“You’re an idiot.” Skylar slammed the drawer to her desk. Opened another one. “What’s wrong with you?”

Brayden leaned against the window, his feet on her heater. “What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. I forgot.” She sat up and blew her hair out of her eyes.

“I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“You thought.” She rolled her eyes. “Men. Men shouldn’t think.”

“It’s my job as her fated mate to make sure she’s taken care of, right?”

Skylar clasped her hands in front of her. “So, this girl, the one you love above all others, is telling you she wants to be with you instead of taking a job. And you break up with her. You just walk right out.”

“Well... Yeah, after she told me to go.”

“How does that even make sense to you?”

Brayden stood up and turned to watch two young bears playing rough and tumble in the back yard behind the lodge. He recognized them as his younger brothers Jaxson and Colton.

He hoped Skylar hadn’t been telling them tales of fated mates. Their lives would be complicated soon enough without the expectation that they had only one love in life who would fulfill them.

In the two weeks since he’d walked out on Taylor, Brayden had barely eaten and had hardly slept at all. He hadn’t even shaved.

“You’re going to have to go find her.” Skylar said behind him. “But you can’t go looking like that.”

“Looking like what?”

“Like something a cub dragged up.”

Just think what I must feel like. “I feel ten times that bad.”

“See.” Skylar joined him at the window. “I rest my case. You screwed up. You deserted your fated mate. Do you know what happens to a man who deserts his fated mate?”

“No.”

“I don’t either. Except that you’ve destined yourself to a life of misery. Remember Uncle Bert? Unlike Riley and Tyler who took ten years to get together, Uncle Bert never found his fated mate. He withered away.”

“He had a decent life.”

“Maybe he had a decent life, but he was a lonely man. Having a good career doesn’t make a person have a good life. Love. Love is what gives a person a good life.”

Brayden turned and looked into Skylar’s eyes.

She kept talking. “Are you hearing what I’m saying? You’ve destined yourself and Taylor to a life of misery.”

“She’ll find someone else.”

“She may. She may even get married and have some kids. But there’ll always be something missing from her life.”

“Where do you get all this stuff?”

“I spend time listening to our elders. Since you don’t do that, you can at least listen to me.”

Between listening to his sister and listening to his heart, Brayden didn’t stand a chance.

He might say his heart was in the right place, but the truth was, he’d been afraid.

He’d been afraid of making a mistake. Cooper had made a mistake. Cooper had thought he’d found his fated mate, but he’d been wrong. And Cooper was a doctor. If Cooper had screwed up and married the wrong girl, who was to say Brayden was making the right choice?

If it turned out Taylor wasn’t his mate and she gave up her dream job, he would never forgive himself. It would be unforgivable. Even as her mate, he couldn’t ask her to give up something like that.