Chapter 7 - Tessa
The house is far quieter than I expected it to be.
Standing at the window for the fourth time in an hour, I watch the tree line with the hope that it might bring me some clarity. The late afternoon light comes through in beautiful beams of warm light, and I hate that I notice it at all.
There shouldn’t be anything beautiful about this situation. I was taken like something he misplaced and finally remembered to retrieve, and now he won’t let me go.
My reflection stares back at me in the glass, pale and visibly miserable, and I look away before I have to confront it for too long.
I’m angry, which should be the only thing I feel, but underneath the anger is something humiliating, squirming around in my chest, and it feels too much like relief for my comfort. I resent it completely.
When the door opens, I don’t turn around.
Still, I hear the weight of Hunter’s boots on the floor, and the silence that follows him like a shadow.
Hunter moves the way predators do, like every step is deliberate and calculated.
Even when he isn’t trying, he takes up the air in a room.
I’ve been aware of that since I was a teenager and too stupid to understand why it disturbed me so much.
I keep my eyes on the tree line and silently hope he moves on quickly.
“You never left the room.”
“I didn’t think I needed to.”
As if I had a choice, I think to myself without airing it out directly.
Biting the inside of my cheek instead, I keep my shoulders squared and my spine straight.
I try everything I can to not fold inward like my body always does when Hunter enters a room.
That reflex has been conditioned into me over years of silences that stretched just long enough to mean I wasn’t needed or wanted.
My body learned to make itself smaller before my mind even registered the threat.
I hate it, and I hate the fact that it’s still there, more like evidence of something I was never brave enough to stop.
Instead, I make myself turn around.
Hunter is standing just inside the doorway with his arms loose at his sides, watching me with that expression I’ve never been able to read.
His blue eyes are more intense than ever, and his jaw is sharper than I remember from when we were young.
He has the kind of face that has been through things and came back without softening.
He doesn’t move toward the kitchen or the stairs like I expect him to. He doesn’t move at all, and just looks at me, steady and certain.
Feeling the irritating pressure of being under his gaze, I lift my chin and refuse to be the one who looks away first.
Finally, he breaks the silence and murmurs, “You’re not going anywhere.”
He says it like it’s already been decided, and he’s simply passing the message along to me.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Tessa.”
“I heard something.” My voice comes out steadier than I expect, but I feel far from it underneath. “I’m asking you to explain it because you’re not making any sense.”
He crosses his arms and takes a breath, looking shockingly hesitant. “You’re staying here with me… as my mate.”
The room stays exactly the way it is, but the air inside changes, becoming pressurized and thin, as if you were experiencing a sudden change in altitude.
I stare at him, and he stares right back, but I’m the one at a complete loss for words. I can’t even register them in my mind for a long, almost painfully awkward moment.
“Is this a joke?” I finally say, not recognizing my own voice at first.
“No, it isn’t.”
“You…” I begin in a mumble before I force myself to stop and try again. “Are you serious right now?”
“I’m not joking. Not about something like this.”
The terrible thing about all of this is that I believe him.
My stomach drops all the way through the floor, and he’s standing there like an immovable force without a single flicker of amusement in his face, and no trace of cruelty. He’s completely, devastatingly serious.
For too long, I can’t speak. I just stand in shock at it, feeling utter disbelief wash over me in waves. Confusion comes in right after, followed by the dawning of something that would almost be wonder if it weren’t immediately overtaken by everything I endured throughout my life.
Anger rises so fast it surprises even me.
“No.”
Hunter’s expression drops, as if he expected me to actually consider it, for whatever reason. “Tessa—”
“No,” I repeat sharply, taking a step toward him. I watch the subtle shift in his expression as that flicker of surprise betrays him, given how I moved forward instead of back. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to just decide for me and have that be the end of it. That’s not how this works.”
“I understand that this might be too much—”
“You don’t understand anything.” My voice wavers, and I despise the way emotion bleeds in where I don’t want it to be. “Do you know what my life has looked like in this pack? The pack that you lead now, and the one you set the tone for?”
I’m close enough now that I have to look up to hold his gaze, and I do, refusing not to.
“I was nothing for years. I ate alone, trained alone, and I sat in the back of every meeting and every gathering like I was furniture someone forgot to move until I had had enough. People looked through me; they talked around me, and you were right there. Every time. Sometimes, you even started it.”
Something close to regret moves across his face, and the usual sharpness in his expression drops. “I know.”
“You know. That’s all you have to say.”
“I was wrong to let it go on as long as it did, and I’m not going to argue that.”
“Then what are you going to argue? Why would I ever choose to bind myself to someone who looked the other way while I was treated like I was less than?” I fire back at him, feeling as my throat threatens to close, but I push through it.
“You don’t get to decide you want whatever this is.
You don’t get to come in here after everything and tell me this is how it’s going to be.
I have never had a choice about anything in my life in this pack, and I am not doing this. ”
He’s quiet for a long moment, letting every word settle in. Finally, he uncrosses his arms, and a resolve I wasn’t expecting from him sinks into his frame.
“I know what I owe you, and I intend to spend a long time paying it back. But I need you to hear me… what happened last night, with Hayes,” he begins, only to stop and clench his jaw. “That can’t happen again. I won’t let it happen again.”
“So now you suddenly want to protect me. How generous.”
“It’s about more than that, and you know it,” Hunter says, voice dropping lower. Hearing that tone from him does something complicated to my heart that I refuse to examine. “You’ve felt it, just like I have.”
Sensing that he’s about to cross into territory neither of us needs right now, I lock up.
“Don’t.”
“Tessa, I’m serious.”
I take a small step back, shaking my head to deflect. “Don’t use that against me.”
“I’m not using it against you. I’m asking you to stop pretending it isn’t real.”
“It’s not real!”
He goes quiet then, almost to a painful degree. Regardless of how suffocating the space between us becomes, I keep myself in it with my chin up and my heart hammering against my ribs.
“I was hoping that you’d come to this on your own terms like I’m trying to,” Hunter murmurs, expression a bit more grave now. “But it seems you won’t.”
The way he says it makes my skin feel like ice, and I narrow my eyes at him. “What does that mean?”
He meets my eyes, and his remain steady while he takes a slow breath.
“It means that you’re going to be my mate, and I’m claiming you in front of the others,” he says, but it lacks any real affection, since genuine warmth is impossible right now.
“I don’t want to force this on you, Tessa, but I won’t leave you unprotected and unclaimed in a world that just tried to take you. ”
The cold front penetrates beneath my skin and spreads throughout my body, forcing me to freeze up entirely.
Staring at him in complete disbelief, I barely manage to speak.
“You wouldn’t.”
Hunter says nothing, and that feels like the worst answer he could give me.
He’s entirely serious, and regardless of what I think or feel, he plans to follow through with the most absurd idea I’ve ever heard.
Tessa, the pack outcast and the daughter of apparent traitors, was claimed by the new alpha. Nobody will believe it, least of all me.