“I could feel it, during the past few weeks. It was like my sixth sense was warning me that someone was watching me, and all along it was you.”
“Seriously?” That’s incredibly perceptive for a human. In the previous months, most humans had been none the wiser that the beast had chosen them for his next meal, but Brianna had sensed us. A flush of admiration fills me.
She stops fiddling with her shorts. “So is that what you do? You stalk women?”
“Um…” I clear my throat and turn us onto the interstate. The air flowing in through my cracked window has cooled, so I turn the A/C off and roll my window down more. A rush of wind enters the cab. It smells of dusty earth, sage, and creosote.
“Collin? Is that what you do? Do you stalk women?”
Okay, so she’s not letting this go.
I sigh harshly and rake a hand through my hair. “On occasion.”
“And did you kidnap them and let them go too?”
I hear the hopeful tone in her voice, and it nearly undoes me, but I can’t lie to her. I can lie to a lot of people but not her. “No.”
Her breath sucks in, and she turns to look out the window. Her body is rigid, her shoulders still.
The beast growls inside me, unhappy that I’ve upset her. His obsession with Brianna is growing. Maybe obsession is normal when one finds one’s mate, but with him, I can’t be sure. He’s still a sick motherfucker. However, I do feel confident now that he won’t hurt her. At least there’s that.
“I wasn’t always like this.” I’m aware that my tone sounds desperate, but that’s exactly how I feel, desperate for her to accept me. It’s crazy. I’ve never felt that with a female before, and I’ve had my share of flings. “I didn’t start doing this until this past year.”
“How many?” She angles her body again, facing me. Tears brim her eyelids. “How many have you killed?”
Fuck me. Fuck me to the moon and back. I instinctively reach for her. I want to comfort her, hold her, dry away those tears, but just as quickly I pull my hand back. She’s already recoiled. Anger and disgust line her expression.
My shoulders sag. She’s never going to want me.
“More than I can remember,” I reply quietly.
I tighten my grip on the steering wheel just as her breath catches and a little yelp of surprise leaves her throat. She presses her lips together. “Those poor women.”
She shifts away again and props an elbow on the windowsill. The wind blowing in through my cracked window lifts her hair, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
My heart aches. It fucking aches. Who would have thought that I would meet my mate this way? That I’d kidnap her, hurt her, nearly kill her? It’s so fucked up on so many levels that I don’t know how I’ll ever make this right.
∞ ∞ ∞
Brianna’s quiet for the next hour. I don’t push her to talk. I want to, but I don’t. I know she’s mulling things over from the way her forehead scrunches up and from how she keeps biting her lower lip.
The beast is unhappy again. He’s pacing in my belly, nearly unhinged. Thankfully, he doesn’t test me, because I’m fairly certain that if I lost control of him right now Brianna would never speak to me again.
He seems to sense that, too, which is why I’m guessing he hasn’t.
My knee moves up and down like a jackhammer. I’ve been fidgeting for the past thirty minutes. I set the car on cruise control miles ago, and the endless interstate passes slowly beneath us.
It’s fucking agony to sit here with her, knowing she’s upset with me and not being able to do anything about it.
I curse fate again. I curse the gods too. They have a pretty sick sense of humor if they thought this was a good way to punish me for all I’ve done. But it’s punishment indeed. Finally, after months of being lost and alone, I’ve finally found my purpose and my home.
She’s sitting right beside me.
Well fuck you too. I rale inside to whatever higher power thought this was amusing.
I sigh and fiddle with one of the knobs on the dash. I never thought I’d meet my fated mate. So few werewolves do even though mating in the werewolf world happens all of the time.
But fated mates? Not so much. I can’t remember the last time it