Page 40 of The Wolf's Bullied Pregnant Mate
It isn’t, I laughed at myself.You’re just a coward.
“Is it really?”
“Yes,” I bit out. “Drop it.”
“Make me.” She bared her teeth, and I ignored her, spooning more rice into my mouth. “I cast a memory spell into the pool earlier.”
I stiffened, remembering my brother swimming for me, hunted by the redheaded witch, poised to kill. Poised to take the very life I was tied to away from me.
“I don’t see what you see,” she said. “But I thought you should know that I cast a spell for you to experience a heartbreaking memory. You were… Your words were causing me to remember some awful things from when I was younger. And I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to prove that I’m not useless.” I opened my mouth to talk, but she held up a hand. I flinched, realizing she truly had scared me earlier in the pool with that whirlpool vice. “I know, I know, I can’t exactly use these spells on demons, but I refuse to be put down by you any longer.”
I nodded. “Well… It worked. I experienced a pretty horrific thing.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “Don’t be. If it helps, you scared me pretty bad.”
She snorted. “It’s not like you thought I’d kill you.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I did. For a minute, I did.”
Her eyes were intense as she gazed at me. “I guess we’re even.”
Silence settled around us. For once, it didn’t feel charged or angry. It just…was.
Once, I would have asked about the Matron’s location to hunt her down, but I found that I had simply asked out of curiosity earlier, and I didn’t like that. I didn’t want anything about me to change. Not for her. Not for anyone.
“Look, we have to find a way to coexist,” she said. “So can’t we just… Talk? Bond?”
“Bond?” I echoed.
“Yeah,” she said. “Bond.”
“What over?”
“Things that don’t hurt,” she said. “Just general things. Like, what’s your favorite color?”
“Black,” I answered. “Yours?”
“Green,” she said. I laughed at the absurdity of it. But anger, for once, wasn’t a driving force in my veins. There was simple happiness there. Just contentment tobe.
“How did you meet Harper?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you the less painful version,” she said, wincing. “Basically, I moved from Brooklyn to the Cove. I’ve lived here since I was eighteen—”
“Not so much of a local, then,” I muttered, shooting her a smirk. She returned a glare.
“When Harper arrived, she looked lost. She looked like her world had fallen apart, and I recognized that look. She’d been standing on the boating dock, just coming over on a boat from the mainland. I went to say hi, we got chatting, and I invited her into the local diner. We had five people at our table offering her assistance within ten minutes.”
“Small town life,” I said. “Nothing like it.”
She nodded. “We got Harper on her feet here. I got her a job where I worked at the time.”
“The convenience store,” I said. “I remember seeing you there a couple times.”
“Yeah, I left over the summer,” she said. “Gramma can’t always work the Emporium as many hours she wants it open. I always helped her out but I started working there full-time recently. It’ll be mine to inherit.”
I nodded. “Pretty good store to inherit. Tourist trap, right?”
