Book 3 Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

"So, you wanna tell me why you ran?"

I don't take my eyes from the view outside my window. "Not really."

"That wasn't a question."

Well, it sounded like one.

I consider arguing back, or lying, and open my mouth.

"The truth."

I turn to find his eyes on me instead of on the road. "What makes you think I'd tell you anything else?" I ask in a meek voice.

He raises an eyebrow and turns his gaze back to the mostly empty highway.

The roads have been so quiet since I said my tearful goodbyes to my pack-my former pack-in Hardin and climbed into Jeremy's black truck.

We're making good time, like really good time. Which means I have less time to prepare for my return to Dawley.

Since it doesn't look like we're going to be stopping at a motel anytime soon, and I doubt Jeremy's going to let me dodge too many of his questions, I give him the truth.

Well… I decide to tell him a more palatable version of it. Something which isn't going to start a fight.

"I didn't like Chicago."

"So, you wanted to return to your cabin in the woods, is that it?"

I narrow my eyes at him. "Who told you…?"

"I pay attention," he replies, giving nothing away.

If that's what he wants to believe, who am I to convince him otherwise, so I shrug. "Sure."

As my gaze returns to the dark landscape outside my window, I can't help but wonder why I was so desperate to return to a place that over the years has left me feeling more and more stifled.

It could be Dayne and Talis, and wanting to return to my pack, but I know that's not it.

Even now, it makes no sense to me. Not when I ran to Chicago to get away from Hardin because it felt like I couldn't breathe anymore.

"But that's not it," Jeremy says, proving to be some kind of mind reader since he doesn't even pose his words as a question.

I let out a heavy sigh. "You're a guy I met in a grungy bar. I think I can be forgiven for not wanting to tell you my life story."

"If that's all I was, I guess," he says. "But since I'm not…"

The entitlement I hear in his voice has me turning from the Rockies, a dark shape set far in the distance, to face him. "I hope you're not about to insist that as my mate, you now have rights over me," I say, keeping my voice mild.

A brief smile touches his lips, though he keeps his eyes on the road. "You're my mate. That means I have rights over you no one else does. It means…" He turns to eye me. "…that you're mine."

"You bit me without my permission," I tell him, letting him hear the sharpness of my anger. "I did not want any of this. All I was looking for was a night of sex with a stranger that led nowhere. And instead, I got you. I got a mate. A mate I didn't want."

"So, that's why you ran then?"

"Yes," I say, struggling to understand how he doesn't get it. "When instead I should have rejected you first."

His jaw locks. "I wouldn't try that if I were you."

I arch an eyebrow. "Why? Will you wreck the car to stop me?"

"I'll do whatever it takes."

I stare at his profile, not knowing if he's joking or if he's being serious.

Since I'm in no hurry to burn in a fireball at the side of the road, I let him have this round. I turn away and go back to staring out of the window. "Well, no need to drive us into a tree. I won't do it now."

"Which means you intend to do it later?" His words are as mild as mine, but there's a simmering heat beneath the surface. He's pissed. More than pissed. And he's driving.

"If you don't let me go, then yes."

"I note you didn't say any of this back in Hardin, back when you had the protection of your former alpha."

"I can take care of myself. I don't need his protection." My words come out more sharply than I intended, and I mentally shout at myself to rein myself in.

I need to remain calm, cool, focused. It's going to be the only way to deal with someone like Jeremy.

"So, you were looking for a reason to leave then?"

Briefly, I close my eyes. The man is dangerous. He is too observant by far, and he doesn't even need to be looking in my face to read me.

I try for casual since cool and collected seems to be out of touch. At least for the moment. "Look. None of that has anything to do with you. All I wanted was a night of sex, nothing permanent."

"I see," he says. "So, any guy would've done as long as you got your itch scratched, is that it?"

There's something in his tone that warns me to be wary, even though his face is devoid of expression.

Then I remember I didn't want any of this, and if Jeremy's feelings get hurt because he pushed something on me I didn't want, then that's on him, not me.

"Well, if I'm being honest, yes. Actually. Any guy would have been fine."

I wait for the inevitable explosion. But when he merely nods as if we're talking about the weather, I can't help but feel a touch… disappointed with his reaction.

"But then you bit me," I say when he doesn't respond.

His hands tighten around the wheel. "You were going to leave."

"I left anyway. Couldn't you just… I don't know, say you wanted me to stay?"

Jeremy snorts. "Would you have stayed?"

I don't have to think about it for a second. "No. No, I wouldn't. But that still doesn't give you the right to tie us together when you knew full well I was only looking for a fling. I was very clear about that in the bar."

"I'm an alpha, Savannah. When we see what we want, we take it."

For a second, I'm distracted because the way he says my name is so sexy that I'm reminded of him growling it in my ear when he climaxed inside me.

