughters. They made my life hell and overwrote every happy memory I might have had up until then.

The second picture is of my mothers car after the accident. Tears well up in my eyes as I take in the dismantled car, imagining her last minutes of life. I look at the third picture, it’s a close up of the back of the car. I look closer, bringing the photo up to my face. I gasp when I see it, the clear claw marks in the metal, something that could have only been done by a supernatural wolf with claws strong enough to pierce through metal.

“I know this must be very hard for you but please believe us, we only want to help. What do you really know about your so-called Mate?

I blink and try to recall what I know about Thorn, and it’s nothing. Not much at all besides the fact that he loves to fuck me, and he enjoys hunting. Could he have really killed my mother? He’s the right age. It makes sense to me now, though. Why someone like Thorn would want a nobody like me. I can’t even speak to him properly. He wants the woman he lost, and he gets the added benefit of never having to hear her voice either.

I swallow down the anger, the betrayal, the hurt, the fear, all of it. Just like I’ve done so many times before. Then I write on the pad again. So what now?

Levi smiles, and Westin nods like I’ve made the right decision. “You come with us, and we take you home. You’ll be safe there. We’ll make sure he can’t get you again. Your stepmother misses you terribly, so I’ve heard.”

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