“Yes.”
Her hands covered her mouth, those brown eyes of hers filling with tears. “Oh, God. How can you believe me? You don’t even know me.”
Bunny covered her hand with his. “I just do.” Not that it would matter if she had.
She was his mate . He’d tell her the sky was orange if it would make her smile.
“Tell me what happened.” Maybe he could find out what had happened and clear her name for her.
Tabby took a sip of her water. Her hand was visibly shaking. “Um, I was seeing Micah, like I said. Well, he asked me to come over to his house when his parents were out. I did, and we wound up in his room. His parents came home before we got too far, though, so I tried to sneak out of the house. Of course, the Alpha caught me trying to leave, but instead of asking me what I was doing there, he assumed I was there to rob the place.”
“What?” Bunny was outraged. How could an Alpha make assumptions like that?
Where had the Omega been during all of this?
She nodded. “He was fed up with me. So he gathered the Pack and asked if anyone would speak for me.” She swallowed hard enough for Bunny to see, and she wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Not even my parents would.”
“What about your lover?” And didn’t it just bite his ass to say that?
She laughed. “Are you kidding? Micah couldn’t stand up to his father. The Alpha was furious, I mean scary angry, and if Micah had tried to defy him I don’t know what would have happened to him.” She rubbed at her wrist. Bunny wondered if she was remembering a bruise there, or some other damage.
“So he declared you a thief and threw you from the Pack.” Bunny could feel the rage building under his skin. “How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
“ Fifteen? ” Bunny could feel his chest rumbling. He held back his roar of outrage with difficulty. Some Alpha bastard needed to die painfully. He controlled his Bear with difficulty. “How did you live?”
“I ran mostly in Wolf form, lived off the land, avoided everyone and everything, for fear they’d be able to tell what I was. I wound up in Mrs. Anderson’s backyard about six months ago, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“How old are you now?” Bunny knew he was about to lose it. That Alpha had thrown an innocent child out into the woods, no Pack or family to protect her.
“I’m twenty-three.”
He felt his eyes turn brown. Bunny stood and walked away, knowing he was inches away from shifting. Eight years. Eight years she’d been without protection, alone and hungry and afraid. He could feel his Bear shifting beneath his skin and knew that if he listened to her story for one more minute, he’d be asking her the name of her Alpha. If he knew the name of her Alpha, there would be a Pack looking for a new one. He’d be on his bike and heading for Georgia to maul the son of a bitch.
He walked out into the cool spring air and took some deep breaths, hoping with everything in him that he’d be able to calm himself before he did something stupid. Because Bunny wanted to kill for her, and until he got that side of himself under control, he couldn’t go back into the restaurant.
Tabby would have enough to deal with when she found out exactly what he was capable of.
Tabby watched Bunny stalk out of the restaurant, leaving her alone at the table.
Totally humiliated, she waited for the waiter to come and give her the check. She hoped she had enough credit to cover the cost.
How could she expect anyone to understand what it was like to be unjustly Outcast? She was lucky the Pumas had taken her in. At least she hadn’t made the mistake of going to the Poconos Alpha. If her own mate reacted like this, she could just imagine what the Pack Alpha would have been like.
A warm hand covered hers. “Tabby?”
She stared at Bunny, his image wavering before her, and only then realized that she was crying. “I’m sorry.” And she should be. She was an Outcast. Someone no one wanted to be near.