Evander #4
“Don’t call me that,” she bites out, her voice shaking. “Don’t touch me. Don’t do… whatever this is.”
“Daisy—”
“How—I don’t even—just get out,” she demands.
I blink. That was not how I expected her to respond—not after how right she felt pressed against my chest.
To have her in my arms.
“We’re scent matches, Cassie,” I say, more controlled now, grounding myself in the only thing that still makes sense.
Once she understands this, everything will make sense. It’s my job as her alpha to protect her, to make sure she never wants for anything, never has to worry.
I’ll fix her life for her so all she has to do is be happy.
“You’re my mate. I can’t leave. We haven’t even—”
“You just insulted me,” she whispers, and genuine horror twists through me when tears fill her green orbs. “You came in here, flooding the room with your alpha scent, and told me how useless I am. That I should just quit and let you take care of me because I’m too useless to do my job.”
My frown deepens, but I don’t try to reach for her again. Even I’m not stupid enough to touch her right now.
“I don’t mean it negatively, daisy,” I say, softer now, trying to figure out where the fuck this went so wrong.
“I’ve just heard about what you’ve been putting yourself through to succeed here.
I thought if this job is too much for you, then, as your mate, you should let me take that weight off your shoulders.
I can make sure you’re looked after properly. I can fix—”
“Mr, sir, whatever—”
“Van,” I cut in quickly. “Evan, if you want. Anything but sir.”
She whines softly as she wipes at her eyes, distressed omega scent thickening painfully in the air.
I bite back a growl.
“Van, please,” she whispers, and hearing a nickname from her mouth almost undoes me. “Right now, I just want you to leave me alone.”
Wait. What the fuck?
The immediate rejection hits hard enough that my instincts go half-feral with panic.
“I was trying to help you,” I say, slower now, as I try to make her understand. “I’ve heard what’s been happening—what they’ve been doing to you.”
I growl, thinking of the way these alphas have taken advantage of my sweet mate. Imagining her forcing herself through every day, whilst they took pieces from her.
“I’m trying to make things easier for you. Keeping you away from these sick fucks and somewhere safe. You don’t need to—”
“I don’t need to what?” she asks, tears streaming down her face. “Work? Try? Prove I deserve my place here?”
I hesitate for half a second too long.
Fuck. Wrong move, Ev.
“There it is,” she whispers, and the genuine heartbreak in her words kills my soul. “You don’t think I belong here. That I’m not capable of handling it.”
“That’s not—”
“You did,” she says, shaking her head in shame. “You just dressed it up as helping. You walked in here and decided there was something wrong with me. That I was failing and needed saving.”
Silence crashes between us, and she steps further away from me. This time—I don’t try to stop her.
“You don’t get to decide I need fixing, Van,” she says, wiping at her eyes. “You don’t even know me yet.”
Somehow this hurts more than the yelling.
“That isn’t what I was trying to do, Cassie—”
“Leave.” She turns her back on me, and I hear her sniffles, feel the overwhelming distress in her scent like it’s a beacon only I can sense.
And I’m the one who caused it.
I don’t deserve to touch her right now.
Don’t deserve to fix it.
“I said leave, Evander!” she cries, and the pain in her voice finally gets me to move.
I step around her, careful not to touch. Her scent clings to me, wrapped tight, threaded through my lungs, coating my skin, sinking so deep it feels carved into my DNA.
“I’ll make this right,” I promise her quietly because I still believe that. More than anything, I have to believe it.
She looks over her shoulder, something exhausted in her expression.
Her laugh is hollow enough to hollow me out with it. She’s completely stripped of the warmth she should feel around me—her scent match.
Her mate. Her alpha.
“That,” she says, her voice breaking all over again, “is exactly the problem.”
I leave, bitterness curdling in my chest the further I get from her. Even once I’m out, her scent stays with me, every breath dragging it deeper into my lungs, a constant reminder that I fucked this up the second I opened my mouth.
I don’t stop walking until I’m out of the corridor—out of the fucking fashion department entirely—and only when I’m back in my office do I finally breathe.
That went badly, it did, but it’s fixable. Everything is.
Cassie’s no exception.
I refuse to lose my mate over one little mishandle. Not when she hasn’t even seen how good I could be to her yet.
Isaac is sitting at his desk when I walk in, but the moment the door shuts behind me, he stills in a way that has nothing to do with the spreadsheets open in front of him.
His fingers have stopped moving over the keys, and his entire posture goes oddly rigid before he pushes slowly to his feet.
I barely register it at first. My head is too loud, my skin too tight, my lungs still full of Cassie’s scent, my glands overheated from being around her.
It’s wrapped around me like I’ve already been scent-marked by her. It’s sunk into my shirt, my jacket, the fucking collar at my throat, and all I can fucking see is the way she looked at me.
Hurt. Furious. Devastated.
And I did that to her.
Isaac’s chair rolls back softly behind me.
I don’t look at him immediately. I shrug my jacket off instead, tossing it over the back of a spare chair, and only then do I glance up to find him staring at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
Not shock or amusement, which would be the usual reaction for him. My beta best friend typically enjoys any chance he can get to take the piss out of me.
His eyes look darker than normal, his face unreadable in that infuriating way observant betas like him have perfected when they’ve decided they know something you don’t.
His gaze drags over me once—slowly, from my throat to my hands and back again—and there’s something tense about him that immediately puts me on edge.
He’s analysing me, obviously, but I’m not in the mood for his cryptic analysis.
“What?” I snap, harsher than intended.
Isaac blinks once, as though I’ve forced this new mask onto his face. “Nothing.”
Fucking bullshit.
His voice is too rough for that one word to be believable, and when he shifts his weight, there’s something almost hesitant about it.
Not nervous exactly—Isaac doesn’t really do nervous—but cautious in a way that doesn’t suit him.
He keeps looking at me like I’m something he’s trying to solve.
Staring at my chest. My throat. The line of my jaw.
If I were in any mood to deal with it, I’d probably ask him what the fuck his problem is.
Instead, I decide I don’t care. Whatever expression he thinks he’s hiding, whatever judgement he’s gearing up to throw at me can fucking wait.
I’ve got more important things to deal with than Isaac Reid silently judging the worst first impression in human history.
I pull my phone from my pocket, already scrolling for Emme’s number.
When you have a complicated problem to fix, you don’t waste time sitting with it.
You get information.
And right now, as much as it pains me to admit it, Emmeline’s men are the closest thing I’ve got to experts on how the fuck to handle Cassie.
“Hey, Sis, what are you and your guys doing this weekend?” I ask, turning my back to Isaac as I stride over to the window, staring down at the city below.
Silence stretches behind me long enough that I know Isaac’s still watching.
Let him stare.
For once, this has nothing to do with him. Isaac will have to find something else to occupy himself because I fully intend to interrogate Emmeline’s mates—Sterling, most likely—the same way they’ve been grilling me on Emme for the last year.
I’m not guessing. Not when it comes to her. I won’t let myself fuck this up twice.
If Cassidy Hargrove thinks I’m the problem, then I’ll make damn sure she sees me as the solution.