Fat Kidnapped Mate (Silvercreek Lottery Mates #6)

Prologue - Skylar

Ten Years Ago

The moon is full tonight, and I’m choosing to believe that means something.

I’ve been standing at the old oak for twenty minutes, picking bark off the trunk and flicking it into the grass.

Bryan asked me to meet him here, at the same spot we’ve been sneaking off to for almost two years now.

But there was something off in his voice, like he was holding something back that might break loose if he said too many words.

Meet me tonight. That was all he gave me before disappearing into the crowd at the pack hall.

So, here I am. Waiting and trying not to read too much into the fact that he couldn’t even look at me when he said it.

A mosquito whines past my ear, and I swat at it.

It’s a warm night for late spring, and the air is saturated with the smell of pine needles and the distant sweetness of honeysuckle growing wild along the territory border.

Normally, I love meeting Bryan out here.

It’s private and quiet, and the rest of the world seems to fall away until it’s just the two of us sitting under this massive oak, talking about everything and nothing.

But tonight, the quiet feels almost suffocating.

I pull at a hangnail on my thumb, a nervous habit I’ve never managed to break. My mother used to smack my hand away from my mouth when I was a kid, telling me I’d give myself an infection. She’s been gone eight years now, and I still can’t stop doing it when I’m anxious.

Three months ago, Cheslem wolves killed Bryan’s entire family.

I was with him when it happened. We’d been down at Miller’s pond, sitting on the old dock with our feet dangling over the water while the sun sank below the tree line.

He was trying to teach me to skip stones, and every time mine sank immediately with a pathetic plop, he would laugh.

I retaliated by splashing him until his shirt was soaked through.

He grabbed my wrist and threatened to throw me in.

I dared him to try. It was normal stuff.

Good stuff. The kind of evening that makes you think life will always feel exactly this easy.

Then the howls started.

Not hunting calls or greetings between pack members running patrol. These were alarm calls.

Bryan went rigid beside me, and before I could ask what was happening, he was on his feet and running.

I called on my wolf and chased after him.

My lungs burned as I tried to keep pace with his longer stride.

Branches whipped at my face. I tripped twice on roots I couldn’t see in the fading daylight.

By the time we reached his family’s cabin on the eastern border, the screaming had stopped.

His father was on the living room floor. I remember the angle of his arm, thrown out like he was reaching for something he never got to touch. His mother made it to the stairwell but no farther. Her body was crumpled at the base like she was trying to get to the second story to reach…

Mira. Bryan’s little sister. At fourteen, she used to follow me around, asking questions about healing herbs, begging me to let her help at the medical center even though she was still too young to work there officially.

I let her organize supply closets sometimes, and she’d act like I’d given her the keys to the kingdom.

Her bedroom window was open when we found her. She never made it through it.

Bryan didn’t make a sound when he saw them. Didn’t cry, didn’t scream, didn’t fall to his knees the way I probably would have. He just stopped moving. Stopped breathing, it seemed like. Something behind his eyes went dark, and that light hasn’t come back on since.

I tried to touch him that night. I put my hand on his arm and pulled him toward me, offering whatever comfort my body could provide. He flinched away like I burned him. That was the first time.

It wasn’t the last.

I’ve tried to be patient with him in the months since.

The mate bond we’ve both been dancing around for two years makes patience difficult.

My wolf wants to go to him constantly, to press close and offer comfort whether he wants it or not.

Every time I see him across the pack hall or pass him on the main road, my whole body pulls toward him like he’s got his own gravity.

We’ve never said the words out loud or officially acknowledged what we both know is there.

We’ve been taking our time, building toward something neither of us wanted to rush.

Late-night conversations under this oak, stolen glances during pack meetings, the brush of his fingers against mine when he handed me a cup of coffee.

Small things. We wanted the kind of courtship that happens in inches rather than miles.

I thought we had time. All the time in the world, stretching out ahead of us like an endless road.

Now I’m terrified we’ve run out.

A branch cracks somewhere in the trees, and my head snaps toward the sound. Footsteps, quiet and careful, but definitely coming closer. My heart kicks against my ribs, and I straighten from my slouch against the oak.

Bryan steps out of the shadows, and my heart does that stupid thing it always does when I see him.

He’s tall. That was the first thing I noticed about him years ago, back when we were teenagers and he shot up six inches in one summer while I stayed stubbornly close to the ground.

Tall and broad through the shoulders, with midnight black hair that flops across his forehead and a face that would make sculptors weep with envy.

He’s got a strong nose, a full mouth, and a small scar just below his left eyebrow from a training accident he’s never fully explained.

His jaw is covered in stubble that’s gone past fashionable and into neglected, and the circles under his eyes look like bruises painted on by someone with a cruel sense of humor.

He’s wearing the same clothes I saw him in earlier—dark jeans and a gray Henley with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Nothing special. Nothing different from any other day. But something about the way he’s holding himself makes my stomach clench.

He’s still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Even now, when grief has carved hollows into his cheeks and put shadows in his gray eyes that weren’t there before. Even now, when he’s looking at me like I’m a stranger, he’s trying to place.

Those eyes won’t meet mine. He stops at the edge of the clearing, a good ten feet away, and stares at a spot somewhere over my left shoulder.

I step away from the oak and head toward him. “You had me worried. You sounded strange earlier.”

Nothing. Not even a hint of response.

“Bryan?” I take another step. “What’s going on?”

“I’m leaving.”

The words hit the air between us and just settle there. I heard them. I know I heard them. But my brain refuses to string them together into anything that makes sense.

