Page 11 of Betrayed Bullied Mate

“Yeah, yeah,” Aris says, “stop chatting and keep up the fucking pace.”

Though his voice is authoritative, I feel through our connection an undeniable warmth for the shifters walking with us. I get the feeling that Aris would give his life for this team. I glance around them, a chill running down my back. Does that mean he would sacrifice mine?

My thoughts fizzle out in my head as we finally come to the crest of the incline. I have to put my hand to my mouth to keep from gasping—I’ve lived in this town my whole life and somehow didn’t know this was here.

Up, much higher than we are, beyond several more hills and groups of trees, is a huge, stately mansion with an air of history and importance to it. Though it’s beautiful, it’s clear that nobody has lived in it for a long time. Vines crawl up the sides of the building, and I can see, even from this far away, that weeds have overgrown the driveway, and the rosebushes under the windows have gone completely wild.

The team comes to a stop, and I bounce off the woman in front of me. She turns to give me a look, and I have to tear my gaze away from the mansion. Aris stalks ahead of the group, taking a moment before he turns to face everyone. It is obvious from how everyone looks at him that he’s the leader of the group, but I also see it in the way he carries himself, how he addresses everyone, assessing them for injury. I can practically hear his mind whirring.

He’s standing in the center of a group of small cabins right next to a large fire pit. The cabins are clearly old and underused, just like the large mansion up on the hill. Unlike the mansion, the cabins are small, and I wonder if they even have running water. Aris claps his hands together and our eyes meet for a moment, but he quickly tears them away, looking back to this team.

“This,” he says, broadly gesturing to the cabins around us, “is where we’ll be staying for the foreseeable future.”

Chapter 7 - Aris

I’ve been staring at Linnea for the past six hours as we tromped through the woods. Around us, the trees shuffle, and wildlife reacts to our heavy footfalls. Bigby leads the train with me at the end to make sure Linnea doesn’t trail away from us. I’m not sure it’s exactly necessary—now that the blood-bond is in place, I think I would feel her absence if she did trail too far behind. But still, I’ve made it a point to walk behind her, telling her to pick up the pace when she starts to slip away from the others. During the time that I’ve been trailing her, I’ve made some observations.

The first is that she’s dressed like a cat burglar, wearing a tight-fitting black turtleneck and black leggings with sneakers. Her hair is slicked back into a ponytail, her curls spilling out over her shoulders when she moves.

Her outfit isn’t without its perks. Even in the dim moonlight passing through the trees above us, I can make out the lines of her curves and watch her tits and ass bounce as she moves. Linnea has always been bigger, but it’s clear that she’s in great shape. She hasn’t asked to stop or rest once and isn’t even breathing hard as we practically scale up the side of a mountain.

An image comes to me of us training in the gym together, me spotting her as she bench-presses. I picture glancing across the gym and seeing her on the stair-climber, her ass hugged in all the right places by leggings just like these.

I think about her outfit—all black. We wore uniforms in high school, but I wouldn’t have pegged criminal chic as her style, and I make a note to ask her about it. Why was she dressed for a heist when that shifter took her from her home?

Not that she’ll just answer any of my questions. My second observation is that she hasn’t forgotten who I was in high school. So far, she’s been downright unpleasant to me. High school was a long time ago, but I can practically hear her replaying old scenes in her head. I’m not the person I used to be back then, but I don’t know how to tell her that.

Logically, I know it’s a good idea to let her go, let her deal with whatever Varun will do to her when his shifters clock her coming back into town, but logic doesn’t matter. Every time I start to entertain the thought of leaving her behind, I get a sharp pain in my stomach, and my mind skitters away.

Besides, it hasn’t been bad watching her ass sway in front of me or catching her as she trips on roots, feeling her soft curves under my hands for a moment before she wrenches away from my touch.

Even right now, she’s staring defiantly at me, but I catch her gaze flitting up to the house on the hill. I refuse to turn. I won’t look at it. It will only serve to distract me from the mission—I can’t be thinking about my parents, my childhood, or what it was like growing up above the town.

Though Bigby, Linnea, and I went to high school together, neither of them have ever seen my childhood home. The property I left behind when I took off for school and never came back. Thinking about it gathering dust is painful, but so is facing what I gave up.

“There’s a lot of work to do before we can call it a day,” I continue, surveying the team. They’re all pissed we couldn’t just shift to come up the hill—if we had, it would have taken half as much time, but I couldn’t risk leaving Linnea behind. “First thing we need to do is get in touch with the commander. Byron, did you send the info you got from Varun’s tech?”

“Shot it out to HQ back at the bar.”

“Okay, great. See if you can set up a connection so we can see what they’ve learned back at HQ.”

“Got it,” Byron says, turning and pulling equipment from his backpack.

“Eva and Percy, go find us something to eat. A lot of something—I’m sure you’re all starving like I am. And we’re going to need our strength.”

Eva grins, rubbing her hands together, and takes off for the edge of the woods, shifting right as she hits the lines of trees. I don’t miss the way Linnea’s eyes widen, tracking Eva’s movements. I wonder if Linnea has ever seen someone shift before, and suddenly, irrationally, I want to show her my other form. I push the thought away, returning to the task at hand.

“She never waits for you to finish what you’re saying,” Percy says, rolling his eyes and dropping his pack on the ground. He starts to roll his sleeves up. “Like, do you prefer rabbit? Deer? What kind of meal are we putting together? What’s the theme? Eva doesn’t—”

“Percy,” I say, cutting him off. He glances up at me mid-sleeve-roll, a goofy grin on his face.

“Yeah?” he asks, like he couldn’t possibly know what I want from him. He can be frustrating to work with, but he eases the tension in the group.

“If you don’t go now, you’ll never catch up with her.”

“As you wish, Boss,” he quips back, dropping his comms watch on his pack and taking off for the spot in the trees Eva disappeared into. Just like her, Percy shifts when he reaches the cover of the woods. Linnea stares directly at the ground, and I stare at the way her hair tumbles over her shoulders, how her hands are kneading together just above her thighs.

“Sir?” Ado asks, drawing my attention away from Linnea.

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