Page 9 of Rejected Pregnant Mate

Her teeth were chattering. "You think I'm going to talk to you after all the shit you put me through?" she asked. Her voice was soft, but there was an edge to it. A challenge.

I should have been gentler with her, but I just didn't have it in me. Nayeli put me on the offensive at all times. "Putyouthrough? If I recall correctly, you're the one that cast that spell that bound us, princess."

Her face flushed in anger, but I could see the pain that was still laced in her eyes.

"That was a mistake," she hissed.

"We've established that," I retorted. "But that doesn't change the fact that we're stuck with each other now, and you're in pain. Or the fact that I'm in an alliance with your cousin, and he'll gut me in my sleep if he finds out I left you sick in the middle of nowhere."

She let out a groan of frustration, shaking her head. Her hair fell into her face as she looked down at the ground, and I had the sudden urge to reach out and brush it behind her ear.

"I can't be near you right now," she said quietly, "It's too much."

"Too much what?" I asked, reaching out to grab her arm. She pulled away from me, looking up at me with wide, scared eyes. I was okay to keep my hands off her, to give her some space to breathe, until her knees went weak again, and instinct took over. I grabbed her by the waist, steadying her before she could fall, but when I brought my hands to her bare shoulders, the reaction was immediate.

The pain left her body in a rush, and she sighed like she could finally breathe again. The relief in her eyes made me feel both better and worse. Better, because I knew I was helping her, and worse, because she hated it. She pushed away from me, and I let her go this time, watching as she stumbled a few feet away and put her hand to her temple.

"That helped you, didn't it?" I demanded. "When I touched you?"

She shook her head and hugged herself tighter. "I don't know."

I let out a frustrated huff, raking my hand through my hair. "Dammit, Nayeli. You're not making this easy for either of us. Can't you just give in and talk to me?”

She looked up at me, her expression angry, but I saw something else there. Desperation. "No! I don't even know why you followed me from the treehouse. I want to be alone."

"It's a good thing I did, considering you seem like you're falling apart unless my hands are on you." It was a wild thing to say, but I did get a secret little thrill knowing a simple touch from me could make her feel so good.

She looked away, cheeks flushed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Yeah, well, honestly, I’m not understanding much of what is going on right now. You’re like a completely new person, Nayeli. You apparently have magic, a secret hideout in the forest, and then you tell me you’ll be right back and instead, I find you in some random clearing talking to an Alpha we barely know anything about. Now you’re hurting, and we’ve found something that will help you, but because it involves me, you don’t want it. Do I have all that correct?”

She looked like she wanted to argue, but how could she? I was right. But it was Nayeli, so of course, she tried anyway. “You don’t get to play concerned Alpha now, Scott. Where was that concern when our mating bond became obvious, and you walked away from me?”

She was frustrating the hell out of me. “You keep circling back to shit that happened in the past when we’ve got plenty of problems right here, right now. Let the mate shit go for a minute, Nayeli. First, we’ve got to deal with whatever is hurting you, and then we have to figure out this bond.”

She glared at me for a long moment, but then her arms slowly unwrapped from her body, and her shoulders slumped in defeat. “Running didn’t help. I really thought getting some distance would make the feeling fade, but it just made it worse.”

I jerked my head back to the road, just a handful of feet away. “Let’s talk and walk. I think we’re both parked at Samson’s, and we’ve got a bit of a walk to get back there.”

Nayeli sighed and nodded her head. "Fine. But only because I don't want to be out here all night."

We walked in silence for a few minutes before I finally spoke up.

"Tell me what you're feeling, and I'll do the same. We need to be on the same page moving forward.”

Nayeli looked up at me, surprised. "You're feeling effects from the spell too? Besides the bond, I mean."

"Yeah," I rubbed the back of my neck, wondering how much I should tell her. It wasn't exactly something I wanted to share, but if we had any hope of her fixing her mistake, I probably needed to be honest. "Not like you are. I'm not in pain, but being away from you is..." I sighed, shoving my hands into my pockets as I looked up at the stars. "It's testing my self-control, Nayeli, and that's not something I'm used to. When you were so far away, before I found you with Jayce, it was like I was being overrun by the Alpha instincts that I've worked for years to suppress. This spell is majorly fucking with my behavioral stability."

"What do you mean?"

I clenched my teeth, trying to keep calm. "I mean, I wanted to rip Jayce apart when I saw you together. And that's not me. Samson, maybe, but not me. I felt like an animal at that moment."

"Oh." She blinked, looking confused, but I could smell the spike in her scent as she considered what I was telling her. "Well, that's not good."

I almost laughed. "You think?"

We were quiet for some time after that, Nayeli turning over my words in her mind. "My reaction isn't like that. It's like the longer we're apart, the more I feel like my skin is on fire. Then, when it was at its worst, I could feel the pain in my stomach and chest, too. Which is also where I feel the bond originating at. It didn't let up until you touched me. I just assumed it would stick around until I fixed the spell, but..." She shrugged one shoulder, unable to look at me. "It looks like we've found an inconvenient stopgap for the moment, at least."

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