Mara
My tail slams against the dresser, hard enough to rattle the mirror. My lion paces beneath my skin, shoving me back and forth across the floor of our suite. I can’t stop moving. Can’t settle. The sealed door mocks me from across the room.
Something is wrong. Aaron’s face when I asked him why I can’t make babies—that flinch hadn’t been subtle. It had ripped through his whole shoulder, his scent souring with something acrid and sharp.
My lion, usually reaching for him, pressing against the boundaries of my skin to get closer to her mate, has gone eerily still. She’s pulling back. Retreating.
I bite down harder on my thumbnail until I taste copper.
A shimmer catches at the edge of my vision, pulling my attention.
The air splits open at the far side of the suite—a portal peeling reality apart, blue-gold light crackling around the edges.
The cafeteria rises through the middle of it, tables and chairs appearing in our room as if through a window.
Aaron stands in the center of the rift with a tray in each hand, his mother at his side. He leans down to press his mouth to her cheek.
Angie’s eyes lift to mine over his shoulder, and one corner of her mouth tips up into that smug grin I’ve come to know too well. She lifts her hand in a small wave, her fingers wiggling.
My stomach twists. In the full year I’ve been mated to her son, Angie has never once looked at me with anything but thinly veiled contempt. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it. Aaron has promised he would handle it more times than I can count, but nothing ever changes.
He steps through the portal and snaps his fingers behind him. The portal closes with a soft pop, the cafeteria vanishing.
“Okay.” I fold my arms across my chest, my claws pricking against my biceps. “What’s going on, Aaron?”
He crosses to the small table by the window and sets the trays down without looking at me. “How about you have dinner with me, baby.”
“You have me trapped in here.” My voice comes out low, my lion’s growl threading through it.
His shoulders drop. He turns toward me finally, his eyes sad—no, worse than sad. Haunted. He lifts one hand and waves it at the door behind me. Blue-gold light washes up the frame, across the top, down the other side, and dissolves with a soft sizzle.
“Mara, please don’t run.”
My arms uncross of their own accord. His scent hits me full force now—guilt sits on top of it thick enough that even a human would catch it. My lion goes sharp and alert inside me, hackles rising. I press one palm flat against my own stomach to hold myself steady, to keep from doubling over.
He pulls out one of the chairs at the table. “Please, Mara.”
I look at the door. My lion is pulling toward it, my feet already half-turned, and there is a sickening dread pooling low in my belly.
I sigh and walk to the table, each step heavier than the last.
Aaron reaches out as I sit down and brushes his fingers slow over my forearm. His touch is so careful, so tentative, that I have to close my eyes against the tenderness that doesn’t match the tension in the room.
“I can’t eat, Aaron.” The smell of the food makes my stomach roll.
He pulls his hand back, and I immediately miss the warmth.
“Why can’t I have babies?” I lift my eyes to his, refusing to blink. “You seem to know.”
He sighs long and slow. I watch his body fold in on itself in the chair across from me—shoulders curving inward, head dropping. A fear-scent hits my nostrils, sharper than anything I’ve ever caught from him before.
My ears twitch and my head cocks to the side automatically, tracking the source of his distress. “Aaron.”
He clears his throat, the sound wet. “I wanted you to be happy.”
My tail settles slow against the leg of the chair.
“Aaron.” My voice drops low.
“Our argument at the border,” he says, his voice coming out quiet, fragile. “You said you didn’t want to have babies on the community lands. I was afraid—“ His voice cracks. “I was afraid I was going to lose you if I didn’t give you everything you wanted.”
I glare at him, heat rising behind my eyes. “What did you do, Aaron?”
His eyes drop from mine and land on the tray between us. His throat works, the muscles contracting once and then freezing, and when his voice comes out it’s shaking.
“I’m scared to tell you.”
My lion cowers, shrinking against my ribs until I can barely feel her presence. My eyes shift to the door—suddenly it looks miles away.
“I put a spell on myself.”
My eyes snap back to him.
“No—not you, never on you, Mara baby.” His hands come up between us, palms out. Blue-gold sparks climb at his fingertips and die again, little flares of panic he can’t contain. I watch him press his hands together to kill whatever is trying to come out of them. “I shielded myself.”
The air scrapes down my throat. My fingers claw at my belly, pressing in as if I could find what should be growing there. My tail hits the floor with a thud, suddenly too heavy to hold up.
Another rejection.
