Page 28 of Sold Bullied Mate

Part of me demands that I go and do it now—just get it all out in the open.

I’ve said the words already, but it doesn’t feel like enough. And I haven’t told her the truth—that I want her as my mate. Partly, it’s because I’m terrified she’s going to reject me, andpartly because it just doesn’t feel like the right time. Not with her brother coming to dinner.

It has never felt like the right time. Not when I first saw her at the market, and not now. But I need to gather the courage to do it soon, because my self-control is waning fast, and her heat is coming. Fear congests in my throat as I wonder, for the thousandth time, if I’ll be able to control myself.

If Kira rejects me, if she still wants nothing to do with me even after an apology? Even after I admit to her that I want her as my mate, then what?

I’ll have to shift, go into the woods. Stay there until her heat is over, until it’s safe to come into the house. And even then, there’s just the mere fact of her existing to make me feel out of control.

My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a quick, uncertain knock at the front door.

Emin.

Feet reacting before my brain, I’m in the hallway and making my way down the steps, toward the front door. I am not going to let Kira be the one to answer—if Emin wants to come over here and apologize for what he’s done, it’s going to be completely on her terms.

The house is filled with various scents—Kira’s the strongest, then the cooking, so when I catch Emin’s scent from outside, I’m not that concerned that it’s slightly different. Being around Kira going into heat, is likely scrambling my senses.

When I open the door, the first thing I see is Emin’s face. I’d expected him to look nervous, maybe contrite, but instead, he looks downright terrified.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice low. “I tried to tell them—”

At first, I don’t understand what he’s getting at, but then I realize he is not alone. His mother and father come to stand behind him on the porch, Mhairi Argent holding a glass pan and peering happily at me.

“Dorian,” she says brightly. “We were so excited to hear that—”

“Absolutely not,” I growl, the words coming out of me fast and low, the anger rising in my stomach like a tidal wave. I played my own part in Kira’s leaving our pack years ago, but so did her parents. And they turned her away when she showed back up, needing a place to stay after a traumatic event, so many years later.

It’s no secret to me—and to everyone else—that the Argents have been clawing their way up in the standing in this pack since before my grandfather was the alpha leader. But to sacrifice their own daughter—to let her leave the pack and not worry over her wellbeing—for the sake of their standing?

It makes me sick. And when I have children of my own, I would never treat them like that.

“What’s—”

Kira appears beside me, and I shift slightly so our arms don’t touch. I’m not sure I could handle it, don’t know if I wouldn’t just slam the door in the Argents’ faces and grab her, carry her up the stairs, take her the way my body is pleading me to.

“Mom,” Kira says, and the way she says it guts me. The hurt of a daughter, the pain of a little girl, staring people in the face who abandoned her in her moment of need. “Dad.”

“Kira,” Kellen says, and to my surprise, his voice breaks, too. Despite his firm stance that she’s a liar, that mygrandfather’s death rests firmly on her shoulders, he’s here, staring at her like he’s seen a ghost. “Gods, it’s good to see you.”

“What are you guys doing here?” she asks, voice small.

I know what they’re doing here, and Emin does too, judging by the look on his face. They were ready to write off their daughter before, when they thought her reputation couldn’t fall any lower.

But they also know that she is still my mate, despite the way I rejected her. And I brought her back from that market, have been keeping her in my home. It doesn’t take a genius to realize I don’t blame her for my grandfather’s death.

A week in the alpha leader’s house is an honor no other person in this pack has received, and that makes Kira something special.

And now that she’s something special, it appears her parents are here to make sure they attach their names to her again, grab a ride on the way up.

Emin meets my eyes, and there’s something specifically pleading there I don’t understand. For a moment, I wish we were shifted, in our wolf forms, because then he would be able to tell me without saying a thing.

“We came for supper,” Mrs. Argent finally says, and then, holding up the dish in her hands, “And hopefully, dessert.”

My muscles tense, and I grab the door, ready to tell them to get lost, but when I look at Kira, there’s something else in her expression.

I expect her to hate them, to see the way they’re taking advantage of her and tell them to get lost. And surely she does know who they are and what they prioritize. I was there the night they turned her away, and she had to come home with me.

But there’s something else in her gaze.

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