“I’m not kidding, Austin. Get. Out. I’m not doing this with you. I tried to avoid it altogether, but apparently this town is far too small to get away with something like clearing out a house. So you’ve been here. You’ve had your chance to yell at me. Now. Get. The. Fuck. Out.” She shouted all that without looking directly at his face.
Instead of leaving, Austin shoved a pile of things to one side on the couch, sat on the cushion, and put his feet up on a sealed box.
She groaned. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.”
“You want me to call the cops?”
“Go ahead.”
She stomped her feet and slammed the door, having a mini tantrum. Fury ate at her until she knew she was going to accomplish nothing if she continued to reason with him. Instead, she stomped down the hallway toward her childhood bedroom to resume packing in another part of the house.
As if that would work out.
Five seconds later, he filled the doorframe. She didn’t need to turn around to see him. She could feel him. Sense him. Scent him. His pheromones filled the small room.
For a moment she was transported back in time. Nothing had changed. He was still the same Austin. She was the fifteen-year-old girl who was totally in love with her boyfriend, even though anyone sane would say they were too young to know.
Nothing had changed.
He was still her mate.
Chapter Two
Austin could have heard a pin drop in the silence of the room. Neither of them breathed. How had he not realized she wasn’t bound to anyone before this moment? Not only that, but she was still his.
“You’re not bound to anyone yet,” he deadpanned. He hadn’t expected to find her unbound. And he especially didn’t expect to find out she was still his. The air knocked out of his lungs.
She’s still mine…
Jesus.
Even though he’d known they were meant to bind together at an early age, that would have evaporated if she’d found another man and bound herself to him. She had not.
“No,” she whispered, keeping her back to him.
“How…” His voice was breathy. Weak. “Why?”
Her shoulders slumped and began to shake a moment before he realized she was crying. A soft sob filled the room.
He rushed forward without thinking, grabbed her shoulders, and spun her around to haul her against his body. He set his chin on the top of her head. By human standards, she was a normal height of five-six. But at six-two he towered over her and always had.
The world melted around him. Nothing existed except Nuria. Her small frame. Her long curls against his chin. Her chest rising and falling with each breath. Fifteen years. And it felt like yesterday.
When she didn’t pull away, and instead leaned into him, he stroked a hand up her back and buried it in her curls. When they’d been younger, he’d been in love with her hair. Fascinated by how soft it was. He often threaded his fingers in it.
But they weren’t fifteen. And neither of them was a kid anymore.
He wanted to freeze the moment for eternity, but after a few minutes of silence, she lifted her hands, set them on his chest, and pushed off. She spun around to grab a tissue from the bedside table and wiped her tears.
Without a word, she lowered herself onto the edge of the same twin-size bed she’d slept in all those years ago. He was shocked by how little had changed in the house. What kind of renters did they have that never altered the furniture? The mattress was bare. At least her bedding wasn’t still there. If it had been, he might have seriously thought he’d stepped back in time.
“Why?” he repeated, needing answers before anything else.
So many questions. But he needed to start with his brother.
“Listen, I’m not going to pretend to understand what you were thinking or feeling that day, or even that month. But I’m so confused. You owe me some answers.”
She jerked her gaze up to meet his. “Do I? Because I don’t think so. Especially not now that I realize what you’ve thought of me all these years. I could have gone my entire life without you finding out about Antoine. How did you find out? Did he tell you?” She lifted a hand, palm out. “No. Never mind. I don’t want to know. It’s history. Just like us.”
Her voice dipped lower, along with her shoulders. “Go home, Austin. Find a willing mate. Let me go back to my life in peace.”
His knees buckled so badly that he lowered to the floor in front of her, putting the two of them at face level. He set a hand on her thigh.
She flinched and jerked out of his reach. “Go home,” she repeated.
“Were you in love with him?” He shook his head to clear the thought. It was too stupid. “Never mind. That’s crazy. You were mine. I don’t get it.”
“And you never will, Austin. Go home.”
“You pulled away from me. For weeks, maybe months, you pulled away. We used to spend every afternoon together doing homework, eating snacks, laughing, watching stupid reruns on TV…” The flood of memories ate a hole in him.
She wrapped her arms around herself as if chilled.
“And then you stopped coming around as often. I still saw you at school. We hung a few times, but something had changed. I didn’t know what. Rumor had it you were seeing someone else. Rumor had it you were seeing Antoine. And then I saw you in the barn that day.”
She flinched.
He swallowed, the memory bringing bile to his mouth as it always did. His voice was lower when he continued. “My life ended that moment. I never recovered. Why? Were you seeing him behind my back?”
She tucked her lips into her mouth, not meeting his gaze. Her gorgeous curls fell around her face like a curtain. Her hair was thicker and longer than he remembered. Something else was different about it too…
It wasn’t pulled back. When they were younger, she hated it getting in her eyes. She spent so much time brushing the wispy loose curls away from her forehead or cheeks that she made him laugh. Now it was down. Shrouding her. Covering her face. Was she hiding? From the world?
“Make me understand,” he begged.
