Page 30 of Broken Rejected Mate

After sliding various pieces onto our plates and settling back into the couch, I realize, with a start, that Veva has changed sides, so she’s sitting next to me. The movie plays on, and we relax into each other.

When her thigh is fully pressed against mine, I lose all sense of the plot on screen.

Every neuron in my brain is focused only on the places we’re touching, from knee to hip, the two layers of pants keeping our skin apart.

Without warning, I remember her how we were as kids. How I could touch every part of her. How wholly and completely she trusted herself to my hands.

Always sneaking around—at her house when her mother wasn’t home, on that bed with the dingy pink comforter. I’d laid her out, marveled at the smoothness of her skin. At the way she touched me back greedily, hungrily, like she thought she might never get the chance again.

I remember each time she tried something new, weaving her fingers into my hair, tugging gently, apologizing breathlessly, then taking it back when I said I liked it.

Just before the big climactic scene, I feel Veva’s body relax, and her head drops down onto my shoulder. I hold my breath, afraid to move, afraid that she might wake up and remember how much she hates me.

I have to apologize to her, find a time to speak with her. But Sarina is always around, and even when she’s not, Veva has made it clear she wants nothing to do with me.

Or, at least, she’d made it clear. Before whatever happened today changed her mind, brought us to this moment right now.

When the movie is finished, I move as quietly as I can, shifting our plates to the side and propping my feet up on the coffee table. Veva has shifted more onto me, one of her hands on my chest, and I have to concentrate to keep from running myhand over her hair, pulling her to me, holding her the way I used to.

Sarina is on the armchair, curled up, a blanket thrown over her. Using my phone, I turn off the lights in the living room, relax into the couch, and breathe deeply, inhaling Veva’s scent so I’m surrounded in it as I drift to sleep.

Chapter 17 - Veva

When I wake up, I’m warm, comfortable, bathed in a scent that’s so familiar it could be my own. I shift my body, letting out a low noise, and feel something tighten around my waist.

That’s when it hits me—I am sleeping with someone. Not someone—a man.

Emin lets out a low, rumbling sigh and hauls me up so I’m more fully sprawled over him, and I feel a deep, full heat spread out over my face. My sweatshirt has ridden halfway up my torso, so our stomachs are pressed together, and though I’m draped over him, my leg is wedged between his.

Then, to make things even worse, he lifts his hand in his sleep and slowly, gently runs it over my hair, before dropping it back down into his lap. My breathing gets shallow, and I will myself to get up, to get off of him. To put distance between us.

But all I can keep thinking about is Emin as a teenager, showing up at my mother’s house, asking after me. Why would he do that? Especially if he knew how his father would have felt about him being seen there?

Out of everything—him protecting us, offering up his house to us—it’s this knowledge that’s making it most difficult to hold on to my anger toward him. He came, he asked after me.

And now, in his sleep, he’s reaching for me, pulling me to him, making sure our bodies are pressed together.

My eyes skip over to Sarina on the couch, and once again, I feel that familiar tug in my gut. The knowledge that she’s growing up without a father, but now tinged with the feelingthat, instead of solely sitting in Emin’s lap, that fact is starting to belong to me, too.

Because I could tell him the truth right now. I could tell him the truth about Sarina, and he’d do the right thing. I can tell that it’s true—but my stomach tightens at the thought of it. If I tell Emin that Sarina is biologically his, that will force us to stay here.

Even if Emin Argent still wants nothing to do with me.

My mind skips back to the Llewelyns, that omegas-only college where Sarina could go and be free to pursue her studies without worrying over alphas. Without worrying about her heat.

When she was growing inside me, I’d hoped more than anything for her to be a beta. Even an alpha would have been manageable. But the moment she came out, I knew the truth—she would struggle through the world exactly the same way that I did.

Maybe as a teenager, she would meet her mate, fall in love with an alpha, and the trajectory of her life would change forever. I don’t regret having her, I don’t regret doing everything I could to give her a different life.

But that doesn’t mean I want her to go through what I did. Having her options taken from her. Carrying the baby of a man who’d so callously push her away, turn her out. Living on the outskirts of society because of bullshit pack standings.

Even if Emin came back for me, even if he went to my mother’s place and asked after me, that doesn’t mean he didn’t turn me away in the first place. And it doesn’t change a single minute of the things that happened to me after that.

Slowly, carefully, I untangle myself from him and tiptoe up the stairs to the shower, where I scald myself with hot water and scrub with soap, desperately trying to rid myself of his scent.

***

“Good morning!”

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