“What?”

“I’m leaving Silvercreek.” His voice is dead, like he’s reading words off a page. “Tonight.”

“Tonight?” The word comes out too loud and bounces off the trees, startling a bird somewhere in the branches above. “What do you mean, tonight? Where are you going?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

I close the distance between us before I can think better of it, grabbing his arm just above the elbow. His muscles are rigid under my palm, tense as a wire about to snap. “Of course it matters! You can’t just leave. What about the pack? What about—”

Us. The word sticks in my throat like something I’m choking on.

“I came to say goodbye.” He still won’t look at me. His gaze stays fixed on that spot over my shoulder like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. “That’s all.”

“That’s all? Bryan, look at me.”

For a long moment, I think he won’t. He works his jaw, and his throat moves when he swallows, but his eyes stay stubbornly averted. I want to grab his face and force him to see me, but I’m afraid of what I might find when he does.

Then his chin drops, and his eyes meet mine, and I almost wish they hadn’t.

I’ve looked into those gray eyes a hundred times.

A thousand. I’ve seen them bright with laughter when I said something that caught him off guard, soft with affection during those quiet moments under this tree, and heated with something that made my stomach flip and my skin feel too tight.

I’ve never seen them like this. Empty. Like someone pulled a shade down behind them and turned out all the lights.

“Whatever you think exists between us,” he says, “it doesn’t matter.”

The words feel like ice water poured straight down my spine, and I suck in a breath.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

I reach for his face with my free hand, and he jerks his head back before I can make contact. The rejection stings worse than a slap would have. “I know you’re hurting, Bryan. I know the last three months have been hell. But running away isn’t going to fix anything.”

“I’m not running away.”

“Then what would you call it?”

“Doing what needs to be done.” He pulls his arm free from my grip and takes a step backward, widening the gap between us. “The pack, the territory, all of it—it’s not my problem anymore.”

“Not your—” I shake my head, certain I must be hearing him wrong.

This is Bryan. The same Bryan who organized search parties when old Mrs. Wiley’s dog went missing last year.

The same Bryan who spent weeks rebuilding the Cortez family’s fence after a storm took it down, then refused any payment because “that’s what a pack does.

” “This is your home. These are your people.”

“Not anymore.”

“Bryan, please.” I hate how desperate I sound. Hate the way my voice cracks on his name, exposing exactly how much power he has over me. “Just talk to me. Whatever’s going on, whatever you’re planning, we can figure it out together. You don’t have to—”

“I didn’t come here to argue,” he snaps, interrupting me. “I came to tell you not to wait for me. I’m not coming back, Skylar. Not ever.”

“That’s not… You can’t just decide that.” I follow him, refusing to let him increase the distance. “What about the bond? I know you feel it too. I know you do.”

“It doesn’t matter what I feel. You need to forget about me. Find someone else. Someone who can actually give you a future.”

“I don’t want someone else.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

The cruelty in his words stops me in my tracks. Bryan has never spoken to me like this. Not once, not even when we were kids, and he barely knew I existed beyond being that girl who always had her nose in a book about medicinal plants. He’s always been gentle with me.

But this person standing in front of me isn’t anything like the boy who brought me wildflowers after patrol and once walked five miles in the rain to bring me soup when I was sick.

“You don’t mean that,” I claim again, but my voice has lost its conviction.

“I mean every word.” He takes a final step backward, and now the distance between us feels like miles instead of feet. “Goodbye, Skylar. Don’t come looking for me.”

And then he turns and walks into the trees.

I should go after him. I should grab him and shake him and demand a real explanation, not this cold detachment that doesn’t match anything I know about who he is. My wolf is howling inside my chest, begging me to chase our mate before he disappears forever.

But I don’t move.

Maybe it’s pride. Maybe it’s shock. Maybe it’s the horrible suspicion that nothing I say will make a difference, that he made this decision before he ever asked me to meet him tonight, and I never had a chance of changing his mind.

Bryan’s silhouette fades into the shadows. The sound of his footsteps grows fainter, swallowed by the forest until all I can hear is my own breathing and the distant call of an owl.

I stand there until my legs start to shake. Then I sit down in the grass and pull my knees to my chest, pressing my forehead against them.

The mate bond throbs like an open wound, reaching out toward someone who just told me to forget he exists.

I should cry. That’s what people do when their hearts get ripped out and handed back to them in pieces, isn’t it? But the tears won’t come. There’s just this vacant feeling in my chest, like someone carved out everything important and left the rest of me behind to figure out how to keep breathing.

Find someone else, he said. Someone who can actually give you a future.

Screw that. Screw him. If Bryan Dinac wants to throw away everything we’ve been building for two years, that’s his choice. But he doesn’t get to tell me how to live my life. He doesn’t get to walk away and still have a say in what I do next.

I climb to my feet and brush the grass and dirt off my jeans with hands that won’t stop trembling. The walk back to town feels endless, with every step seeming heavier than the last. My wolf whines and scratches at the inside of my ribs, desperate to turn around, to find him, to fix this somehow.

But I ignore her. And I’ll keep ignoring her for as long as it takes.

Bryan wants me to move on? Fine. I’ll move on so hard he’ll feel it from wherever he’s running to. I’ll build a life so good he’ll choke on his regret if he ever bothers to look back.

That’s what I tell myself, anyway. That’s the story I repeat with every step, trying to make myself believe it.

But the bond keeps pulsing in my chest, keeps calling out to someone who isn’t there anymore. Someone who chose to leave.

Something tells me this isn’t the kind of wound that heals clean.