Page 7 of Wolf's Claimed Mate
After Thalia moved in with Fenrys after her Mating Games, her family politely suggested I move out, too. There hadn’t been many options for a leopard shifter in a town of wolf shifters, but I’d found this dinky place and took it as the first option.
I didn’t think of the open-plan house I’d lived in with Kato’s pack. I didn’t think of the expensive rooms and furniture, with space abound, my own room to myself at the age of seventeen, after sharing a tiny bedroom with three siblings in my family home. That place had been beautiful, nothing more than a memory now. A missed home, a place I had thought was my future.
Now I eyed the faded paint on the walls, the worn wooden floor, the furniture that hadn’t cost me a lot at all, and shoved aside thoughts of that open plan house.It had been a pretty prison, I reminded myself.A pretty prison, it’s keeper, your boyfriend.
I pushed aside my romanticized thoughts of the past, knowing that was exactly what they were. Deep down, I knew I had only taken Thalia to Kato, hoping that I would be loved by the pack again. I was a leopard girl playing in a wolf’s den, a dangerous game, when it had concernedthatden. Somehow, Fenrys’s pack—even Aidan’s pack, as volatile as he was—felt different.
Another message making my phone chime with apingstartled me.From C: Don’t ignore me.
Maybe it was the racing thoughts I was struggling to keep at bay, maybe it was cruelty to protect myself, maybe it was a multitude of reasons, but I answered simply.Is the big bad beta playing at being an alpha again?
I knew it would hurt. I actuallysmiledas I wrote it, but the minute I sent it, a stab of guilt pierced me, wanting to take it back.
But thewooshsignified it had been sent already, and I knew he’d react. I just…
Maybe one day, he’d react by showing up at my door, and I’d get a chance to talk to him.
I wanted him to come tome. I had told myself a long time ago I’d never crawl back to a man, never chase, never want more. Why was Conall already that exception?
I considered apologizing, but before I could do so, my phone rang. Conall. Of course. I answered the phone. “Hello?” I asked, feigning sweet innocence.
“Are you finally going to talk to me?” he asked, all arrogant expectations as if I had an obligation to.
“One almost hook-up doesn’t make me yours to command, Conall,” I answered. “I don’t follow that wolf pack loyalty ingrained in your DNA. So, no, I’m not going to talk to you. Not until—” I stopped myself, not wanting to give him the scenario I yearned for on a silver plate.
“Until what?”
“Nothing,” I snapped. “Untilnothing.”Until you come get me yourself. Until you finally show up at my door again, letting me have a second chance. I had pushed him away; maybe I didn’t deserve that scenario. Maybe he thought he was doing good by giving me space, being respectful, but I wanted to see some of that demanding anger come through even more.
Iwantedit. I wantedhim, and I hated that.
“You might not follow orders, but I have to,” he bit out. I could picture the scowl on his face, the narrowed glare, the thick, dark brows pulled together. That curl to his lip in displeasure. I’d kissed that curling snarl into smoothness once, coaxing groans of pleasure from him before I’d cut all physical intimacy off.
“Fenrys is on my back,” he told me. “Don’t tell me Thalia isn’t on yours about us working together.”
She was, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
I bit my lip, staying silent.
“You have information I could use to help us anticipate Kato’s pack being a threat,” Conall went on.
I looked down at the box on the floor I’d gotten out—my physical Pandora’s box. “Mmhmm,” I answered, non-committal.
I nudged the lid off my box and steeled myself. Conall was talking in my ear about the plans he needed to start making, the action he wanted to take, some ideas he’d come up with to help Fenrys and the others, but that he needed me to help him to help them.
I didn’t fully listen to what he said, but I listened to the tone of his voice, letting it settle me, keeping my mind distracted as I sifted through the box’s contents. It was a box of mementos from my past relationship, something I should have thrown away a long time ago but couldn’t bring myself to do so.
There was a picture that I held up: Jackson and I in front of the Golden Gate Bridge on my eighteenth birthday. It was the first vacation we’d taken together, a couple days’ trip to San Francisco.
While I was grateful that he’d gotten me out of my family home—Kato’s whole pack helping to get me out—I couldn’t forgive him for everything else.
“Sasha?” Conall’s voice prompted me from my thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“You there?” His voice was softer now, quieter. I swallowed, remembering his voice that night of our almost hook-up.I want you, he’d said, the first time he’d kissed me. I wanted to be wanted—to beneeded. But at the same time, I despised anybody, making me become dependent on them too.
I didn’t want to want or need anyone.
