“Every day,” he confirmed.
“Exactly. For so many years, too. That means a great deal. Kids like that, they tend to move around. He sticks close. Maybe because of this shelter. Maybe because of you. You’re a decent male, Jarvis. Always have been. He’ll respond to that. You’re the authority he always should have had, should have had to learn from, rather than having a son of a bitch like his uncle in his life.”
Despite himself, he was touched. Enough so that his voice creaked a little as he said, “Thank you. For saying that.”
Her smile was gentle. More gentle than he’d ever seen from her. “There’s no need to thank me. You’re the one doing the hard work. Which,” she said, then inhaled deeply, “is why I’m here. I want to help. By either publicizing this place for donations or simply to shine a light on it. Publicity is always good.”
“Is it?” He cocked a brow. “I’m not so sure.”
She studied him. “How do you fund this place? I’ve seen barely any kind of sponsored meals or galas or whatever to fund an operation of this magnitude.” She cast her gaze over him, then looked around the room. He watched her analytical glance take in the kitchens, all sparkly new and top of the line. He saw her take note of the food the kids were eating—good, wholesome dinners. Rich in macronutrients. “If you don’t run on sponsorships, then how?”
He pulled back again, leaning heavily against the rest as he murmured, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you so interested?”
“It’s a side of you I hadn’t thought I’d ever see.”
“And that bothers you?”
“It bothers me that I read you so wrong.”
He shrugged. “We all make mistakes.”
“I made my name in journalism by not making mistakes. And I made it in a time where journalism was having a crisis. I can’t afford to make mistakes, yet I have with you.” She cut off that line of conversation by hazarding a guess, “You fund it, don’t you? Out of your own pocket?”
“Some of it,” he confided.
“Most of it,” she corrected.
“Justiss helps.”
“Justiss is the multimillionaire, isn’t he?” she asked softly. “I never knew him all that well.”
“Until he joined the Council, which is well before you left for Mississippi, he used to hang around in the background. He was always a bit of an outsider under the other presidents.”
She blinked at him, but her attention was wholly on him once more.
A fact both man and beast appreciated.
Intensely.
“Justiss played the stock markets and made himself a fortune.” Jarvis shrugged. “Along the way he helped me, too. I run this place. Use most of my funds to run it because it’s my pet project, but he helps. And Toni, his mate, is the doctor here. She donates her time and usually a lot of the medication too.”
“Pet project,” Cinda scoffed, picking up on that one remark and immediately dismissing it. “Like this could ever be considered a pet project.”
“I only have the time I don’t dedicate to the Council and the MC’s businesses to focus on this place. It’s not enough, not really. It’s a full-time job.”
For some reason, his words had her swallowing. Gulping down nerves, maybe? He had no idea why she’d be nervous until she whispered, “Let me help.”
He frowned. “Why? Why would you want to?”
“I don’t know. I just… I want to help. That was always my intention when I came here. Whether it was by helping raise money or even volunteering some time, I wanted to help.”
He took her in and wondered what had happened to the Cinda he’d always thought he’d known.
Of course, her presence here, that delicious scent she exuded by simply breathing, told him precisely how wrong that analysis had always been.
Birth control.
Goddess. They’d only realized how badly birth control could mess up the interaction between a male and his mate.
Pip had lived at the clubhouse as a club whore for years, under Major’s nose, and he hadn’t realized she was his thanks to the medication she took for PCOS. Only when she’d left the clubhouse, unable to remain as a club whore anymore when she herself felt the call of the mate bond to a male who seemingly didn’t share that call, and had taken herself off the medication thanks to no insurance to cover the costs of the meds, that her true scent had been allowed to blossom. Once Major had scented her, he’d known. And they’d mated.
How had this happened with Cinda?
She Bears never took birth control. It was unnecessary. It wasn’t like they could get pregnant with another male who wasn’t their mate. But birth control had to be the only explanation as to why the fact she was his had eluded him for so long.
“What is it?” she asked softly. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He should tell her. He knew he should. But he wanted her to figure it out. For her to realize what he was to her. The call of the mate bond hadn’t just eluded him after all.
Pip had known Major was hers, regardless of the meds. Had Cinda known and simply evaded it?
When his Bear growled, a deep bellow that the man longed to release, he knew that was exactly what Cinda had done.
There was no other reason to go on birth control. Not unless she’d known, had always known, that he was her mate.
Rage washed through him, followed by a hurt so deep it was worse than any blow he’d ever known in a fight. Goddess, it was worse than the time he’d been sprayed by bullets on a field trip into another gang’s territory.
“How long have you known?” he asked softly, but his words were more a hiss than anything else.
“What do you mean?” she asked warily.
“Why are you back in Houston?” Jarvis asked, changing the subject. He wanted answers, and if he pushed too hard in one direction, she’d run off.
He could already sense her nervousness and could see in her body language she was prepared to rush off. She’d come to him but that didn’t mean he could shackle her here until he got all the answers he needed. Screw that. Deserved.
