Page 7 of The Beast's Betrayed Mate
“Nothing, I just… Thank you,” he repeated. “For taking me. For driving me home. I appreciate it.”
She wasn’t going to let him get off that easily, so she asked, “What’s in your pocket?”
He raised his eyebrows innocently but could tell that she wouldn’t let up. He brought out a USB memory stick, holding it up with a meaningful look at her as if to underline how it was nothing.
But his expression a minute ago and said otherwise.
“Uh-huh,” she muttered, focusing on the road again.
He clearly wasn’t going to tell her its significance, so there was no point in pushing. Although, her curiosity was annoyingly peaked. What the hell was going on with him?
“You said you couldn’t remember getting bitten,” she said.
“I didn’t, but it’s coming back to me,” he replied.
“So, what happened?”
“I went for a walk. Ran into a stray.”
Oh, that was not the truth. That was so clearly an excuse he had thought of. It almost sounded rehearsed. As though he’d gone over it in his head a few times, wanting it to sound casual, believable. Well, she did not believe him.
“You said you were chased.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “By a stray.”
“Where was this? We should call the local rescue. Have them send someone out. If we call the shelter, you know they’ll just put the dog down, but maybe it was scared or maybe it has puppies. Did you hear any whining?” she inquired.
“No, it wasn’t a… a female dog so there won’t be puppies, I don’t think. Only the mom-dogs go all… protective, right? So… I mean, I can barely recall where it happened—”
“Oh, my God, you are embarrassing yourself,” she stopped him.
It was rather entertaining, though, watching him struggle. He had made her skin feel like ice, and her heart drop to the soles of her feet when he told her there was absolutely no way he would ever date ‘someone like her’. She had carried that sentence with her for six years and still had no idea what the fuck it was supposed to mean. What was she like that he had felt such need to smack her down like that?
“Stop lying,” she prompted. “What happened to you last night? And what does that,” she indicated the memory stick, “have to do with it?”
He looked out the side window and she thought he wasn’t even going to deign to reply, but then he said, “My friend Michael is missing. He hasn’t responded to a text in a few days, so I went to his place. He wasn’t there, but I have a spare key and I thought, hey, better safe than sorry. So, I let myself in. And his bedroom was trashed. I mean… Absolutely trashed. And there’s this secret compartment in his kitchen cabinet that I know about and when I looked there, I found his laptop. He usually stashes it if he’s going away for a bit without it, so that wasn’t weird. On impulse, I opened it up and when I checked his internet history—”
“Wow,” she remarked.
“I know,” he said. “But I was really worried at that point. The bedroom looked like there’d been a pro-wrestling match going on in it, and there was a blanket with what I assume were bloodstains on it. I mean, I figured it couldn’t hurt just checking what the last thing he’d been up to was. And there was research into his family that had been done…”
He trailed off.
“I didn’t get to read it all because I got spooked. I saved it onto this—Michael keeps a stash—and then I hauled ass out of there. I don’t know. I felt like I was being watched.”
“Why didn’t you just take the laptop?” she asked.
“Because I don’t know that I’m right, and I wasn’t going to steal my friend’s property if he’s actually just taken a few days to recharge and will be back on Monday.”
“Fair enough.” She nodded. “But what does that have to do with the bite?”
“I don’t know if it’s connected, but when I left, I saw this huge dog across the street. It was staring at me like I was dinner and I hurried to my car. It… intercepted,” he slowed down as though the memory was retraumatizing him. His hands were shaking slightly, and he fisted them against the fabric of his jeans, steadying himself. “It was trying to stop me, I swear… But I got away. Only… not before it bit me. It was going to drag me out of the car, but I broke free because it hadn’t gotten my entire wrist between its jaws. You know? It was only the front teeth latching on and I could wrench away. I just… It washuge. You don’t understand. As big as my car.”
“That can’t have been real,” she suggested. “Your brain is making it seem that big because it almost got you.”
He shook his head slowly, growing quiet.
She looked over at him, and the urge to give him a hug was so overwhelming that she gripped the steering wheel tighter.
