17. Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Gage
I was brief with my tour of the cabin when we arrived. It was clear by her wide eyes and soft inhales that Abigail was impressed. Compared to living out of a car, it was luxurious.
Well, compared to the way most people lived, it was luxurious. The windows were identical to the ones at the office. Light poured into every room, contrasting with the dark wood floors and walls.
When we started building this place, Levi said his vision was a cozy log cabin with enough room for the both of us. I should have known my brother’s idea of cozy had more amenities than mine.
Two bedrooms became two beds plus two full baths, glass showers and all. The kitchen/living room combo took up most of the square footage with a massive river stone fireplace. Most of the walls were glass, and some of the trees were cleared to open up the view.
Spruce, hemlock, and stone outcroppings for miles. We were in the mountains, so the view wasn’t as grand as the one we got in Seattle. Instead, it felt daring. A breathtaking glance at how far we could drop if the house were six hundred feet further south.
It wasn’t the house I cared about when I came out here. This was the closest I had to home in Washington state. It wasn’t exactly like our territory back in Alaska, but it was the best I could get if I chose to stay with Levi.
Even turning onto the driveway had my wolf itching to break free.
My wolf was different than Levi and Mason. They never believed me, of course. Wolves were wolves to them. We were all shifters. We were all pack.
But Levi and Mason didn’t understand what it was like to have Wildling blood. Their families were in modern packs for generations. They became tame.
My father was a Wildling until the very end, even if he did choose to live in shifter suburbia with my mother.
It was the kind of sacrifice you made for your mate. That was what he always told me.
I cringed internally, thinking of how my father would judge the way I handled Abby. Rightfully so. I couldn’t stop picturing her huddled in Cargill’s kitchen, tears spilling out of the corners of her eyes.
I did that to her.
For some reason, I was glad to see her tears. In my eyes she was so organized and levelheaded and just…easy.
Everything about her and her life was easy.
Except it wasn’t at all. She’d been living out of her car for months, without complaining, without letting on even a sliver of her struggle. I underestimated her. Saw her as what I wanted her to be, not what she really was.
It was why I was so quick to accuse her of selling out Cargill. I wanted her to be guilty. It would give me an escape. An excuse. I understood now that kind of excuse didn’t exist. There was no escape.
And she wasn’t that kind of person. She didn’t have it in her.
So, who was Abby, really?
Abby who was getting comfortable in my room. Abby who I dragged out here only to leave her alone with nothing to do.
There’s a TV, hot water, and a bed. What more could she need?
For me to stop being such an asshole.
I would try, starting now—
Starting after I ditched her to let the wolf run for half the night.
For a heartbeat I almost invited her to join me. To revel in the night with me, to run under the stars. Humans didn’t care for those things though.
So, she was in there, alone, and I was out here, alone.
I stood outside for long minutes, naked, letting the cold air tickle my skin. Then I dropped to all fours, and I was running, fluid as I moved through jagged terrain and understory with ease. My nose drew me to the edge of my territory, noting the distinct scent of the young Wildling alpha. There were half a dozen other shifters, all wolves, that marked the line between my land and theirs clearly.
It was my instinct to do the same, marking every tree and shrub with my scent. Making it known that I was king here. That I would destroy anyone that stood in the way of what belonged to me.
My brother was right. I needed this. I was meant for this. The thrill of the wilderness whispered to me, urging me to discard my human life and stay like this always. To shed my human skin and live like my Wildling brothers, ruled by the moon, called by the hunt, beholden to nothing but their own base desires.
The wolf raised his head to the heavens, howling out his call for her . To come to him and unleash herself too. To glory in this freedom with him.
But he knew she wouldn’t heed his call because she wasn’t built like him. She wasn’t meant for this.
And if she wasn’t, neither was he. A wolf needed a pack first and foremost. He wasn’t designed to be alone. He had no desire for it. Deep down he craved closeness and touch. Comfort in the arms of his mate. What he needed more than the night was for her to draw the wildness from him and make him whole again.
It was wrong to stay like this while she waited for his return. Unmarked by him. Untethered to him in the intangible way a mate should be.