She didn’t mimic his pose. She hadn’t relaxed into the seat even though they’d been having a conversation. She was sitting upright, her elbows on the table as she leaned toward him. Perfect for immediately jumping into action and running away from him.
Again.
She frowned at him. “I was reassigned.”
“To Houston?”
“Yeah.”
“That was lucky, wasn’t it? Coming back to your home turf?”
She firmed her jaw. He could see the muscles tense and clench as she stated, “I might have put in a request for a transfer.”
The confession didn’t ease his anger. “Finally decide you were ready to meet your mate, did you?” he asked in a far softer tone than he’d realized he was capable of.
She immediately flinched and he knew he’d hit home.
“Why, Cinda? Why?” He shook his head at her. “Why would you do this to us?”
“You haven’t suffered,” she told him angrily. “You’re not the one who…”
When she broke off, he leaned forward, copying her posture. It was interesting that she chose that second to back away. “Who, what? Tell me, Cinda. Explain why you’ve avoided this. Us.”
She gulped. “I was too young. You were too young.”
His eyes flared wide at the bullshit excuse. He slapped his hand against the table, so hard that the sound rang around the room and his palm stung in response.
When the chatter of a two hundred teenagers came to an abrupt halt in response to his move, he sucked in a breath, seeking control. The last thing these kids needed was to see him out of control, to believe that he wasn’t the source of safety he’d always tried to project onto them.
“Lies,” he hissed before he turned to the crowd and forced a smile. “It’s okay,” he called out. “Enjoy your dinner.”
He knew the kids carried on
watching them and he felt their eyes crawl over them as they slowly but steadily went back to their earlier conversations.
In the time it took for that to happen, Cinda had started to tremble; a fine quiver overtaking her limbs, and he watched, unfeeling, as she unraveled before him.
“I wasn’t ready to mate,” she whispered, closing her eyes as though that harsh truth was more than she could stand.
Goddess, she thought it was hard for her to say aloud. How the fuck did she think it felt for him to hear it?
“But you’re ready now?” he snarled at her, uncaring that she flinched. His Bear didn’t approve of his line of questioning. All the Bear wanted was to wrap her in his arms, take her to the nearest flat surface that was in complete privacy, and Claim her as his.
The Bear didn’t want to talk. He wanted action.
Pity for the Bear that at that moment all the man wanted was answers.
And until he had them all, until he knew exactly what in the hell kind of game she was playing, there would be no Claiming.
For years his brother Chris had fought the mate bond. As had his mate, Mars’s daughter, Ava. For weeks, Mundo and his mate, Christie, had had to withhold the mate bond. As had Jessie and Spyder.
And so too had Cinda, it would seem.
He’d known her for nearly forty years. She’d lied to him for forty years.
Four wasted decades of loneliness, and all because she hadn’t felt she was ready to mate.
If the tables had turned and she’d suddenly decided she was ready, then there was no way he was going to make it easy on her.
If it made him a bastard, then that was her fault. Not his.
A rejection spanning nearly half a century was the reason for that, and she’d just have to accept the consequences for her stupid, stupid decision to avoid him and their mate bond.
Chapter 2
Seeing Jarvis was always bittersweet.
Bitter because of the choices she’d made long ago. Choices that had set her on a path which led her on her current course of action.
On the other hand, it was sweet because, Goddess, he was her mate.
Her She Bear hated leaving him. Every time, it grew harder and harder. This time, it would be nearly impossible. The conscious decision to go off the human birth control was one that had been decades in the making. Living without the limitations on her hormones had made the past six months very interesting.
Interesting read tortuous.
She let out a sigh and deciding that neither defense or offense was going to work here, so she sat back against the uncomfortable dining chair. It had a spindly back and those spindles dug into her spine in all the wrong places. Regardless, comfort was never going to be a factor in this conversation.
She could be sitting on a goddamn cloud and would still feel uncomfortable as fuck.
That was her punishment, she guessed.
Or, at least, it felt like one to her. In Jarvis’s mind, she probably deserved an ass whooping.
She guessed she had to be grateful that even back in the days when a man hitting his wife didn’t raise an eyebrow, Jarvis had never been like that. He’d always been courteous. Kind. Respectful of women.
An anomaly.
It was one of the reasons why it had been so hard to leave him behind and go off on her own. But writing was a vocation. It wasn’t something she could give up easily, and she’d had to explore those ambitions or forever have regret for failing to fulfil those goals.
She didn’t fold her arms even though it was instinctual to do so. She sat there, arms at her side, vulnerable with her head bowed down, eyes glued to the table. Slowly, she flickered her gaze up until it washed over him.
His rage was… well, it was far worse than anything she’d ever seen from him.
Jarvis was one of those guys who looked terrifying, but was actually a BFG. He was nearer seven feet than six, and nearly three-fifty pounds in his skin—and yeah, she’d seen him in his skin. Just the memories made her grow hot inside and out.
Shivering a little, she saw the rage contorting his usually gentle features. He had a stubborn jaw and a look about him that reminded her of Chris Hemsworth. Except Jarvis had been around a lot longer than the Australian had, so maybe Chris looked like her man.
