Page 4 of Betrayed Bullied Mate

I have to sit on the edge of my bed for several minutes, breathing deeply, until I feel well enough to stand and shuffle to the kitchen. The morning sunshine is bright and orange and warm, and I want to bask in it after that terrible dream.

As my morning coffee brews, I open my laptop and click to get to the special email. After putting in the password and scanning my fingerprint, my laptop gives me access.

There’s a single message waiting in the inbox. I click on it, and my stomach flips at the information there.

I can help you break your pack bonds, but once it’s done, you won’t have a pack scent. You’ll never be able to bond in another pack. If you have a mate, the process will also break that bond, which can be incredibly painful and even result in total brain function loss. Look over the attached materials about the procedure and let me know if you’re still interested.

The phrase “total brain function loss” isn’t appealing, but I know it’s what I have to do. After months of searching, I managed to find a contact who knew a doctor specializing in shifters and their ailments. He offers a bond-breaking procedure that would permanently sever me from the shifting community.

It’s for the best. I re-read the part about the mating bond and that it “can be incredibly painful.” What the doctor doesn’t know is that my mating bond is already incredibly painful. After that first night at Prom, my body has continued to yearn for one person and reject everyone else year after year.

While Aris left and never came back, I was stuck seeing everything that made me think of him, his and his family’s scent drenched all over this town. I’ve tried to work on myself since then, and I have, improving my confidence and starting my own business, but I haven’t been able to shake the persistent urge my body has to be close to one man only.

Even without the mating problems, I might still be considering the procedure. Since Aris’s dad died and Varun took over, things have gone from idyllic to barely functional. After I got my CPA and started providing accounting services online, Varun called to have me brought into the bar, which he’d modified to serve as the pack HQ.

When Aris’s dad was the alpha, the HQ was a tasteful center in the town square with daycare and meeting spaces. Now, it’s a run-down bar with low lighting and the ingrained smell of cigar smoke.

I showed up with my laptop in tow, prepared for the worst. The documents I got were hastily gathered and barely legible, and I had to help them fix their taxes to comply with the tax regulation code within the Maan Pact. I had four days.

Within those four days, I watched a long line of female shifters enter the bar and not leave. One day, I saw a bartender ushering one girl into a door behind the bar.

I finished the paperwork as quickly as I could and left, but not before Varun cornered me and made a show of rejecting me because my body wasn’t fit enough for him.

What he doesn’t know is that I run three miles every morning and can do so without breaking a sweat. Just because I have curves doesn’t mean I don’t take care of my body. Since that day, feeling so powerful in the corner with Varun, I’ve also been driving a town over to take a self-defense class. I know, logically, that there’s no way I could take on the alpha, but taking the class does make me feel safer.

My coffee machine beeps, and I close my laptop, making my way over to it. I think of the fake I.D. and passport I have in my backpack, of the money I’ve been putting in a new account for months, living on as little as I could while creating a new life for myself.

With no family and no ability to shift, it doesn’t make sense to stay in the pack. And I intend to leave the first chance I get.

Chapter 3 - Aris

Bigby has his eye on me as soon as we ride into Rosecreek. I can feel him watching me, and I know it’s because he’s worried being here is going to put me on edge. I give him a quick look, shooting into his mind. I’m fine. Stop staring.

Not a thing has changed here. Main Street is still a collection of quaint little buildings, the high school still sits to the South of town, its field woefully outdated, and people in the street still nod their heads when they see me pass by. I see some old timers widen their eyes when they recognize me, and I know what they’re thinking.

They’re thinking I’ve returned to Rosecreek to take out Varun and take back the pack that’s rightfully mine. They think I care enough about this place to fight and get it back. They’re wrong.

I’m here to complete the objective, do my job to the letter, and get the fuck out of here before I’m suffocated under the memories.

From what we’ve gathered so far, Varun has moved the HQ from the old meeting hall to a bar in town, which doesn’t make much sense to me. There’s not enough room in there to set your elbows on the bar, let alone address the entire pack or take care of people properly. I push the thought from my mind—I’m not the alpha here, and I don’t want to be.

“So, Boss,” Percy says, bouncing forward and slinging his arm over my shoulder. I give him the side-eye, but he just grins. If I was truly angry, he would back off, but we’ve all gotten used to taking shit from him. “This is where you and Bigby grew up? Partners in crime? Were you, like, co-captains of the football team or some shit?”

Somewhere behind me, I hear Bigby laugh under his breath.

“I was captain of the football team,” I say, throwing him a look over my shoulder. “Bigby was off somewhere learning about quantum physics.”

“Mathletes,” Bigby says. “I was the captain of the Mathletes team. And we, unlike the football team, actually went to state.”

“Whatever,” I grumble, “You know I was hurt that year.”

“Yeah, sure,” Bigby says, and I can almost feel him rolling his eyes.

My high school “friends” had all started commenting on my change in attitude during senior year, and eventually, it got to the point where the entire school knew I was far more irritable than normal. I got hurt on the football field because I slammed head-on into another kid. A human kid. He was in the hospital for three weeks, and the coach benched me because he said I had to learn to control my temper.

They all thought it had to do with being the rising alpha, that primal instinct making me more violent and driving me to challenge my dad. It couldn’t be farther from the truth—I was pissy all the time because I suddenly found myself enjoying sex a lot less.

There was no shortage of girls in high school. As the rising alpha and captain of the football team, I pretty much had my pick of the cheerleaders, but right at the start of our senior year, I couldn’t look at them the same. I was never satisfied. There was one thing my body wanted, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to get it.

---