Page 39 of Betrayed Auctioned Mate

I glance down at her, hoping for some kind of response, but she doesn’t acknowledge me. Her face stays hidden; her body curled into itself like she’s trying to disappear.

“Keira,” I say softly, my throat tightening around her name. I don’t even know where to start.

She doesn’t respond. She stays silent, her breathing shallow, her hands gripping the fabric of my shirt like it’s the only thing anchoring her to this world.

“I’m sorry,” I try again, the words falling from my lips like stones. “I didn’t want it to be like this. I didn’t—”

“Stop. Just… stop.”

Keira’s voice is quiet, barely above a whisper, but it cuts through me all the same.

I fall silent. My steps falter, but I don’t stop.

The trees begin to thin out, and I glimpse one van’s dimmed headlights washing through the darkness. There’s norelief. Exhaustion peers out through the cloud of dread. I could sleep for a week if I wasn’t so full of adrenaline.

As we approach the van, the back doors swing open, and Bigby hops out, his face a mixture of relief and concern.

He reaches for Keira, but I hold her tighter, unwilling to let go.

Maisie appears behind Bigby, seeming to materialize out of the darkness. There’s a look on his face I have never seen there before.

“We’ve set up a mattress inside,” she says gravely. “Lay her down.”

I nod, but I can’t bring myself to move just yet. Keira shifts in my arms, and I feel her eyes on me. I look down, desperate to meet her gaze, to see something—anything—that will tell me I didn’t just lose her completely.

But when our eyes finally meet, all I see is distance. A vast, unbridgeable chasm between us. Her expression is closed off, her walls back up, stronger than ever. She doesn’t trust me. Maybe she never did.

“Put me down,” she says quietly, her voice steady despite everything. “I can walk.”

I hesitate, but the look she gives me leaves no room for argument. Slowly, reluctantly, I lower her to the ground, my arms aching more now than when I was carrying her.

Blinding pain shoots through my chest when our bodies part. I almost gasped out loud, palming my chest, trying to remember what it was like to breathe when I could still do it.

Does Keira feel that too?

I squint at her. She sways momentarily, unsteady on her feet, but she doesn’t reach out for me. She doesn’t even glance in my direction as she makes her way to the van, climbing in without a word.

I watch her go, guts squirming. I feel so violently unwell that I worry for a moment that something is seriously wrong. I feel like a tuning fork. The force of connection oscillates back through my body like a spring released, and I look down at my hands and see that they’re shaking.

Bigby rounds the van to slip into the driver’s seat. “You need to take the Aston back to Rosecreek. Cover our tracks.”

I nod. Maisie is still clambering into the back. I see her hand on her hip, where a hefty first-aid kit is strapped.

The van door closes behind her—behind Keira—and I watch the vehicle as it pulls away down the narrow, forested path down the mountainside.

***

Dawn has yet to show over the mountains as I pull back into the pack center’s lot. It’s almost four in the morning now.

It’s deadly quiet, not a car in sight. Soon, the vans will be here, parked in a staggered formation. The team is clearly exhausted but relieved to be home after everyone’s ordeal. But we all took differentiated routes to one another, and I happened to arrive first.

I open the window of the Aston Martin to feel the cool night air on my face. Through the screech of cicadas, cars rumble distantly on the highway.

“Fuck,” I whisper. “What did I do?”

I wonder whether I can try to feel for Keira in my mind now that we’re bonded. I think of her face as I held her and decide not to try.

Soon, two vans pull up, coming from either direction up Rosecreek’s only two-lane road. Bigby’s and Zane’s.

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