I was running again, blazing a fresh trail through the forest until the reflection of starlight gleamed off the windows of my home. She was there, separated only by a pane of glass, huddled under the blankets of my bed as she slept.
The wolf let out another howl, announcing himself to her. Letting her know that he was coming for her.
She understood, appearing before the glass with wide eyes. Her mouth fell open when she saw him emerge from the shadow of the trees, shoulders proud and head high as he eagerly presented himself for her.
I stumbled into the house in a state of delirium, slipping a pair of sweatpants over my now human legs as the last logical part of me remembered there was some etiquette to this. I didn’t want to scare her.
Abby still stood before the wall of windows, eyes swollen with sleep, face awestruck and confused. She whirled at the sound of the door crashing open, asking, “Did you see him?”
I stopped an arm’s length away from her, staring at her bare legs. She was wearing shorts so short I could barely see them, her upper body covered in an oversized sweatshirt. My sweatshirt.
I growled, closing the distance, and grabbing the fabric of the sweatshirt to thrust her backward. Her back hit the glass, and she exhaled audibly. I held her in place with one hand, using the other to gently brush her hair behind her ear and over her shoulder.
“I am him.”
“That was you?”
“Tell me you feel it too,” I begged.
She tilted her chin to the side, arching her neck to reveal the delicious curve of her throat. It was the second time she submitted to me. From a mate, submission was an invitation.
“Do you know what this means?” I asked, cupping her throat, and using my thumb to draw circles over the spot I desperately wanted to bite her.
Her eyes flicked to my face, excited and fearful. “Defeat.”
“ Submission ,” I corrected. “Acceptance.”
The excitement dimmed from her eyes, muddied with confusion. Of course, she didn’t know. She was only human. She didn’t know anything about bonds.
That was my fault. I kept it from her. Hid the bond away, buried this delicate little light that glowed between us.
But Abigail didn’t revere a mate bond the way a shifter would. She wouldn’t carry it into death.
And she’d already abandoned one life mate. What would stop her from leaving another once she got tired of me?
The bond . Because even if she didn’t feel it, I felt it. I revered it. I would treasure it in this life and the beyond, and if she wandered, I would draw her back home. If she lost her way, I would guide her.
Was I…accepting this? After so much fighting?
No—not yet.
Yes! My wolf insisted at the same time.
My head was dizzy with indecision as memories that proved and disproved my fears surfaced all at once. Abigail leaving a four-year relationship to work at Silver Bullet. Abigail patching the wall in my office, so I didn’t feel guilty over Mackenna. Abigail refusing to talk about her past. Abigail raising her voice in a room full of snarling shifters when she saw me coming apart.
Abigail, Abigail, Abigail.
Everything was Abigail. I was overloaded with her, overwhelmed by the sensation of her against me, the insatiable need for her. I shoved away from the window clutching my head and letting out a noise so animal she gasped.
Then the mattress was dipping beneath me. Gentle hands shifted me onto the soft surface, wordlessly grounding me as I spiraled into the pit that had been waiting to swallow me up since I watched that bullet make impact with Dallas’s head.
Since I walked in on my fiancé in our apartment.
Since I went home to Alaska and found that nothing had changed but me. I was broken. Unwell in a way that only feral shifters were. So weighed down by guilt and sorrow that I couldn’t catch my breath.
And then, on top of everything else, there was her. Her that had to appear right when I thought I might get myself back on track. Her that disrupted my routine, warmed me from my numbness.
Abby was like a taunt. A temptation I thought I could never, ever give in to.
But there was no escaping her. Even now her touch was strengthening the bond. Pulling us closer to the inevitable.
On our drive to the cabin, while Abby slept soundly in the passenger seat, I made a call I’d been dreading. One I put off for weeks because deep down, I already knew the answer to my question.
“I thought I would hear from you sooner, Gage.” Arlo, the oldest and most meddlesome of our pack elders answered on the first ring.
I instinctively wanted to snap at her. She and Levi were going behind my back, checking up on me as if I was on the verge of a mental breakdown.
I snorted. I was on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Pack elders deserved respect, even more than the alpha herself, so I swallowed my grumbled words and said without preamble, “I need to know about mate bonds. It’s for an investigation,” I was quick to add.
