Page 6 of Betrayed Bullied Mate

“Yes, that’s an interesting proposition,” Varun says, raising his eyebrows and steepling his fingers. “But I have my own for you, Aris.”

Hearing my name come from him makes the hairs on my arms stand up. I don’t want to be associated with him whatsoever. When I don’t answer him, Varun continues.

“I can sweeten the deal for you. You go back to your agency, tell them everything’s sorted out, and I’ll give you and your team a little cut of what comes through here. And trust me, even a little cut is surely more than what you’re getting in a year. In exchange, you run a little interference, make sure any… Unsavory reports don’t get through. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

I can’t help it—I laugh. Varun startles at this but quickly sits back, trying to relax his stance again. For a moment, I almost feel bad for the guy. It’s like he’s play-acting a role he’ll never be fit for.

“Sorry, Varun, it’s a no from me. And now you can add bribery and attempted illegal action to that list of charges. I have to say—it doesn’t feel like you’re taking our presence here seriously.”

Shit, Byron sends through. More security than I thought. Doing what I can. Keep him busy.

“Okay, Cadell,” Varun purses his lips, shakes his head once, and then calls one of his shifters over to him. He whispers something in his ear, and the shifter turns, disappearing back into the thick of the bar. “I’ve got something that actually will interest you. Just give my man a moment to fetch it.”

I want nothing more than to collect my team and get the hell out of here, but Byron needs more time, so I concede, watching Percy tap on a fish tank and Bigby mentally catalog every detail of the place while we wait for Varun’s mysterious offer.

Chapter 4 - Linnea

I’m full of nervous energy, pacing up and down the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. After reading through the information about the procedure a few times, I finally messaged the doctor back and told him I was in. I know it’s my only option.

There are stories of shifters who try to complete the procedure, who end up in chronic pain, or who just lose their sanity altogether, but at this point, it’s worth the risk. I think back to when I was a kid, hearing my parents whisper about someone they knew trying to defect and how they’d ended up jumping off a bridge when they could no longer bond with a pack.

I think about my dad, sitting at the kitchen table, his hands wrapped around a steaming mug as he said, “Not everyone is cut out to be a lone wolf.”

The doctor is sending someone to get me tonight. I can only bring the essentials, and I have every candle and incense in my house lit to try and disguise what’s left of my scent. I doused every room and every surface with bleach. Hopefully, by the time Varun realizes I’ve deserted, none of my original scents will be left, and they’ll have no way to track me or figure out what I did.

Once you break ties with your pack and become a “lone wolf” without allegiance to a new pack, there’s nothing protecting you from their vengeance. So if I leave, I have to make sure Varun can never find me, or I’ll become the perfect example of what happens to anyone who tries to leave.

Luckily, besides his brief interest in my accounting services, I don’t think Varun is that interested in me. From the time he became the pack leader and started working his way through the female shifters, something always put him off from me. I don’t know whether it’s the shape of my body or the fact that I can’t shift, but either way, I’m grateful for it.

I know I need to stay calm and avoid working up a sweat, but my anxiety builds at the thought of what I’m about to do. If either of my parents were still around, they’d be horrified. Every time I think of them, the grief comes back in full force. I lost so much in such a short amount of time—my chance for a mate, my Alpha, my parents.

Two months after Aris left, the day after graduation, my parents were in a fatal car accident. They were coming home from a fishing trip, probably singing together in the front seat. Typically, shifters survive your average car crash. But this was two eighteen-wheelers colliding, then spinning into my dad’s 2007 Prius. They never stood a chance. The paramedics told me they died on impact.

I stop in front of a photo of them on the mantle, running my thumb over the frame. They’re smiling, looking up from chairs around a campfire. Like most shifters, they loved being in nature and took long, remote vacations so they could shift freely and stretch their muscles. I only saw them in their shifted forms once, when I was kid, and according to my dad, I cried so hard they had to take me home. After that, my inability to shift wasn’t surprising.

I glance at my mom in the picture, holding me, just a little bundle in her arms. When I was little, she used to sing an old shifter folksong to me as a lullaby. And there’s no need to run from the big, bad wolf.

My parents were pack traditionalists through and through—they would never understand the idea of deserting your people.

To them, the pack was everything, and they always talked about my duty to support my pack brothers and sisters. But they never experienced what it’s like to have a crooked alpha, to fear for your safety every day, to watch others in the pack be abused and disposed of. My parents had the luxury of a sane, sensible pack leader in Aris’s grandfather and then Aris’s dad.

My heart squeezes at the thought of Aris, as it always does. For a brief moment, a swell of nausea rolls through me at the thought of severing that connection, but I push it away. The universe chose Aris and me to be mates, but Aris rejected me. He made it clear it was never going to happen. Even if I can never have another mate, that’s still better than the never-ending torture of waiting for one who doesn’t want me.

A hard, pounding knock rattles the door, nearly jostling it off its hinges and I jump so hard I hit my knee against the coffee table. I glance at the clock. The guy is twenty-five minutes early. My backpack, with my fake documents and preparations, is on my back, the only thing I’m taking with me.

I glance at the door, then back at the clock. Another resounding knock reverberates through the house, and a deep voice shouts something on the other side.

It could be the guy I’m waiting for, but something deep in my gut tells me that’s not the case. Before I can waste another second, I race down the hall, get on my hands and knees, and raise the floorboard under my bed, sliding the backpack inside. By the time I replace the rug and start coming down the hallway, the door splinters, flying apart and landing in pieces on the living room floor.

Standing in the doorway is one of Varun’s lackeys, breathing heavily with the exertion it took to blast my door into shrapnel.

“Hey!” I call, indignant. I wasn’t planning on coming back and was just going to hire a realtor to sell my family home, but something about the destruction of my property still makes me angry.

“Hey, yourself,” he growls, “I was knocking. Didn’t you hear?”

A sadistic smile curves over his face, and I can’t help the shudder that works up my spine. Just because Varun isn’t interested in me doesn’t mean nobody is, and so far, as alpha, he’s done nothing to stop the abuse and assault on different female shifters in the pack.

“What do you want?” I say, trying to sound as brave as I can. There’s no way they could know what I was planning—right? I used an encrypted email. Every part of the process was so careful and intentional. How could Varun possibly know? “I already filed Varun’s taxes. And the business. It’s taken care of.”

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