Page 26 of Alpha's Bullied Mate
Only when I growled, a sound more wolf than human, I’d frozen and realized what I’d started to do. I’d pulled away, losing myself to the arousal clouding every sense in me. That roaring had become a demand, a need to bite, take, andmate. That had terrified me, even as my arousal had raged through me. Even her voice had taunted my desire, coaxing it back to a high every time it ebbed away with distance.
God, I thought, tightening my grip on the wheel. Dakota wasn’t my mate. I refused to believe it. We did not have a mating bond in place, nothing had snapped the way my dad had told me it did. My perception had changed by me breaking the barrier of wanting her. No matter how much I’d always wanted to, I'd never kissed her before today.
Breaking those binds of anger had been the very thing that showed the desire beneath.
I hadn’t meant to show it. I hadn’t meant to let myself kiss her or even touch her intimately.
When I parked up at my house, my pack’s cars were already outside, spread out across the drive. Due to the quick move we’d been forced into after our banishment, my father had gotten the first house he could find, which was a pretty nice one, but it wasn’t exactly part of the town, in the center. Small towns loved tourists, but newcomers from another town? Not so much. We hadn’t exactly been shunned but the welcome wasn’t the warmest, either.
It was why I’d made myself become the person I had been in high school so nobody would get close and that way I’d never have to lose friends again. It hadn’t just been my father who had suffered for the banishment. I had lost my friends: Conall and I had been tight once, perhaps even more than Fenrys and him at one time. Lyna and I had played together in the sandbox as kids. Our parents, in the same pack, had grown up together. Even Fenrys and I had talked about the girls we’d take to homecoming once.
I had seen Homecoming in Oak Hill, not Silverlake Valley.
I had never heard from any of them since the banishment.
“Aidan?” Dakota asked. The silence had dragged on in the car. I hadn’t made a move to
get out. I only stared down the driveway, thinking of my father and mother moving out of this house when I’d been old enough to form my pack. They’d relocated to a loft apartment above a bookstore in town and managed the store.
But now I took over with my pack. I managed the home, who came and went in it, and what happened inside it.
“Let’s go,” I told Dakota. She was part of this now. Not part of my pack. She never would be that, no matter how much it had appeared right to see her alongside them, but she was involved in this situation. I couldn’t take her back now even if I wanted to.
“Wait, Aidan, can we talk about what happened in the woods before you take me into a house full of men?”
“They won’t hurt you.”
“It’s not about my fear of being hurt,” she snapped at me. “It’s about the general overwhelmingness of testosterone with nobody I can relate to. Nobody in there would get me. Everyone can be bigger and stronger than me. So, before I go into a place where allegiance to you is what keeps them grouped together, and they would side with you every time, or make jokes about what happened, I would like to talk.”
I made a show of thinking about it for a minute. “Hmm, no.”
I got out of the car, walked to her side, and yanked the end of her wrist binds. She glared at me, and I was relieved we were back on solid footing. This was something I understood how to navigate. I’d slept with women before and hadn’t felt a fraction of the desire I had for Dakota back in those woods. It scared me. It made me not even want to look at her for fear of what she’d incite within me.
Dragging her to the house, Dakota kept her head high as I marched her in. This time, I didn’t take her into the living room. Instead, I took her upstairs to the crowing of my pack.
“You all want to shut up before you all find yourselves sleeping outside tonight?” I yelled. Immediately, they fell silent. “That’s what I thought. Declan, Ryan, watch the bathroom window from outside. Jason, you’re up here with me.”
I pushed Dakota into the bathroom. She snapped her teeth at my face.
“I don’t need babysitting,” she said.
“You escaped last time,” I reminded her. “Not risking that for the third time. Nice try though.”
“Can I at least have some fresh clothes?”
“They’ll be here for when you’re out.”
“I want them here first. I do not want anyone in there when I shower, nor do I want to come out of this bathroom in only a towel.”
I glared at her before snapping my fingers. “Jason, grab a shirt and some sweats from my room.”
“Ryan’s would probably fit her—”
“Mine,” I snarled. “She will wearmyclothes.”
Dakota blinked at me, shocked, and I was, too, at the possessiveness in my voice. The threat I posed to Jason—or he posed to me. Or Ryan’s threat. I didn’t goddamn know. All I did know was that Dakota was messing up my brain, and I hated it.
When Jason got a fresh change of clothes for her, and she was satisfied, Dakota went inside. I kept the door lock from being turned with a random key on my keyring, stopping her from being able to lock herself in. When the hot water turned on, I listened extra carefully.
