Chapter 6 - Hunter
The way Tessa flinches shakes something loose in me that I didn’t anticipate. No part of me could’ve prepared for that look on her face.
Everything in me was yelling for dominance one moment, and the next, Tessa’s shoulders curled inward, her chin dropped, and she visibly shrank like she wanted to disappear into the hardwood floor beneath her feet.
Any other words I have die in my throat as the echo of my voice returns to me in my mind.
I’ve seen men cower in the field, and I’ve watched hardened soldiers break under interrogation, yet the quiet, instinctive recoil from a woman who has clearly endured too much fucking guts me.
“Tessa,” I say, catching how rough my voice comes out. Trying again, I force my jaw to unclench. “What was that?”
Despite her previous fire, she doesn’t meet my eyes this time.
Instead, her arms wrap around herself now, and she grips her elbows like she’s holding herself together by sheer will alone.
That awful stillness I remember from when we were kids settles over her once more, just like it always did when she’d go quiet and small to make herself invisible.
All because I made being invisible necessary for her, all under the guise of protecting myself and keeping those instincts in check.
“You just yelled at me,” she says with such a flat tone it feels more like she’s reading from a script. “People tend to react when someone twice their size gets in their face and screams at them.”
“That wasn’t…” I trail off and run a hand through my hair, well aware that’s exactly what just happened. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”
The huffed, disbelieving sound that escapes her isn’t a laugh at all. It comes out far too brittle, and more like a deflection that makes my inner wolf whine in the back of my skull. “Right, of course not. Because only something physical counts.”
The sarcasm feels loaded with barbs, and while it would be easy to rise to the bait, I don’t. I can’t now, not when I’ve just triggered this concerning response from her.
Opening my mouth to argue, nothing comes out. I don’t know what she wants me to say.
I want to tell her that the past isn’t a reflection of me now, and that I’m not the boy who tormented her and made her feel less than all because of something she had no part in.
I made her life a living hell because she was an easy target, and because of all the things I couldn’t bring myself to face.
The thought of being drawn to someone like her terrified me, and I was too much of a coward to handle it properly.
I should tell her that part of me is gone, and that I’ve left those reflexes behind.
Except that version of me isn’t entirely gone.
He’s still standing right here in this room with us, watching the evidence of his cruelty written in the way she holds her body, and how she angles herself toward the door.
It’s so clear in the way her heart pounds so hard that I can hear it from several steps away.
I made her afraid of me, and more than that, it happened like something that has long been built into her.
Guilt and self-loathing twist in my chest immediately. It’s ugly and raw, and feels too shameful for me to be comfortable with.
This is all because of me.
“Tessa… look at me.”
She doesn’t. Instead, her gaze stays fixed somewhere just past my shoulder, and even that seems painful.
I can smell the fear on her now as it’s layered beneath her scent that’s been driving me out of my goddamn mind since the moment I smelled it again.
She’s afraid of me, and while I can’t blame her for it, I still don’t like it.
That primal, possessive part of me stirs, and the beast inside me doesn’t like knowing the one who should be our mate is frightened. He wants to hunt down whatever made her this way and tear it apart with his teeth, except the thing that did this to her was me.
Mate…
I have no right to let that word bang around in my head still, but it’s coming from somewhere so deeply repressed in me that I can’t hold it back anymore.
It’s the same pull I felt as a kid, and the same one I tried to conceal ever since. But I’m not a kid anymore, and while the unknown surrounding what that means still taunts me, it doesn’t seem as impossible to believe anymore.
“I shouldn’t have raised my voice,” I manage, but the words feel clumsy in my mouth, and almost foreign.
I can’t remember the last time I apologized to anyone, or genuinely felt the need to. As easy as it would be to brush it off, this matters in a way I don’t fully understand yet, and I can’t just leave it.
Tessa’s eyes finally lift to mine, somewhat wide and still filled with that careful blankness she wears to protect herself. She nods once, and that’s all she gives me.
There’s no outright acceptance or forgiveness, just a flat acknowledgment that I’d spoken.
There’s so much more I want to say, like all the ways I can explain that I didn’t mean to scare her, and that the anger wasn’t even directed at her so much as at Hayes, the situation, at the delicate early growth of a bond that has the capacity to bloom into something bigger, regardless of what we think about it.
