Page 18 of Betrayed Bullied Mate

The fact that I’m not having a terrible migraine also tells me that this is a dream and not a vision. I wish it was a vision—my current situation is so terrible it would be nice to know my future held something lovely and simple, like an afternoon in a field of flowers with people I loved.

As I lie in the flowers, dozing in the warm sunshine, I look to the edge and see the man and the child disappear. I’m sad, but not overly so—I knew they weren’t mine to begin with. I open my eyes again, and I’m tucked into a bed, warm and safe, with an arm draped over my middle.

Something’s pressing into my back, and I nuzzle back into it contentedly. I smell Aris’s familiar pine scent as he wraps his arm around me, pulling me tight to him. In a moment of clarity, I realize it’s his cock pressing into my ass, and I find myself arching back into him. His breath comes faster, and he reaches down to push my panties aside—

“Linnea.”

I jolt, opening my eyes to see Aris standing in front of the bed, his eyes dark and heated. My eyes trace to his forearms, bare and braced against the bedposts. I catch a glimpse of a tattoo and wonder how I didn’t notice it before. I make a note to investigate it further when I have the opportunity.

He’s most definitely not in bed with me, and I curse my brain for tricking me with the double dream. I also feel my cheeks flush, knowing that’s how I would have reacted if he had actually climbed into bed with me. My core is throbbing at the memory, and I shift, feeling a damp spot in my underwear.

Is this the mating bond? Or the blood-bond? Or just how any woman would react if they were in a bed and Aris was standing over them like this?

When he’s close like this, I can feel his heartbeat like my hand is on his chest. I wonder if he can feel mine, too, but I’m too embarrassed to bring it up. Remembering the way people made me feel about my visions, I wonder if the heartbeat thing might be written off as another delusion from a silly girl.

Realizing I was just having a sex dream about Aris, and now I’m openly staring at him, I flush, feeling the warmth from my forehead down to my neck. What was I doing when he came in? Could he tell what I was dreaming about?

“Why are you watching me sleep?” I finally ask, blinking away the sleep in my eyes. I take in his appearance, eyes roaming up to his face—he looks like shit. The bags under his eyes have only gotten darker and his hair is damp, flopping into his face. The faint smell of outdoor water wafts off of him. “And why are you wet?”

I could ask you the same thing, I hear him growl in my head. I gasp and sit back, pulling the covers higher over me. My brain supplies me with the image of him pulling them down, crawling into the bed, covering my body with his, and I push it away. It’s bad enough to have dreams about him naked—I won’t allow myself to fantasize about it awake, too.

Can you hear what I’m thinking? I think at him, eyes wide. From what my parents told me, it took them years to develop a mind link, and it only ever happens after mates have consummated.

The thought of that sends another shiver down my back. Maybe it’s different with an alpha—maybe our mind link will develop before consummation. Maybe we can put consummation off forever and just keep operating the way we are now.

My eyes skip up to Aris and I take in his disheveled appearance again. I’m no genius—but it’s not hard to imagine what he’s feeling if I’m having sex dreams about him.

“Can you hear what I’m thinking?” I breathe, eyes wide as I look at him. He’s got a hand out on one of the bed posts, leaning against it. He looks like he could fall asleep at any moment.

“No,” he says, seeming a little more alert after I ask him that. He eyes me up and down, then takes a step back. “Can you hear what I’m thinking?”

After a moment, I lie: “No.”

It’s not a whole lie—I only heard the one line. Or maybe it wasn’t actually him; maybe I was just fantasizing about what he might say. It did sound exactly like him. It was so unexpected. I push the thought away, straightening up.

“Where did you go last night?”

“I slept in the river.”

“You—you what?”

“Well, I didn’t actually sleep in the river like a fish,” Aris says, grinning a little. “But I did take a dip, and I did fall asleep on a rock out there. Bigby woke me up this morning before I could wash away and drown.”

“What a shame,” I hear myself saying, and to my surprise, Aris cracks a smile. Is he so sleep-deprived that he’s developed a sense of humor?

“Listen,” Aris says, wincing as he adjusts his posture. “What can you tell me about Varun?”

I shift, uncomfortable when I remember the things I saw during my brief stint in the pack headquarters. Remembering what it was like to be there isn’t pleasant for me, and Aris must feel that because his forehead wrinkles.

“That bad?” he asks softly.

“Yeah,” I say, wrapping my arms around my knees and pulling them close to my chest. “I didn’t—there are a lot of girls there against their will.”

I watch Aris’s jaw work, and he pulls up a chair to the end of the bed, sitting down and meeting my eyes.

“Tell me,” he says, finally. I can feel the pain and guilt radiating off him—he still thinks Varun being the alpha here is his fault, and I wish there was something I could do to convince him otherwise. He may be stubborn and a pain in my ass, but Varun’s actions are his alone, and Aris doesn’t have to take responsibility for them.

Taking a deep breath, I think about what I saw myself and what I’ve heard from others in the pack.

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