Chapter Three

If Antoine wasn’t in the Northwest Territories in prison, Austin would personally find him and kill him with his bare hands.

His brother had ruined his life. He’d taken away a piece of his mate’s innocence. Austin had never confronted his brother or told his parents. He’d simply carried that hell with him for fifteen years. He hadn’t even told Isaiah until a few months ago when Antoine tried to kidnap Heather and bind to her.

Obviously, he wasn’t right in the head. He wasn’t just a jerk. He was certifiable and evil.

Nuria was shivering so hard her teeth chattered.

On instinct, Austin crawled toward her slowly, rose onto his feet, and lifted her into his embrace, blanket and all. He carried her to the couch, shoved everything onto the floor, and lowered them onto the ridiculously old cushions.

The springs squeaked beneath him. He held her tight, her body shaking in his embrace. Maybe she would prefer any other being in the world console her right then, but no one else was around, and he couldn’t stop himself.

He brushed her curls from her face, but they fell right back into place. He used the corner of the blanket to wipe her tears, but new ones fell in their place too. She shivered for so long he thought she might need a sedative. Finally, she relaxed, her body going limp in his embrace.

When she squirmed, he leaned to one side and lowered them onto the couch, his back against the cushions, her back pressed against his front. He kept both arms wrapped around her and the bulky blanket and said nothing. It took over an hour, but she finally fell asleep.

Austin didn’t sleep. He did nothing but run through the events from that horrifying day in light of all the new information and mentally beat the hell out of himself a little harder with each passing rerun.

Nuria flinched as she awoke hours later. She stretched but was trapped by his arms and the blanket. He felt her momentary panic. And then she breathed in and exhaled slowly. “You’re still here.”

“Yes.” He tentatively reached up to brush a lock of hair off her face again. When did she stop pulling it back?

“You should go.”

He froze, not wanting to hear that from her. “Nuria…”

“No, really. I need to think, process everything. I can’t do that with you in my space.”

“I get that but…”

She shook her head under his chin. “Austin, I’m not kidding. I need space,” she continued as she shoved his arms out of her way, lifted to sitting, and then stood.

The moment she severed contact, his heart fell. “We should talk.”

“We will. Another day. Not now. Now I need to be alone.”

Another day? Not today? When?

“Let me have some time, Austin. You’ll only alienate me if you continue to ignore my wishes. It’s not winning you any brownie points. I need to think.”

He shoved himself to sitting, running a hand through his hair. His arm tingled from her lying on it for so many hours. He shook it out and rubbed his temples. She wanted to be alone. She deserved that. He needed to give her space.

He didn’t have to like it, but he would do it.

He pushed himself to standing and sighed, glancing around her messy living room filled with half-full boxes and piles of memorabilia.

Finally, he met her gaze. “You’ll call me later? Can I leave my number?”

She nodded and turned around, heading for the kitchen.

He followed, not sure what her intentions were. Did she want him to leave through the back?

And then she grabbed a pen and paper, scribbled something on it, and handed it to him. “My phone is probably dead somewhere in this house. I’ll have to charge it.”

“Okay.” What did she mean by that? Was it her way of saying don’t bother to call for a while?

He stepped closer, cupped her face, and experienced unbelievable elation when she tipped her cheek into his touch.

He stroked her bottom lip with his thumb, watching the fullness of it as she parted her lips. He wanted to kiss those lips. But that wasn’t on the agenda for today. “I’ll call you this afternoon,” he said to impress upon her how serious he was. “Do you want to grab dinner?”

She shook her head and stepped out of his reach, folding her arms across her chest and shivering. “I’m not ready for that, Austin. I don’t know if I will ever be.”

He nodded slowly. Oh, what a fucked-up mess this was. She was clearly still meant to be his, but the chasm between them was so wide, it was possible he would never be able to breach it.

He had fucked up. Royally. Could she forgive him? Would he in her shoes?

Hell, he wasn’t sure he could forgive himself.

He swallowed, took a deep breath, and headed for the front door. “I’ll still contact you this afternoon. I’ll text or call.”

