Page 12 of Undesired Mate

“Shane.” He says it with a deep, ominous growl.

Shane. The thought of him is almost enough to take away my appetite, but my body needs food.

He sounds kind of matter-of-fact about it. I can’t get a feeling for what he thinks. I wish he would tell me, but he’s too busy shoveling spoonful after spoonful in his mouth like he’s never eaten before. Like he worked up an appetite in the bedroom.

There is no avoiding the pain in my chest as I’m forced to look back on everything that’s gone wrong in my life. “He was telling the truth. My mom is a witch. I can’t shift.”

“If your father was a shifter, you should be able to?—”

“I’m really glad things make sense to you, but not everything is cut and dry the way you think.” I have to force myself through eating now, even though I was hungry before we started this conversation.

With another growl, he says, “You might want to watch your attitude.”

“This is hard for me to talk about. My whole life, I’ve been ashamed,” I admit. “My mother hates me.”

“Come on. It can’t be?—”

“She hates me,” I insist, because it’s the truth. “My parents weren’t in a relationship. I don’t even know who my father is, and every time my mother has ever looked at me, she has had to remember what they did to her.”

He drops the spoon into the bowl, staring at me now. Like maybe he’s actually listening. “What did they do?”

“They… raped her. She was raped by a gang of shifters. There’s no way of knowing which of them was my father. That’s all I amto her. A reminder of what they did.” I feel so dirty, admitting it. The kind of filth that can’t be washed away. The kind that stays with you always. I’ve carried it everywhere I go, all my life.

“You want to know why I can’t shift? Because she put a curse on me,” I tell him, and I watch his features squeeze together like he’s in pain at the idea. Finally, somebody gets it. “Because she hates what I represent. I’ve never had a real home. I’ve never had a real family.”

“So you found the pack and tried to join them?”

My head bobs as a bitter taste fills my mouth. How stupid could I have been? “Yeah, for some reason, I thought it would be that easy. I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t know any better. When I turned eighteen, I left home, and I tried to join up with the first pack I found. At first, everything was fine—I guess they could sense what I am, like I wasn’t lying. They didn’t even know I was part witch.”

He sets the bowl on the table and turns to me, sighing. “How long did it take them to find out you can’t shift?”

There’s relief in not having to explain every little bit of the most embarrassing memories of my life—and the most terrifying. “Not long. A few days. They were going out on a hunt, and I made all these excuses for why I couldn’t, but there were no more excuses to give them.”

I can hear their taunts and jeers, their curses. I feel their spit on my skin. “They told me to leave. They didn’t give me anything to eat or to bring with me. I just had to go. I asked where, and they said they didn’t care, so long as they never saw me again. Otherwise…” There’s a lump in my throat that I have to swallow back. “Otherwise, they would’ve killed me right away, so I toldthem to let me go off on my own. I figured I could at least try to survive, and if I couldn’t, I could go to sleep one night and not wake up, and that would be fine. What else did I have to live for, right?”

Now it’s out. All of my shame. It’s out and there’s no taking it back. I only wish I understood the almost chaotic energy wrapped around him. The uncertainty swirling in his blue eyes. I only wish I knew what he’s thinking.

And what he’s going to do because of it.

7

LEVI

No wondershe didn’t want to tell me.

The whole time she spoke, I heard the pain ringing out in her words. Shame, too. She could barely look at me.

One thing is obvious: I can’t kill her. Not for something that isn’t her fault. Her fate was set in motion long before she was born, and she’s been paying for her father’s sins all this time.

Her father. There isn’t much that disgusts me more than what she described. It takes a special kind of cruel, heartless monster to traumatize someone who couldn’t possibly defend herself against them. She might be a witch, but I doubt that means she could have fought off not only one shifter, but a whole group of them.

A flash of bitter, searing heat rushes through me when I imagine what I would do if I got my hands on them. Not only for what they did, but for what they turned Clara’s life into. She’s only known rejection, first by her own mother, and then by the pack she fled to. I bet she saw them as her salvation. They cured her of that misconception, didn’t they?

“Well, now you know everything.” The only word that comes to mind when she lifts her chin is dignity. Somehow, she’s more dignified than she was before. Now that I know everything she’s trying to hide.

I can’t sit still. I can’t suppress this energy rolling through me, forcing me to my feet. Action, that’s what I need. To make a difference. Because my wolf will not be denied the mating much longer. I’m hanging on by a thread as it is.

“Where does your mother live?” I ask, taking the bowls to the sink for lack of anything else to do. “Is she part of, you know? A coven or something?”

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