Chapter 15 - Tessa
I don’t sleep well in his bed, but that isn’t anything new. It’s just odd and makes me feel even more out of place.
I haven’t slept well since this started, and having him next to me while my head and my heart are at odds doesn’t help. The bed smells like him, the room is organized but most certainly his, and I feel like the one component that shouldn’t be there.
It felt more like a reflex to argue about sleeping in the same room as him when we first returned to the house, but Hunter wouldn’t hear it. He acknowledged that it would be strange at first, but for both of our sakes, he said that sharing a bed is the only option.
I know why that is, but I want to pretend like I don’t.
With the bond fully in place after a severe lapse in judgment, he’s hanging by a precarious thread, as all freshly mated males do.
They can’t help the instinct to keep their mate safe and out of reach from anyone else who might try to contest their claim, and those volatile reactions become even worse.
Hunter has been tenser than usual, and I feel every moment of it, but I let it be.
Before, the pull between us was something I could pass off as irrational or not worth my time. It was just something I could intellectualize and keep at arm’s length. Now it’s locked into place, and there’s no denying its existence.
It has me in an even tougher position, since I can choose to be angry about the decisions he made and validate my own resistance as much as I want. But I can’t think myself out of what my body knows now.
I spent so long clinging to the crystal clear fact that I didn’t need anyone, and I certainly didn’t need the complexities that came with being someone’s mate, but all that careful rationalizing means nothing now. I can’t outrun it when he’s a part of me after everything.
We let the bond take root, but that doesn’t mean anything else has changed. We both admitted that much.
The question I keep returning to is whether he’s different. If he’s genuinely, truly different from the alpha-to-be I used to know.
I’m not completely blind to the evidence.
The man who came back from whatever he did in the military isn’t identical to the boy who stood with his friends and looked through me like he knew exactly what I was made of, and didn’t care for it.
He’s more deliberate now and more willing to say the uncomfortable parts plainly rather than leaving them to silence.
He maintained the heat in the cabin even though he didn’t need to, made coffee, and sat next to me in the dark.
He let me tell him straight to his face that he was handling everything poorly, and he didn’t even deny it.
Even if these seem like small things, they’re far from it.
Regardless, Hunter still looked at a situation, made a decision, and implemented it without my input. He still stood in front of the pack and declared me as something I never wanted to be. He handed me an ultimatum and left me no room to protest.
He regrets how he did it, but I haven’t heard him say he regrets the action itself.
Part of me regrets giving in to him, but the other remains traitorously unclear. More accurately, the other part liked it far more than it should have.
I need air.
That’s the thought that gets me out of bed and into clothes after nine.
I used to walk in the mornings before any of this, when my life was small and mine. I’d take the trail that cuts through the old pines, and I’d be gone for hours sometimes. No pack members stopped to check in, and I wasn’t forced into any conversations I didn’t want to have.
It was just me, the trees, the wildlife, and however I wanted to spend my time.
Even if it’s not quite the same, I can still have a piece of that freedom.
So I slip out the front door before I can think about it too hard, and before I can even bother to see if Hunter was waiting around for me.
The morning is grey and cold, but it doesn’t deter pack members from moving along the main roads and down walking trails that the humans wouldn’t think twice about.
A group of younger wolves spars deeper into the woods out of sight, and a cluster of women near the cafe talk with the ease of people who have known each other for decades.
It’s all normal, but it hasn’t been for me in a long time. I put my head down and take the side path toward the eastern trail.
I barely reach the trees when I feel eyes on me, and something about that sensation sours the solace I’m searching for.
Even if they don’t say anything, I know what those looks mean.
They want to know why I’m here, they’re pretending they don’t notice me, or they’re wondering if they should say something.
In a way, those glances are a little different from what they used to be. Rather than just being looked through while they tried so hard to avoid me like I was a walking plague, there’s a strange kind of recalculation in those looks, more like they’re trying to figure me out.
There isn’t warmth in it, yet it doesn’t feel hostile either. They’re just as unsure about all of this as I am, and nobody has an answer. Still, it makes me feel like an outsider all over again.
A few elders sit on a bench together beneath the trees, and when I pass, they don’t say anything, but their eyes follow me as long as they physically can. The feeling of it sits heavily between my shoulder blades, and as uncomfortable as it is, I keep walking.
By the time I reach the point where the main path splits off, I’ve collected too many of those looks to keep track of, along with two conversations that stopped when I came within earshot and resumed when I passed.
As much as I want to say I’m used to this and have handled worse, my chest still feels just as tight, and everything in me is screaming to get away. To return to my cabin and force everything out of my mind.
Eventually, I’m far enough out where the old invisibility tries to surround me in comfort again, and where pack politics can’t reach me.
Neither can whispers about what Tessa Collins’ parents did, nor who Tessa is sleeping next to now.
The pines smell the same, and the ground feels the same as it used to.
It’s the same kind of quiet, but the bond pulls, tethering me to reality.
It pulls me back just enough to make its presence obvious. Like a stitch in my side, it reminds me of where he is, where the house is, and the distance growing as I walk.
I wasn’t connected to anything before. I could walk out here and be a thing that existed in almost complete freedom. Now there’s a thread, and I can feel Hunter on the other end of it, and it’s almost like a soft question comes down that invisible channel.
Are you alright? Where are you?
Whether it’s intentional or not, I push it away. I try so hard to drown it out despite the agonizing fact that Hunter is taking up far too much room in my head.
When I can’t take it anymore, I stop on the path between two old pines and stand there long enough to just breathe.
He did this. In trying to make me visible and far too significant, he has taken away the invisibility that was the only way I could keep myself going. Now, I’m too exposed at a time when I want privacy more than ever.
I’d rather be ignored, and as much as it hurts to admit, it was what felt safest.
Being invisible wasn’t good, and it never was sustainable, but even that slow damage I was accruing felt like mine, and I knew how to do it. I don’t know how to do this, and I don’t know how I’ll ever feel normal again.
***
When I reach the house, it’s quiet as I enter, feeling the exhausting weight of far too much attention than I’m used to. It makes my bones heavier than usual, leaving me sluggish and so worn down that it takes everything in me to keep moving.
I sense Hunter in the kitchen, and I feel his eyes on me next. Somehow, it makes everything else that much worse, even if he’s supposed to be my other half. While a piece of me wants to relax in his presence, it feels too much like a trap now.
“Tessa,” he says, catching me before I can get far.
Stopping at the sound of my name, I glance over at him, but I don’t cut the distance between us.
His dark brows furrow as he looks me over, and a glimmer of concern settles in his eyes. “Are you okay?”
That question feels like salt to my wounds, since he should know better. He should know what this arrangement is doing to me.
“I’m fine.”
My tone sounds more lifeless than I mean for it to, and that makes the crease between his eyes worse.
“You don’t have to pretend. You can tell me.”
A quiet huff escapes me, but I just shake my head, lacking the energy to put up any real fight. Everything has drained it out of me, even to the point where my inner wolf stirs in his presence, but doesn’t do more than that.
Hunter’s worried look lingers, but when I keep moving and head upstairs, he doesn’t say anything else. He likely knows he won’t get anywhere right now, and he’d be correct in assuming that.
So emotionally exhausted to the point of it manifesting physically, I muster what energy I can to get myself up the steps, and I close myself into the spare bedroom.
I was supposed to have the woods, but now, it feels like I don’t have anything at all.