Not that she had the right to call Jarvis that.
Not yet, at any rate.
Soon, though. Hopefully.
She gulped as his dark blue eyes seemed to ripple with emotion. The cerulean depths were like an ocean shore that was being bombarded with waves.
His Roman nose, always prominent, was flared at the nostril as his outrage manifested itself physically. The skin about his lips and chin were blanched, bleached of color as he tried to process his rage and ultimately failed.
It was hard to stay back in her seat. She wanted to lean forward, needed to implore when Cinda had never begged for shit from anyone. But this was her mate.
And she’d denied him his mate for decades.
Not accidentally. Not for any reason like his Prez’s daughter who had discovered her mate at far too young an age—her brother’s mate, Christie, had told her all about that.
No, she’d avoided the bond for ambition.
Sheer, ruthless, bloody-minded ambition.
Goddess, what had she been thinking?
“I’m sorry, Jarvis.” She hadn’t planned to say that, but the words had just blurted free.
She’d been helpless to keep them back because they were the truth.
“You’re not. You’re sorry that you have to tell me now. That you can’t finagle your way into making me believe the mate bond is a new chapter for both of us.”
She blew out a shaky breath. “That’s another reason why I’m sorry. But this can’t start out with more deception.”
“And you think you have the right to decide that, do you?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing dangerously as he leaned into the table, making the damn wood groan with the pressure he was exerting upon it.
“I-If I hadn’t come here today, you would still be in the dark about all this,” she said on a low whisper, dropping her gaze because those waves in the expanse of blue were more intense than she could cope with at that moment.
“So, you expect me to be grateful then?” he asked, his tone close to conversational now.
She eyed him warily, and biting her lip, stated, “Of course not. I-I didn’t have to come.”
“It’s all about you, isn’t it, Cinda?” He shook his head at her. “Everything you’ve done, every decision you’ve made, it’s always been about you. Your life. Your future. Your world, and undoubtedly, your career.” He was seething and the words attacked her like shrapnel from a dirty bomb that embedded itself in the softest, most tender parts of her body.
She could feel herself bleeding from the cut of each shard.
“No, it wasn’t like that,” she tried to defend herself.
“Of course it was,” he snapped, loud enough to make the room fall silent once more. He inhaled roughly, took a quick look around the dining hall and tried to convey that all was well with a false smile.
It didn’t work.
These kids could read faces. They knew something was going on. They could see it as well as smell it.
They didn’t have to be Shifters to know all was not right with their usually placid friend.
“You never took into account that I’m nearly Mars’s age. That I’m nearly two-fifty, did you?” he demanded. “You never thought about me. What a separation would do to me. All you thought about was how the bond would affect you.”
Stung, she sat upright. “That isn’t fair. How is what you said anything other than what you’re accusing me of?”
He shook his head. “Because I’m two-fifty, and you’re barely sixty. There’s a huge difference, and don’t try to pretend you don’t know it because that would be bullshit. Oh, but wait, that’s what you’re used to spewing at me, aren’t you?” he snarled. His hands came up to cover his face
a split second before he rubbed the palms over cheeks and pressed into his eyes. “You know the older a Bear gets without its mate, the lonelier he feels. The more isolated he gets. And the more aggressive and volatile he becomes as a result. You didn’t think about that, though. You didn’t care.”
Her bottom lip trembled. “I was young.”
“That’s no excuse,” he snapped, his hands falling away so he could lance her with his glare. “We could have done it together. You could have gone around the country and done whatever the fuck you wanted. But we’d have been mated. We wouldn’t have been alone.”
“It was something I needed to do by myself,” she said softly, dropping her gaze to her lap. “I needed to know I could do it without help.”
He let out a snarl. “I need not to be seated opposite you right now,” he confessed gruffly.
She blinked, astonished, as he scraped back the chair and got to his feet. When he started to walk away from her, her shoulders dropped in further bewilderment. Leaping to her feet, she demanded, “Where are you going?”
The note of panic in her voice was unavoidable. It didn’t stop her from grimacing at it though, or at herself.
She sounded positively scared, and Jarvis, for all his might, wasn’t a man she could ever fear. Not only because he was her mate, but she’d seen him at his very best and his very worst. Of course, those parameters would be affected once they mated, but for now, her memories worked in her favor.
When he paused, hovering in his tracks down the middle of the dining area, she saw tension fill his plaid shirt-shod shoulders. “Please,” she whispered softly, and the word was barely spoken; mostly carrying on the sound waves by desperation alone so quiet was it. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”
He didn’t move. His back still turned away from her.
She watched his shoulders heave, saw the tension fill his body as though he was about to move, and felt more fear shudder through her. He was going to leave her.
He was going to abandon her.
The agony hit her square in the gut.
She knew it was unfair. Knew that her actions had placed him in her situation, that she’d effectively abandoned him. But he hadn’t known. She did. She knew that if he walked away now, it was intentional.
JARVIS Page 2
