Page 44 of Scapegoat

The fucking aching pain in my chest that came with each stride of my paws then, and as I stood here before her now. The need to touch her now was the same as the need to take my next breath. But it wasn’t just that I needed Kaia.

She needed me.

Her arms went around herself, hugging her body when I should’ve been the one to do it.

“Anna… Anna’s your sister?”

I sighed, not giving a fucking damn about all of that. We’d left it behind when we ditched Stanthorpe, but Kai hadn’t.

“Your mum and mine, they’ve got history.” I sucked in a breath and pulled out another cigarette, but Kai didn’t stop me from lighting it. That harsh blast of smoke, the crackle as it lit? It went someway to calming me. “My dads? They were your mum’s boyfriends back in the day. But when they all went through their first shift, their wolves made clear… My dads were meant for Mum and your dad was meant for your mum.”

Kai snorted, shaking her head, a death’s head smile on her face.

“Meant? I tell ya, I think the humans have the right idea. Stay together as long as it feels right, finding someone that has the same ideas, the same values.” She shook her head sharply. “None of this fated mate bullshit.”

But we weren’t human and I reminded her of that fact as I stepped closer.

She was partially obscured by the haze from my cigarette, the blue smoke wreathing around her, but my eyes cut through it. I’d searched for Kai every damn day since the moment we’d shifted and I would keep on searching if she scuttled on out of here, slipping through my fingers. I’d loved her with my whole fucking heart my entire life, and that would never ever stop.

“Yeah?” My voice was husky and ragged as I stepped closer and I could feel the wolf riding me. “So what do you think about? What do you value? Talk to me about them, because I think you’ll find I’m on board with each and every one of them.”

“Atlas—”

“Whatever you fucking dream about, I’ll help you find.”

“Atlas—”

I was stepping closer and she was stepping back. This felt like some kind of old timey dance, the steps strange and convoluted, but I was dancing along as best as I could.

“Whatever you fucking want—”

I was doing all right there for a moment. The fire in her eyes had banked down, and she was talking to me, trying to reason with me. But I’d fucked it up all too soon. Her feet might have planted, not taking her any further away from me.

But she wasn’t coming any closer, either.

Her eyes narrowed, and she stared me down, taking such a deep breath that I was pretty sure I was going to get the biggest serve of my life.

“What I want?” Fuck, I wasn’t gonna like this, I just knew it. “What I wanted? Jesus, Atlas, don’t you know?”

My heart beat furiously, my mind racing, because I was supposed to know this shit, wasn’t I? I was her fucking fated mate and I—

“I needed you to choose me,” she said, tears filling her eyes and I wanted to brush every single one of them away, but she just jerked free of me. “I wanted you to see through Mum and her bullshit and choose me! Someone needed to put me first. Someone! Because if my own fated fucking mates didn’t…”

That hopeless voice. I wanted the anger back desperately as I watched the woman I loved collapse in on herself.

“Then who else would…?”

She let out a sigh, then closed her eyes, leaving me to watch her eyelids flutter, tears streaming down her face. I moved closer. Of course, I fucking did. I wanted, needed to tell her— And that’s when I saw the first tear fall.

Chapter 26

Atlas didn’t get it.

He never would and neither would his brothers. Anna being their half-sister as well as mine? That was just the kind of twisted shit my mother would think up. In her mind it’d all make sense, I bet, that this was her second chance to right the wrongs done to her. She’d made clear that she felt hard done by. That she deserved better than my dad, that she… I shook my head, as if that would dislodge my fucking mother from my head.

I didn’t want to think about her.

I didn’t want to know anything more about whatever twisted logic was going on in her head.

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