Page 17 of Protected By The Polar Bear

I just wonder which one of us is going to go first.

NINE

Ash

I don’t know how I fucked that up so bad. Things between Tessa and I have been going well all week. That’s why I felt comfortable asking her to move in with me. I guess I didn’t phrase it the right way when I asked her, though, because she got pissed.

Then I got upset and left.

“I’m an idiot,” I grumble as I lift a few branches that fell out of the hiking path I’m on.

“What did you do now?” Flint asks, and I glare at him.

I don’t really want to talk about it, but maybe Flint will have some idea about how to fix things with my mate.

My polar bear paws at me, urging me to tell him what happened, and I sigh as I toss the last branch aside and turn to face him.

“I went to talk to Tessa and I messed things up.”

“Again?” He asks, and I’m starting to regret opening up to him already.

“Yeah, again,” I snap, and he holds his hands up in surrender.

“Maybe you should stop talking to her,” he suggests, and I glare at him.

“She’s my mate.”

“What did you say today to piss her off? Or did you reject her again?”

“I asked her to move in with me.”

“And that upset her?” He asks with a frown, and I nod.

“Yeah, it surprised me too,” I grumble, and my polar bear snaps at me.

Take this seriously, he growls at me. We need our mate.

“What did she say?” he asks, and I lean back against a nearby tree.

Flint and I are out on the northernmost trails. We’re supposed to be cleaning up the trails and making sure that everyone is being safe. We’ve been out here for close to two hours now, and haven’t seen a single person. There’s only been a few things to clear on the trail, so it’s been an easy shift. I hate that. It’s giving me way too much time to think about what went wrong with Tessa when all I want is to forget about it for a little bit.

“She said that she’ll consider moving in with me in ninety-seven days,” I tell him, and he frowns.

“Why then? Is that when her lease expires?”

“No, that’s how long I waited before I claimed her,” I mumble, and he huffs out a laugh.

“Your mate is feisty; I’ll give her that,” he says with a laugh, and I relax a bit.

“That she is,” I say fondly, and my polar bear nods in agreement.

He leans back against his snowmobile and sighs.

“What did you say back to that?” He asks, and I frown.

“Nothing really. I just left and came to work.”

“I thought that things were going better between you two?”

---