Finding His Mate (Bare Bites #3) - Mila Crawford Page 0,4

a trail of fire in their wake.

I couldn’t think, standing that close to him. I pushed back my chair and got up, moving quickly to the other side of the room.

“I thought you said you were human?” He asked, shock forming in his eyes.

“I can’t shift, but I have Bear reflexes. I can run fast, move quickly, but I can’t shift and my sense of smell isn’t as potent. It’s just slightly better than the average human, but not by much. It’s not enough to tell me much. Now you tell me: where did you come from? Wolves travel in packs, and as far as I can tell you’re solo.”

He sighed and sat down in the vacant seat I left behind me. He put his head in his hands, and I felt a pang in my heart at his look of defeat. “I left my pack. I didn’t like the new rules so I left.”

I walked closer, so I was standing right in front of him. “What were the new rules?” I asked, raising his face so that I could look into his eyes. I needed to see the emotion in them, to truly understand him. I could sense through our bond that he feared something, but I didn’t know what. He had a deep-seated shame behind his eyes. “It doesn’t matter what it is. You’re my mate. We’re a team now. I need to know your darkness as much as your light. You’re safe, Brett, you’re home,” I said, my arms wrapping around his neck and bringing him into my embrace.

“I hated Bears and the son of my Alpha mated one.”

I wasn’t prepared for what he said. I felt the shock of his words riveting in my veins.

The horror that the man I was mated to hated my father, hated a part of me. But I couldn’t let go. Because no matter what, I loved him, and I knew I would never mate with someone that was actually evil.

“Why do you hate them?”

“I don’t anymore,” he whispered in my chest. “I can’t now. As soon as I met you, it changed it all for me.” I could hear the truth in his words.

“I still need to know why,” I whispered, trying to fight back the tears that were just lying underneath my eyelids. “When I was seventeen, my parents went for a hunt. They came across four Bears who decided to make an example out of them. They attacked. My parents weren’t able to fight them off. Four Bears, against just the two of them. My father tried to fight them off, but he wasn’t strong enough. They mauled my mother to death, leaving him howling in the wind. Three days went by and we didn’t hear a word. Finally, the Alpha sent out a search party and we found my father, naked, battered and bruised, crouched over my mother’s body, trembling with tears and rage.”

“Brett...” Tears trailed down my face. Seventeen was still a pup, too young to lose a parent, especially in such a traumatic event.

“My sister was twelve,” he continued, his eyes filled with anger and sorrow. I could feel his pain through every single word he spoke. “But my mother’s death wasn’t the end of it. The trauma of not being able to defend his mate left my father completely impotent. He couldn’t shift after that. The Bear Mountain Pack doesn’t do well with defective Wolves. Those are the ones that we cast aside and throw away like garbage. My father was no good anymore, just a burden. I knew that if anyone found out, my dad would be shunned, left on his own. There was no way he could handle that, not after what happened to my mother. He would have died on his own. So I hid him. I grew up faster than I should have to protect him and my kid sister.”

The horrors of his words washed over me. My father had always talked about his clan lovingly. He was proud of how they took care of their weak and helped the Bears who were struggling. He always said it was a community full of love. But that was the Bear Mountain Clan. I also knew other clans weren’t as willing to have peace at any cost. But Gavin was a good Alpha, my father always said he was the best of the best.

I felt the bile rise in my throat. There was really only one Bear clan in the mountains. Only