“It’s too late, Austin. There’s nothing to say. You made your judgment about me. You can’t take it back.”
He furrowed his brow. “I made a judgment? How do you figure?”
He leaned forward, set his hands on both sides of her thighs, and crowded her personal space. “Tell me, Nuria. Make me understand why my girlfriend, my mate, the woman I intended to spend my life with, was in the barn of my parents’ home fucking my brother?”
His voice rose higher. “Why did I have to see that? Tell me?” he insisted.
Suddenly, she snapped. Her head jerked up, and fury filled her eyes. “You think you’re so smart? If you were so sure we were meant to bind to each other, then why the hell did you believe I would fuck your damn brother so easily?”
He flinched. “You telling me you didn’t?”
She shoved at his chest, but he didn’t move. “That’s what I’m telling you, you dick. Not only did I manage to get away, but now I’m finding out my own boyfriend saw his smarmy brother trying to rape me, and instead of helping, he fucking left me there to fend for myself.” She screamed those last words, spit hitting him in the face.
He felt like he’d been slapped. No. Much worse.
She shoved away from him in his stupor and scrambled to stand behind him. Tears streamed down her face. “I wish you hadn’t come here at all. I never would have known what a fucking jackass you were.” Her voice rose higher in pitch. “You fucking left me there in that barn? With your disgusting brother pawing at me? Tearing at my clothes?”
He spun around to face her.
“I fought with all my might to keep him from pulling off my jeans. Do you know how much bigger he is? I had to jerk my face back and forth to keep him from biting my neck and fucking binding me to him. I was fifteen years old, Austin. Fifteen.”
Austin lowered his ass to his heels, unable to hold himself u
p. He set his hands on his thighs.
“The only thing that saved me from a fate worse than hell that day was a cat that jumped down from the rafters and scared your brother for enough seconds for me to wiggle out from under him and run from the barn. I ran hard and fast in human form until I got to the tree line, and then I shifted and ran faster in bear form.”
Austin felt like he’d been punched in the gut.
She was shaking. Tears fell freely down her face. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. “And my boyfriend, the person I trusted most in the world, saw that? You left me there?” She sobbed, and then she spun around and ran from the room.
He listened as she stormed out of the house, the back door slamming. And then she was gone.
He had no doubt she’d shifted and headed into the woods. He couldn’t blame her. He was indeed the biggest dick alive.
»»•««
Nuria was furious. She was mad at herself for engaging in the conversation with Austin at all. She was mad that she’d opened the front door. She was mad that she’d come to town to clear out the house. She should have hired a service to do it.
Of course, if she’d had the funds to hire a service, she would have. As it was, she was going to be stretched too thin to even eat by the following month if she didn’t get this house sold fast.
She ran hard. She’d shifted before her paws hit the grass off the edge of the deck. Thank God no one had been around. More importantly, it was amazing she’d had the wherewithal to take a second to scent the area for humans.
There weren’t usually humans in her part of town, but there was always a chance.
For at least an hour, she ran. She didn’t even know for sure where she was anymore. She headed up the mountain. Although she’d known every single rock and tree by heart when she was young, she didn’t anymore. The trees were larger. The rocks hidden in the brush.
She couldn’t even admire the beauty of the place she’d once loved. In her mind, she remembered the evergreens that huddled together all over the side of the mountain. Today, the trees seemed colder and lonely. Their scent refused to penetrate, as if they were a mirage. The crunch of freshly fallen snow beneath her paws was present, but she ignored it.
She came to a stream higher than she would normally go and raced to the edge to lap at the water. It was cold outside. Way too cold to shift into her human form. So she padded into a thick group of trees and lowered her weary body to the ground.
Gasping for breath, she closed her eyes. There was no way to block out the truths. Truths she would have rather gone a lifetime without knowing.
He knew? He saw her there, and he left her? It was so inconceivable that she wanted to scream. She wanted to punch him. Hurt him like he hurt her.
And the worst part of the entire thing was she couldn’t even go on with her life because he was her mate. Even though she would never bind herself to him, she would also never find someone else. She had no interest.
That reality penetrated as if a tornado had picked her up and thrown her hard against a tree trunk. The breath whooshed out of her where she lay.
In her bear form, she cried, ugly sounds coming from her snout. She cried for the lost innocence of a young girl. She cried for the life she would never have. She cried for the loneliness she would feel until death took her. She cried for the secrets she would carry with her always.
When she couldn’t cry anymore, and her throat was sore even in her bear form, she slid into a deep sleep.
Hours later she woke up. Cold. Alone. Hungry. Tired. Bone tired.
It was dark. She had fur, but she didn’t like to be out in low temperatures, bear or not. She preferred the warmth of her home. Any home.
When she pushed to all four paws, her entire body hurt as if she’d worked out too hard, which she had.
She had no choice but to make her way home. It would take a while, but waiting any longer would make it worse. Under the light of a crescent moon, she worked her way slowly down the mountain. She figured it took almost an hour to get to the spot where she’d stopped. It took two hours to make her way back.
