Page 14 of Undesired Mate

It takes a second for me to understand what she’s saying, and when I do, I turn to Clara. She is stunned—no one could effectively pretend to be as surprised as she looks now, with her mouth hanging open and her chest rising and falling with each shallow breath. “What do you mean?” she whispers. “You always told me you didn’t know who he was. There were too many of them.”

Persephone flinches, like the pain in the memories is still fresh after all this time. “What was I supposed to tell you? I was afraid you would be stupid enough to go off searching for him, then lead him back to me. You have never exactly been strong when it comes to common sense.”

Clara flinches under her mother’s sharp words. Unnecessarily insulting, antagonistic. She wasn’t exaggerating when she said the woman hates her. I can feel it in the air.

“You’ve always known who it was?” I ask.

“There were a number of them,” Persephone explains, wrapping her arms around herself and turning toward the fire. “But the rest of them held me down. Only he used me.”

Suddenly, her head snaps around, making her silver-streaked hair fan out behind her. “Do you want the details? Or are you satisfied with that?”

“What they did… it is not our way,” I insist. “I’m not defending them. I’m only telling you not to look at all shifters the way you would look at them.”

“I’m not interested in what shifters do.” With a glance toward her daughter, she scoffs. “I already know too much. What interests me now is vengeance, pure and simple. Balancing the forces. He took from me, and he deserves to suffer for that. As he made me suffer.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.” I hear Clara’s disappointed whimper behind me, but it doesn’t change anything. There are things I know, things we all know once we become fully grown. There is what matters to us, personally, but what matters to the pack must come first. Being part of a pack means we can’t think of ourselves.

And killing a wolf from another pack will throw us into war. I can’t be responsible for that.

It occurs to me now that I’m refusing the wishes of a witch who would cast a curse on her own daughter. What could she try to do to me? But instead of snarling or threatening me, she smiles. Somehow, that’s more unnerving than anything she’s done so far. “That won’t be a problem, because last I heard, he was banished. He’s a lone wolf now.”

“And if I can’t find him? He could’ve gone anywhere.”

She lifts her chin and the temperature in the room lowers several degrees in spite of the fire. “Then you came here for no reason.”

Another soft whimper from Clara. The wolf’s presence swells in my mind, expanding with every second she is in pain. I’m consumed by the need to soothe her and protect her, even if the bond hasn’t been completed. Nothing has ever mattered more.

Right now, the best way to comfort her will be to remove this curse. That’s what she needs more than anything. “If I do this, you swear to lift the curse? You’ll let her go? She deserves a chance to be who she is without a curse holding her back.”

“Do as I ask, and the curse will be lifted.” She holds my gaze without blinking. “Those are my terms.”

There’s no choice. It’s either fall in line and do as she demands, or suffer my wolf’s craving until I go insane. “Very well.”

She smiles, but it holds no warmth.

8

CLARA

“Areyou sure you need to go out?”

The look Levi gives me could freeze lava. I can’t understand it. He went out of his way to find my mother and order her to lift the curse, but he still looks at me like I’m lower than nothing. Like it’s my fault any of this is happening. I don’t know what brought us together, just like I don’t know why my life has to be so difficult at every turn. Why I’ve never been accepted by anyone, why I have never been normal. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. I thought he understood.

“I know what I’m doing,” he tells me, but that’s all the explanation he’s willing to give. “I have work to do if I’m ever going to find your father.”

My father. More like my sperm donor. “How would you even know where to start looking?”

“Don’t worry about it.” He’s tense and angry, making me wish I never asked. “You’ll be fine here. The pack knows you’re here.”

Yes, that’s what I’m afraid of. I’m glad he feels he can trust his pack, but trust isn’t something that comes easily to me. Whatever unseen, unspoken force is binding us together, I doubt it extends itself to the rest of Levi’s pack. I doubt they feel as generous toward me as he does—though that isn’t saying much, since right now, there’s a chaotic energy swirling around him that gets more intense every time he looks at me. I’m torn between feeling sort of glad he’s going to be gone for a little while since I can’t breathe easily when he’s around and needing him to stay. “Do you know when you’ll be back?”

“What is this? Keeping tabs on me?” I almost wish he wouldn’t fold his massive arms, since all it does is remind me how much bigger and stronger he is. He could snap me in half without any effort, and he must know it.

Although that isn’t the only thing on my mind when I look at his insane body. I have to deliberately pry my gaze away from his biceps before I can remember how to speak. “Of course not. What’s wrong with wanting to know when you’ll be back? Wouldn’t you want to know if you were surrounded by strangers?”

His jaw ticks and the muscles in his cheek jump. “Stay here, all right? It’ll be perfectly safe, but you have to stay here. No going out. Understood?” Part of me wonders what would happen if I disobeyed, but I would be insane to test the limits like that. I’m not in any hurry to get myself hurt or killed around here. “Understood,” I murmur, shutting down in the face of his… what is it? Hatred? I feel it in him. I feel how torn he is. Conflicted. I get the sense he isn’t the kind of person who likes to talk about his feelings—besides, I’m not sure I would want to hear what’s going through his mind.

Some of the tension drains from me when I’m alone. I can hear myself think now without the buzzing that goes on in my head whenever he comes too close. I’ve never felt like this before, not about anybody for any reason. I don’t have the first idea what to think of it. The sense of having no control over my impulses when it comes to him.

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