“But you just told me—“
Aaron is already shaking, his scent spiking with a fear so potent it makes my eyes water. He takes one slow step toward me.
“Mara, I promise you, I never meant for my decision to hurt you.” He stops, then takes another step.
“You told me you didn’t want to raise a baby on the community lands.
I didn’t have a proper home for you. And you were going into heat.
” His breath catches. His hand comes up and hovers at my shoulder, not quite touching.
“I was afraid I was going to lose you. I thought I was doing the right thing by making us wait. We could have time to build our mate bond.”
“You’ve been lying to me.”
“What?” His face crumples. “No, no, baby, I wasn’t lying.”
Something snaps inside me.
My hand flies through the air before I can think.
My palm cracks against his cheek. The tears come up in my eyes all at once and I don’t try to stop them.
This time I’m not ashamed of slapping him.
His head jerks to the side with the hit and stays there, my handprint rising on his cheek.
When he turns his face back to me, his hand comes up to his cheek.
“I never wanted to hurt you, Mara,” he says, his voice coming out soft and wrecked, eyes glassy.
“I’m just pleasure to you.” The words hiss through my teeth, venom dripping from each one.
“Absolutely not, Mara.” His hand drops, the imprint of my fingers still visible.
“You don’t want a family with me,” I tell him, and my tail begins to sway behind me, cutting through the air with sharp, agitated movements. “You knew about the floor plans for our cabin in your pack, and you didn’t bother to look at them for six months. You didn’t even tell me they existed.”
He sucks in a breath, the sound sharp. “I’ll admit, Mara, I’ve been really stupid here—“
“Mmhmm.” I cock my head to the side.
He sucks in another breath, this one shaky.
“I have loved you,” I tell him, my voice steady. “Without a doubt. You asked me to trust you, and I said okay. My father told me he could not watch you destroy me.”
“Mara—“
I hold my hand up, and he stops mid-word, his mouth snapping shut.
“He wasn’t wrong. He told me to make you work for my heart. I didn’t. And look at what that got me.” The air around me feels too hot, too thick, pressing in on all sides. “I am humiliated.”
“I didn’t want to force you to raise a cub in the one place you said you didn’t want to—“
I shoot him a death glare and his mouth closes, words dying in his throat.
“My father says witches and warlocks are the most selfish supernaturals he has ever encountered. Worse than the vampires.”
His face creases, pain moving behind his eyes. He opens his mouth but I keep going, unable to stop the torrent now that it’s begun.
“But I never cared about any of that.” I shrug, the movement jerky. “Seems like I should have. I just loved you. And that’s all that mattered to me. I was willing to accept whatever came with you.”
I step closer to him and he sucks in a nervous breath.
“When we mated, I was willing to accept whatever came with us. If I fell pregnant, I would have attended classes with my cub. I would’ve worked out a schedule with Nala, or asked my parents, or your mother. I was willing.” My voice drops low. “Did you think I couldn’t handle it?”
“It wasn’t that,” he argues.
I look away from him, my gaze landing on the window. I shrug. “I keep trying with you.”
“I’ll fix this.” His voice comes fast, desperate. “I won’t do anything this stupid again.”
I look at him—the fear in his eyes, the trembling in his hands, the way his magic flickers around him like he’s losing control of it. “Yes, you will. This is who you are. And I love you above it all.”
I turn away and walk to my dresser.
“But I won’t let you destroy me.”
I pull the dresser drawer open, the wood scraping loudly. I walk to the closet, grab my luggage, and drag it out onto the floor with a thud that seems to shake the room.
“Wha—what are you doing?” His voice cracks on the question.
“I’m going back to my pride.” I flip the luggage open. “I can’t make you love me. I can’t keep begging you to build the mate bond with me. I’m nagging you for the basics.”
“Wait, hold on—“
He crosses the room fast, his footsteps heavy. I start pulling clothes out of the drawer and dropping them into the suitcase, not bothering to fold anything.
“So this is your response to my honesty. To leave me,” he says, his voice cracking open on the last word. “We spent a year building a mate bond.”
I keep packing, my movements mechanical.
“I spent a year building a mate bond,” I tell him, not looking up. “You spent a year enjoying fucking me. I’m a fetish to you.”
I hear his breath pull in behind me, sharp and pained.
Then I hear his magic, the low crackling snap of it filling the air with electricity, and my luggage slides out from under my hands and back into the closet as if yanked by invisible strings.
The air goes electric against the back of my neck, raising the fine hairs there.
I stand upright, going rigid.