Page 41 of Country and Clove
“You two are going to be shacked up and mated in no time.” He jutted his chin toward Aaron.
“Stop. He doesn’t want me like that. I mean maybe he wants my body, but he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to be mated.” She flinched a little as she spoke those words aloud again. Was it ever going to get any easier?
“Oh so you’re just going to go off and find a new man?” Graham gave her a narrow look.
“He doesn’t want me. I should be able to do what I want with who I want.” Alcohol and frustration heated her blood.
“I can prove to you in under thirty seconds that you’re wrong,” Graham said. He set his beer on the ground.
“Oh really? How’s that?” Clove’s tone was mocking. Graham’s lips met hers in the next moment. His mouth was firm as it moved against her lips. His masculine scent rolled over her but it was all wrong. He didn’t have the soft skin of Aaron and his beard was too rough as it grazed her face.
A deafening snarl shook the air around them. Graham was wrenched away from her as Aaron slammed into him. Several people screamed as the two went tumbling through nearby chairs, their bodies a mountain of muscles and swinging fists.
“Aaron!” Clove cried. Graham kicked him off and jumped to his feet.
“She ismine.” Aaron’s eyes were dark and deadly as he circled Graham.
“But she’s not yours, is she?”
The rest of the group were on their feet, but they didn’t intervene. A sinking feeling made Clove’s stomach plummet to the dirt.
“You lost the chance to claim her with that title when you rejected the mate bond. So what is it, Aaron? You don’t want her but no one else can have her either? That sounds like a real load of horse shit to me.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” Aaron growled back.
“I know you were gifted a fated mate. The rarest bond among our kind and you turned it down. You broke her heart and still expect her to come running to your bed when you can’t fight the feeling any longer? That’s not fair and you know it. Either stick to your decision and let her go, or get your head out of your ass and take what the stars gave you. It’s not fair for you to ruin her life in the meantime.”
Clove’s hands were covering her mouth in horror. The eyes of every pack member present drifted between her and Aaron. She was mortified, humiliated, and hurt. She wished more than anything that she could disappear.
“Is that true?” asked Tawny, her voice flickering with sadness.
Aaron twisted away from Graham and his eyes connected with Clove’s. The pain behind them was too much to bear. It collided with her own pain, threatening to drown her in the rapids of despair and heartache surging between them.
She turned, breaking into a sprint away from the group. A steady stream of tears flowed down her cheeks as the night air whipped by her. She raced past the main house, pushing her legs on, urging them to take her away, to someplace where she could be alone. The massive red barn loomed in the distance. She tore toward it, her tears drying up as a cold detachment sank into their place.
The door to the barn slammed open, causing the horses to startle. Clove shut it behind her and ran down the aisle, rounding the corner and darting into the tack room in the back. She’d barely had time to close the door before it opened again. Aaron pressed in, his towering frame making the room feel small.
“Don’t,” she bit out when he tried to close the distance between them. “I can’t do this anymore.” She was tired down to her bones. The constant push and pull of wanting to be near him, giving in to that need, and then pulling herself back left her exhausted.
Aaron stood so still and so quiet that all her sensitive hearing could pick up was the beating of his heart as it pumped faster and faster.
“I think our bond is starting to fade.” His words were like an arrow to her heart. “Our wolves don’t call to each other anymore. Our wolves are barely present at all.”
Something deep within Clove’s ribs shattered. He was right. Her wolf had stopped claiming him. She and her inner animal had always been so close, but recently it felt like her wolf was somewhere distant, dark, cold.
“Then this will all be over soon.” Clove’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I don’t want it to be over.” Aaron stepped toward her. “I’ve spent all this time fearing what I would lose if I accepted the mate bond. The gods only know why it took me so long to see that losing you is so much worse than anything I could imagine. Losing you is like losing the blood from my veins, the air from my lungs. I don’t think I could survive it.”
His words pressed in on her defenses, fighting their way through. “You can’t just walk in here and claim me just because you don’t want anyone else to have me.”
“It’s more than that. I’ve been denying myself this happiness, this joy of having you by my side. I wasn’t ready to let someone in so soon after my recruits died. The guilt ate away at my rational thought, convincing me I didn’t deserve a happy life, because that chance was stolen from those under my care. I used it as an excuse to avoid giving away the last of my control.”
The hurt in his eyes was so visceral that Clove’s own chest began to ache for him. “What happened to them wasn’t your fault,” she said softly. Aaron shook his head.
“If I had listened to my instincts that day, things would have been different. I ignored what my gut was telling me and it nearly cost me everything.” His voice was tight with emotion. “But I’m not going to ignore them any longer. Clove, I want you. I want this. I want tofixthis.” He took another step toward her.
“Why now?” The uneven thumping of Clove’s heart left her shaking and breathless.