When she finally stepped out of the clearing into the yard behind her house, shifting into human form and then running through the cold, she was beyond stunned to realize Austin was still there. In fact, he was sitting on her back patio with a blanket wrapped around himself. He jumped to his feet as she approached.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she muttered as she passed him to get to the house. She was too cold to do anything else. The temperature had dipped, and the only clothes she wore were jeans and a T-shirt. Luckily she’d been wearing tennis shoes when she fled him earlier, or she’d have been even colder now.
Shivering, she jerked the sliding glass door open and stepped inside. She was unable to get it closed before Austin stuck an arm in and shoved in behind her.
“I don’t have anything else to say to you, Austin. You’ve done enough damage. Get the hell out of my life and leave me alone.” She rubbed her arms, needing a warm bath, food, sleep. In that order. Without her stupid teenage crush hovering.
Her mate.
The one whose pheromones filled the house, making her body react to him in total betrayal of what her mind knew was best for her sanity.
She squeezed her legs together and backed toward the hallway.
“Not gonna happen, Nuria. I have things to say.” He followed her, slowly, cautiously.
“I don’t want to hear them. I’ve heard enough.”
“Too bad. You’re going to hear them anyway.”
She hit the wall at the entrance to the hallway on the other side of the kitchen, miscalculating the space.
Austin continued to advance. Though he did have the decency to stop a few feet from her. He eased the blanket from his shoulders and held it out. “You’re freezing.”
She stared at it for a few seconds, contemplating the wisdom of accepting it for so many reasons, the most important of which would be that it smelled like him.
Shivering won out, and she snagged the blanket from him and wrapped it around her body. She slid down the wall next and landed on her ass on the floor, her legs bent, her forehead settled against her knees.
“I didn’t know,” he began. “Not that there’s any excuse for my actions or lack thereof. There’s no excuse. And I have to live with that for my entire life. But you have to believe me when I tell you where my mind was that day.
“When you started pulling away from me a few months before, I thought you’d lost interest in me. In us. I was so upset and confused that I couldn’t sleep or eat right. Several of my friends tried to talk me into breaking up with you. They said they’d seen you with someone else.”
She didn’t move a muscle.
He continued, “I thought you were seeing another guy. I thought you were seeing Antoine. When my mom found me despondent one day in the living room after school a week before you left town, I started crying. I told her my suspicions.”
Nuria didn’t move. She stiffened, but hopefully he didn’t notice. She was a statue, her face hidden, her hair shrouding her in a veil. Thank God for her hair. She’d learned to use it to conceal her feelings over the years.
“Unfortunately, my brother Antoine came in the room while I was still spilling my heart to my mom. He laughed at me and told me I was a fool, and anyone could see you were more into him than me. He said the only reason you ever came around was to see him.”
Nuria’s body jerked, but she still said nothing. She couldn’t help the reaction.
“It sounds absurd now. Fucking idiotic. But I already thought you were seeing him. The rumors… So it wasn’t a huge stretch, for some reason. I knew my brother was a dick, but at that point, I still didn’t realize how much of an ass he was.
“My mom chastised him and told him to go to his room. He continued to laugh, called me a few names, and then wandered away. I never let my mother say another word. I bolted to my own room, locked the door, and then cu
rled on my bed like a baby. It was humiliating.
“It was stupid as hell. I have no idea why I fell for his shit. It was all mixed up in my head. And then I never saw you that entire week. Every chance he got, Antoine told me how good a kisser you were, how smoking hot you were, how stupid I was for ever thinking I could nail a girl like you.”
Nuria couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Was it possible he wasn’t to blame for what happened? His brother orchestrated this entire thing? Why?
“When I rounded the door to the barn that afternoon and saw the two of you…” His voice choked. He was being totally sincere. She could hear it in every word. This was the hardest thing he’d ever said out loud. “I died ten deaths. I wanted to climb onto the roof and fall to my death. I wanted to kill my brother. From where I stood, it looked like you two were deeply involved in a lovers’ embrace. I didn’t hear you protesting. I thought you were moaning.”
She jerked her face up to meet his gaze. “You stupid jerk, he had his hand over my mouth. I was screaming against it, hoping someone would hear me.” New tears fell. She couldn’t stop them.
Austin lowered to his knees again. He looked like he’d been hit by a truck. Distraught. As if his best friend had just died or his parents. Or his mate…
“I should have told you.”
“Told me what?” he asked.
She swallowed. “I didn’t want to mess with your relationship with your brother.”
“What are you talking about?” He fell to his ass, bending his knees in front of him and setting his forearms on them.
She inhaled long and slow, wiped away another line of tears, and continued. “The reason I pulled away from you and stopped coming over so often was because Antoine freaked me out. He was always touching me, tickling me, trying to pull my hair.” She shuddered violently, seeing nothing for a moment, stuck in the past.
Austin’s face fell. He looked like he might be sick.
“I should have told you,” she mumbled. “I should have told someone. But I didn’t. Instead, I canceled when we were going to be at your house and found excuses anytime Antoine might be around. He scared me. But I convinced myself I was being overly dramatic.
Grizzly Beginning (Arcadian Bears Book 2) Page 2