Still, the words won’t form as they get stuck somewhere in my throat and caught behind years of conditioning that taught me to shove everything down.
To protect myself, I need to bury it deep and never show weakness.
I lived by that lesson during the years I was away, when showing emotion could get you killed or compromise a mission. But looking at Tessa now, forced to watch the careful way she holds herself away from me, I’m starting to wonder if everything I learned was wrong.
“I need a minute,” I tell her, but if anything, it feels more like an automatic response.
Then I’m moving, pushing past her toward the door, while my inner wolf protests. Leaving her here and now feels like cutting a limb off, but I can’t stay in this room. I can’t think with her scent wrapping around me, or with the memory of her flinch replaying in my mind.
I need air, space, and the chance to figure out what the hell is happening to me.
The deck faces toward the stretch of coastline that comes up from Coldreach, and I plant my hands on the railing and stare out at it, letting the salty breeze clear my head.
It doesn’t help, even if I wish it would.
I can still feel Tessa, even if we haven’t initiated a true bond yet. Regardless, every part of me is aware of her, just like it always was before, and that fact made me feel insane when I was young.
I hadn’t wanted her then, at least, not in the way a mate should want their other half.
I wasn’t old enough to even know what to do with it, but it sat heavily in my chest anyway, like the deepest form of longing that could plague someone at that age.
As I got older, it only got worse, which made me push her away more.
Even if a mate bond is the one thing every wolf wants, our situation was too complicated.
In all honesty, the thought of giving in to it scared the living shit out of me.
I didn’t know how to reconcile the fact that my inner wolf was guiding me to her, the one girl I was supposed to hate on principle.
But now, I can’t stop thinking about the way she smelled when I pulled her out of Hayes’ reach.
The rain mixed with something sweeter underneath made me want to bury my face in the curve of her neck and never let go.
I can’t forget the fire in her eyes when she argued with me, the sharp edge of her tongue, and the way she stood her ground even though she was terrified.
She’s still strong, regardless of what I did to her, and after years of being treated like dirt by our pack. Even if she has been mostly surviving on her own, there’s something so appealing in that strength.
And I want her.
The realization hits me like a freight train, and I grip the railing tighter as my knuckles go white.
I want her, and not just because the bond is pulling at me, though it is.
Not just because my wolf has decided she’s ours to protect.
I want her because she’s the first person in years who hasn’t backed down from me, and who hasn’t let me intimidate her into submission.
She looked me dead in the eye and called me out on my bullshit.
I want her, and I’m terrified of what that means.
Wanting her means facing what I did to her, rather than just acknowledging it happened and moving on.
I have to sit with the knowledge that I broke something in her that might never be fixed again.
The flinch, the fear, and the careful distance she keeps between us are all my fault, and if I want to make things better, then I can’t shy away from it.
She didn’t deserve the way I treated her, or anyone else, for that matter.
She was just a girl… an omega with no family, no support, and no one to protect her. I ruined everything because I could.
Shame rolls through me, and I bow my head beneath the pressure of it, squeezing my eyes shut. For the first time, I let myself feel it. Instead of shoving it down where it can’t touch me, I force myself to endure the discomfort of that truth.
I was a monster, and maybe I still am, but standing out here on this deck, with Tessa’s fear still ringing in my ears and the bond burning in my chest, I know one thing for certain:
I have to fix this.
My wolf stirs with the same desire to claim her. To make the official promise that I won’t let a soul harm her again, even if I don’t deserve that right.
Despite everything, I can’t let her go… I don’t want to let her go.
I want to earn back the trust I destroyed, and to see her look at me without that flicker of wariness in her eyes. I want to hear her laugh, and to learn who she’s become in the years since I left, what she loves, what she fears, and what gets her out of bed in the morning.
I want to know her, and I want her to know me—the real me this time.
It’s going to take time and effort, but for the first time in years, I’m willing to try.
Pushing off from the railing, I turn back toward the house while my resolve hardens with every step.
I need to apologize again, but properly this time, and without fumbling.
I’ll make her understand that things are different now, and that I’m different now. I’m not a frightened child. I’m a man who has grown and now knows how to face the impossible. If it really is fate that’s been pushing me in her direction all along, then so be it. I’ll stare it down directly.
And maybe, if I’m very lucky and work harder than I’ve ever worked for anything before, maybe she’ll believe me someday.