She didn’t respond, which made him nervous. Would she answer?

At the door, she held the frame while he turned around on her porch. “Bye, Austin.” She didn’t meet his gaze or say another word. Instead, she simply shut the door, and that was it.

When he climbed into his truck and started the engine, his hands were shaking. He rubbed them together as if warding off the cold, but he knew this had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the woman who had just dismissed him.

He had never considered the possibility that she would be unclaimed. After so many years, why was she still single? Same reason he was?

He drove home on autopilot, not noticing a thing between her childhood home and the one he’d built for himself several years ago. It was less than a mile from his parents’, just outside the city limits of Silvertip.

When he pulled into his garage and shut off the engine, he glanced at the clock. It was early. Six thirty. Half of him wanted to go to bed and never get back up. The other half told him it would be wiser to go to work and keep as busy as possible.

The second idea seemed better, so he climbed from his truck and forced himself to head into the house and straight to the master bathroom. A shower was a good start.

As soon as the water was warm enough, he stepped inside, closed his eyes, and let the stream run over his face and body. In the last fifteen years, he had replayed that fateful day thousands of times in his head. He had never visualized it the way she described.

She didn’t have to be mad at him. He was mad enough at himself that he should leave her be and let her move on with her life. The rift between them was way too wide. Insurmountable. The damage was extensive.

She deserved better. She deserved to find a mate who would never let her down. One who had never let her down. She deserved the world.

He had brought her nothing but heartache and sorrow, even if he didn’t realize he’d done so. The guilt weighed heavily.

He leaned his head against the tile, a bit harder than necessary, and groaned.

Nuria Orson. She was hotter than ever. Filled out where the younger version of her had still been mostly a girl. She had the most amazing hair—thick brown curls that begged him to run his fingers through the locks. Deep, green eyes. God, he used to get lost in them. And he still did. Her breasts were much fuller than he remembered. Her body had an hour-glass shape that made him groan again just thinking about it.

And she was not his. She was both his and not his at the same time.

How was this going to work?

He didn’t know anyone who met their mate and then didn’t bind to her at some point. It was unheard of. Obviously, after the last fifteen years, he knew it could be done, but those years had not been pleasant.

Was she as unsettled for a decade and a half as him? Had she dated? How many men had she been with? So many unanswered questions he may never have responses to. She owed him nothing. He’d left her in a barn being molested by his brother and walked away as if he were the one being wronged.

Nope. He needed to let her go. She was obviously reluctant anyway. And she deserved better.

With a ball tightening in the pit of his stomach in contrast to his resolve, he shoved off the wall and grabbed the soap. He needed to talk to someone. Advice. His parents. Isaiah. Someone.

»»•««

Austin. He was in her home. All night. His arms held her tight while she slept. His scent permeated the space to make her nipples pebble and her pussy moisten as she awoke. It unnerved her that she had that reaction to him.

She was furious with him. He left her in a barn with his sick brother and ran off without giving her the benefit of the doubt? It was unimaginable.

On the flip side, she knew in her rational mind that she’d chased him off for weeks. She hadn’t known he thought she was seeing someone else, let alone his brother, but she had pushed him away. It wasn’t a surprise that she’d succeeded.

She should have told him everything. It seemed so stupid now. Why the hell had she tried to protect his brother? Was she insane?

It didn’t matter that she was still angry with him or that she shouldn’t yearn for him. The binding didn’t care about that. They were mates. It overruled everything.

Many grizzlies went their entire lives and never found their mates. Many met, fell in love, and bound to each other without feeling that intense sensation they belonged together.

It didn’t matter. Once a couple completed the binding, they were locked together for life anyway. The only thing needed to turn a couple into more than a dating pair was for one of them to sink their teeth into the skin of the other and let the serum from their saliva mix with the other’s bloodstream.

It was a process as old as time. Most mates preferred the sweet spot at the base of the neck. Some did it to each other at the same time. Sometimes the male did it. Less often the female. Consent wasn’t even needed. Though claiming a mate without his or her permission was one of the worst crimes their species could commit. The punishment was severe, and it didn’t happen often.

