Page 17 of Outcast
A howl sounded from her, and I felt the sorrow in it as I walked away towards the dining hall. Hunger racked my body, my metabolism having been ramped up from the shift, and I needed to eat. We burned a lot of energy in the shifting process and would need to triple our food intake now as full-fledged shifters.
As I walked onto the patio, I grabbed some clothes from the pile left outside, and quickly put on the grey sweatpants and black shirt.
A crunching sound made me spin around, and I saw my mate morphing.
I guess it was time to reveal her identity—and hopefully find out what the hell was going on.
Desire pulsed through me as her human form appeared. Her tanned skin and lush curves drew me in, and I ached to move the long white hair that covered her breasts. As I moved my gaze up towards her face, I squashed any attraction in me and decided that the universe was playing a cruel fucking trick on me.
Kira.
Her face showed her own nerves and confusion about the situation, her eyes wide with tears gathering in them, and maybe it should have softened me towards her, but it did the opposite.
"I don't know how the hell you managed to hide that you were a shifter this entire time, but let me make myself perfectly clear, Kira. You willneverbe my mate," I spat at her and turned to go inside.
Her soft voice followed me, soothing my wolf who was raging at my denial of her.
"Jameson, I am just as confused as you are by what is going on."
I didn't bother stopping to acknowledge her, instead continuing to the kitchen. Grabbing a plate, I piled it full of the pulled pork, wincing at the pain of being at odds with my wolf. He wouldn't stop his whining for us to go to her and make it okay.
Too bad he didn't realize that she was the last person that I would ever be okay with as my mate. He’d just have to accept that we would find someone else. I didn’t give a shit what fate said in this instance.
A small hand rested on my back, and it made my wolf want to preen under her touch, while it made my skin crawl.
Whirling around, I gripped her wrist, giving me déjà vu of our earlier interaction here. She wore a long shirt that fell to just above her knees, and it made the animalistic side of me angry to smell another man's scent on her.
She winced as I gripped her roughly and backed her up to the edge of the sink while my wolf raged at me for bringing her even an ounce of pain.
“Do not ever touch me again. Do not ever speak to me. I don’t care what our wolves think. You will never be my mate,” I seethed down at her.
Tears flowed down her face, as she whispered, “I miss her too, Jameson. You aren’t alone in your grief.”
How fucking dare she think she understood anything. It was all her fault that we had even gone out there that day. She’d been relentless in begging Mom to go see that damn waterfall from the very first time she’d heard about it.
I dropped her wrist like she burned me and turned my back on her, leaving my food untouched and grabbing a bottle of whiskey instead as I headed to my home.
Fuck this night.
Chapter Eight
Kira
Grief unlike anythingI'd ever felt before crashed through me in suffocating waves until I slid to the floor. I sobbed as I hugged my knees to my chest, crushed by the pain my wolf and I were enduring at his rejection. All the information from Selene threatened to overwhelm me, and I still hadn't quite come to terms with the fact that I was a shifter, but all I could think about right now was him walking away.
How could he deny fate? How could he deny our bond?
I tried to soothe my wolf, who cried out for him and didn't understand why he’d left us. It was barely any help, because I myself was an emotional wreck about it. You’d have thought, given my severe dislike of the man he'd become, that this wouldn't have gutted me so much.
For a moment, when he hadn't realized who I was in wolf form, I had allowed myself to think I would regain my best friend. That we could forgive each other for the distance and animosity over the last sixteen years and finally comfort one another in our ongoing grief, as we should have done all along.
It had been a beautiful thought, but now it made his rejection sting even more.
Perhaps fate itself wasn't strong enough to quell such a deep-seeded pain as what he harbored within. Maybe in another life we could have experienced the joys of a mate bond, but deep down I knew that he would never allow us to love him. Moreover, I knew he wouldn't allow himself an ounce of happiness, because it would feel like a betrayal to Maya.
Although I knew his reasons and even understood him more than he realized, it didn't dull the ache that spread through my soul and crushed my wolf's spirit.
Rejection wasn't an option in her mind. She wanted me to run after him and dominate him until he submitted to this bond he seemed so eager to be rid of.