I could hear the smile in her voice. She was too old to buy that excuse. “What a peculiar line of research.”
“I know how they’re completed . But before that, can they be broken? Turned off?”
“I can’t see why anyone would want to do that.”
“If they did?” Arlo was quiet for a long time. I glanced at Abby, making sure she was still asleep as I reiterated. “It’s only a potential bond.”
“Legend says the bond exists from birth until the beyond. It is not a potential, but rather an inevitability.”
I waited a heartbeat before prodding, “Unless…?”
“Unless one of you—ahem, your clients, dies.”
“That’s it?” I nearly shouted, catching myself on the tail end of the last word and repeating in a hiss, “That’s the only way?”
“Have you asked your alpha about this?”
“Why would I?”
She hummed. “No reason at all.”
Note to self: Ask Levi about mate bonds as soon as I’m sure he won’t wring my neck for kidnapping Abby.
Realistically, I did kidnap her. If she refused to go to the cabin, I would have taken her with me, anyway. Levi ordered me to leave, and I wasn’t leaving without my mate.
That was a fun little cheat to alpha orders. They could never override the wellbeing of a mate bond. And since protecting Abigail was my responsibility as her mate, Levi literally couldn’t tell me to leave her alone.
At the same time, he was right to be worried about her safety around me. When I confronted her at Cargill’s house, I was furious. But the moment I got my hands on her, I went in an entirely different direction. It was a fucking miracle I didn’t mark her.
Now I was at the point where kidnapping her so that I didn’t have to spend the weekend away from her seemed like perfectly reasonable behavior. Clearly, I couldn’t keep pushing this. I needed Arlo’s help.
“When you’re as old as me you do hear a story or two.” Arlo considered. “The right kind of witch can sever a bond. It’s extremely painful, and the magic required is volatile. It’s just as likely to kill the subject as it is to kill the bond. One would have to be mated to a monster to take that kind of risk.”
Abigail might not be my ideal mate, but I certainly wouldn’t risk her life to avoid bonding to her. “What if they didn’t know they were mates? Could they just go about their lives and ignore the bond?”
She laughed loudly. “What kind of moron can’t figure out who their mate is?”
A human that knows next to nothing about shifter culture.
“Maybe they’re ignorant. What happens if they never complete the bond?”
“They always complete the bond. In my eighty-eight years I have never known a shifter to resist the bond. For a time, perhaps, but ultimately, the bond prevails. As I said, it is inevitable. Mate bonds were written by the Moon Mother when we were mere glimmers of her light, stars fragmented into pieces so that they may be reunited again in the physical realm.” Arlo sighed wistfully. “However it comes about, a mate bond is a blessing. A rare blessing these days. No one will love and know you as a mate will. I am speaking from experience, you remember.”
Arlo had been an elder my entire life. I’d almost forgotten that she had children of her own and a mate long dead. Her generation was lucky, she told me once, because finding your mate was often as easy as stepping outside your front door.
All shifters lived like Wildlings then. Unless they were extremely bold and thought it was worth the risk of exposure to venture into the human world and play at being one. There had to be human mates before shifters came out to the world, but I hadn’t heard of them. Maybe it was an adaptation, a work around for shifters scattered all over the world to continue their genes.
Arlo left me with a final warning, only adding to my growing fear about what was happening to me. “Avoiding the bond for too long can be dangerous.”
“I doubt that.” I know it’s true because I’m becoming a raging, horny psychopath around Abby.
“Don’t underestimate the power it has over you. The longer you ignore it, the more intense the need to complete it becomes. You’ve heard of a mating frenzy, haven’t you?”
“That only happens to shifters, not humans.”
“Human, huh? Now it makes sense.” She laughed. “Your mother didn’t give you a thorough enough talk about the birds and the bees. It’s not our biology that causes that, it’s the bond. Human or not, the bond will find a way to force your hand. Both of you. Best to be on the same page before that happens.”
How could Abigail and I ever be on the same page?
I couldn’t trust a human.
But if I was going to expose Cargill, I had to.
And if I could trust her with that…
Could I trust her with our bond?
My final thought before drifting into a heavy, long overdue sleep, was, yes.