I make a sound of frustration at my inability to control my hormones, and because Jeremy still isn't getting it. "I'm a person. Not a thing. You can't just-"

"Then you shouldn't have tangled with an alpha."

I open my mouth to complain.

"Your former alpha, Dayne." He shoots me a side look. "I see he's mated. From our first meeting, I get he's possessive of her and would've acted that same way even if she hadn't been pregnant. Are you telling me he didn't go after her hard once he knew she was his?"

I start to deny it.

The thing is, I can't because I know he's right. I want to ask why he's so convinced I'm his, but I don't. I just sit there, stewing in my frustration and my anger.

Once Dayne returned from the meeting of alphas that he attended in place of Owen, he became obsessed with finding the girl he saw crying there. Talis. He focused all his efforts, all his energy on tracking her down because she was his.

When I asked him how he knew, he said he just did. Not because Talis was his fated mate, but something inside him refused to let him walk away from her.

Fated mates are rare. So rare that I don't know anyone who's found there's. But it's a soul mate thing. Dayne's parents once told us our heart, our soul would just know when we'd met the other half of us.

Since I can't remember the last time I peered into my heart, I wouldn't know I'd even met mine. The only thing I have in my heart is the pain of everything I've lost. I don't need to be reminded of it, so I don't turn my gaze inward. Not anymore.

But fated mates are an impossible dream few shifters can ever hope of having.

"How did you even track me down?" I ask instead.

On the third morning of mine and Jeremy's planned one-night stand, I slipped out early and headed straight to the airport. I struggle to understand how he tracked me down to a tiny town in Colorado, which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

Finding Hardin, to put it mildly, is not easy if you've never been there before.

"I was motivated, and I'm ruthless about going after what I want."

"Well, it doesn't matter," I reply, brushing his words aside.

"Because you've planned something out?"

I remember him saying almost the same words back in Hardin. "What makes you think I have?"

"Maybe because the last time you told me it doesn't matter and brushed me aside like that, it was after I'd bitten you, and the next morning I found you gone."

Right. Well. He might have a point then.

Clearly, I need to rethink what I say around him. "If you're afraid some shifter won't want you because I've rejected you, then I have no problem with you rejecting me. You can do it in public if you want, that way no one will think it was me throwing you away because I didn't want you."

There's a long pause before Jeremy speaks, "So, you'd prefer it if I threw you away instead? In public? Humiliated you? Ensured that every male shifter would look at you and wonder what it was you'd done that your mate had publicly rejected you, and likely ensured you remained alone forever?"

I'm not prepared for the sharp sting of his words. Because yes, while I accepted it on a mental level, to hear him tell it back to me… hurts. A lot.

So, I shrug like it doesn't bother me. "Yes. It's not like I've ever been interested in settling down, anyway. I'll be fine."

"You don't strike me as the type of girl happy to live a life of no-strings sex, and commitment-less short-term flings. And trust me, I know. I've met more than a few."

Unexpected jealousy flares at the thought of all the women who've come before me, but like the pain of his rejecting me, I shrug as if it doesn't matter. "It's my life."

"Right. So, you want me to reject you and then you, what…?"

"Get on with the rest of my life." Since I have no idea what that looks like, I figure the less I say, the better.

"And relationship-wise? What if you get lonely?"

"There are guys in bars all over. I doubt I'd have to look very hard to find a guy interested in no-strings sex."

As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I realize I shouldn't have said it.

It's hard to know what it is about Jeremy that changes. It isn't his expression, or that he says anything. I just get the sense I've made a big mistake.

The silence that follows my words is the longest so far, and I'm struggling to figure out what to say when he nods again.

"I see. Anything else you want to get off your chest?" he asks, his voice mild.

I gaze at him warily. "Not really."

He nods again and focuses on the road ahead. "You sure about that?"

"Crystal."

"So, we just sit here for the next however many hours in silence then?"

Although I met Jeremy in a dingy bar, I'm getting the sense he's the high-maintenance sort. "It's not my job to entertain you. Nothing is stopping you from turning the radio on, you know?" I snap.

Then I lean away from him because I've let him provoke me into losing my temper, and alphas have never taken too kindly to someone snapping at them.

I still have the recent memory of Talis ready to kill me when I snapped at her in Hardin about charging after Dayne to rescue him from Glynn Merrick. And this alpha, Jeremy Stone, doesn't seem the sort to let something like that go.

Jeremy stretches a hand in my direction, making me flinch since I'm expecting him to lash out at me.

But after a pause, he moves his hand. Not to hurt me, but to switch on the radio.

Slowly, he returns his hand to the steering wheel.

I examine his profile a little while longer, then when nothing happens, I turn my face to the window as classic rock fills the tense silence in the car.