The only worse offense was changing a human, which happened even less frequently. Well, mostly never.

The kicker was that Nuria had been isolated from her entire species for most of the time she’d been gone. Her parents, thinking they were being helpful, whisked her from Silvertip hours after her attack.

She was their only child, and they were devastated to know that another member of the community had preyed on their daughter. Perhaps another set of parents would have handled things differently, but not Mabel and Rawling Orson. Nuria had begged them not to tell anyone. She was mortified and embarrassed to have been in the position in the first place.

As an adult, she understood better now that she had not been at fault for anything, but as a teenager, she had felt somehow responsible. Most importantly, she never wanted Austin to find out. After hours of inconsolable tears and pleading, her parents had agreed not to tell anyone, but only if they could remove her from the town. The idea of Nuria being repeatedly forced to face her attacker made Mabel uncomfortable.

So they left. In the night. They went all the way to Quebec and moved into the city, where she assimilated slowly with humans.

In all those years, she and her parents shifted infrequently. Only when they were on a vacation outside the city. It wasn’t the ideal existence for shifters, but her mother was adamant that Nuria would do better if she didn’t have to face anyone from the shifter community.

Mabel Orson thought she could chase away the nightmares Nuria had nearly every night if she kept her away from their own species.

What her mother didn’t realize was that humans were at least as bad, if not worse, than shifters. Their behavior was atrocious. The high school she attended was all human, and she found herself lonely and confused most of the time.

Human boys tended to take advantage of girls far more often than grizzly shifters. They seemed to feed off of the number of conquests they managed and how big the girl’s breasts were.

She never told her mother the horror she observed and heard in the hallways. The woman thought humans behaved better than what Nuria had experienced, and Nuria let her. Especially when her mother got sick a few years later.

Was it Fate that her mother needed her so badly at the same time Nuria finished high school?

Maybe. She’d always thought so. Instead of attending university and moving away from her parents, she’d stayed at home to take care of her mom while her dad worked his ass off in the human community.

It was a hard life. Not the sort of existence most grizzly shifters lived. Normally they lived in communities with others like themselves. People who understood. People who helped each other through rough times. People who were drawn to each other and cared.

When Mabel got sick, they didn’t know what was wrong with her. The doctors were baffled. They had to travel long distances to see a doctor in the shifter community. In the end, there was no hope. Nuria spent the next few years making sure her mother was comfortable and not in pain.

When she died, Nuria was devastated. She didn’t have the same relationship with her father, who had spent the last several years working. And the man was despondent after losing his mate. He never bounced back.

So, Nuria switched from mothering her mother to mothering her father.

At thirty, she was exhausted, broke, and had no education past high school. When her father died, the only job she’d ever had was babysitting and tutoring the children of several neighbors in her apartment complex. She’d gotten a part-time position at a local daycare and worked long hours to barely scrape by for the last five years.

After the first year, she’d moved into a smaller apartment, but the rent was still too high, she never had any extras, and she was lonely.

She’d put off returning to Silvertip for two reasons. One, the family who rented her childhood home was still in it until recently. She needed the money she got from them every month to help pay her bills. And two, Antoine Tarben was still living in the area.

When she got notice a month ago from the renters on the heels of Antoine’s arrest, Nuria knew it was time.

She sank onto the couch, glancing at the mountain of work still needing to be done, and leaned her head back to stare at the ceiling. She intended to wrap things up at the house in a few days, put it on the market, and sell it as fast as possible.

The proceeds would have to get her by until she could make it on her own. She had no interest in returning to Quebec. She’d sold everything and moved out. She did want to return to a community of shifters somewhere.

But not in Alberta, and certainly not in Silvertip.

After the events of the last eighteen hours, she knew she couldn’t stay. It would be too hard. She needed to disappear without a trace.

The idea of meeting Austin later, or even taking his call, was too much.

The pull toward him was too powerful. He was her mate. It was supposed to be powerful. But what happened when mates couldn’t reconcile their differences?

She didn’t know, but she was about to find out.