3

Having to tell Mack I needed help to use the bathroom was one of the most humiliating things I’ve ever had to do.

For hours, I hoped the urge would go away. I thought if I didn’t think about it, then magically, I would no longer need to go.

After hour two, I realized I’m not one of those people who can ignore the urge to go for a long time. I just can’t.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to shout down the stairs. Mack came in to see if I wanted lunch since I’d slept right from the semi accident the previous day through breakfast that morning.

While it was a relief to find out five or more days hadn’t passed without my knowing it, I was busy working up the courage to tell him I needed to use the bathroom because I didn’t think I could get up on my own.

As I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I watch the deep blush spilling over my cheeks and down my neck in remembered embarrassment.

At first, I refused Mack’s offer of carrying me, telling him I just needed someone to lean on. He didn’t fight me, just helped me rise from the bed, but the second I put any pressure on my leg, the pain had my eyes filling with tears as I sucked in a sharp breath.

“Please, let me carry you.” There was no demand in his voice, no look in his eyes that told me he thought I was being stupid for refusing his help. Just a soft offer to ease my pain, and one I could deny if I wanted.

It was the very opposite of how an alpha would have spoken to me.

If it’d been Shane or my father, I doubt they’d have cared enough to offer to carry me. My father would’ve told me to stop being stupid and do what I was told as he stalked away and left his beta to deal with me. Shane would’ve just ignored my pain, pretending he didn’t see me. I doubt he’d have even gotten anyone to help me, either.

So, at Mack’s gentle offer, I blinked back my tears and agreed.

He didn’t rush me. He asked me if I was ready, and when I nodded that I was, he curved an arm around my waist, slid the other under my knees, and then he lifted.

Other than the brief agonizing pain that came from bending my leg, there was nothing. He lifted me so easily, so smoothly, and didn’t jar me at all as he carried me out of the bedroom and down a cream carpeted hallway to a spotless bathroom opposite.

Although Mack isn’t built like the big guy—the alpha, Bennett, I felt the coiled strength in his ropy lean muscles and I knew he was every bit as strong as Bennett was. He could even have been stronger.

It’d felt nice being in his arms. And, of course, being closer to him meant I could inhale more of his scent. That or run a hand through his tousled dark brown hair, which looked soft and inviting. So, even though I wanted to press closer for a longer sniff or a touch, I didn’t.

Having an attraction to a shifter who saved me from certain death is one thing, but acting on it is another thing entirely. I can’t imagine any guy would appreciate a pregnant girl who still carries the scent of her mate burrowing close.

You’d have wound up on the floor before you knew what’d happened. So don’t mistake kindness with something else, Aerin. Just concentrate on getting well and getting out of town.

Even though it’s been a week since I was last with Shane, Mack couldn’t have failed to pick up his scent on me. A week is nothing to a shifter’s nose.

I scrubbed my body in a motel shower for what felt like hours after I’d left Shane. I think that’s all I did in the first motel I stopped at. Just focused on getting clean and washing away my past.

It was a waste of time. I knew it, but that didn’t stop me from trying, anyway.

The moment he bit me and we joined as mates, his scent and mine created a new scent. A soul-deep connection. As long as I’m still mated to him, any shifter who comes within sniffing distance would know, just as Bennett and Mack did, that I have a mate.

I shake my head and refocus on my reflection, knowing it serves no purpose to dwell on the past. I got away, that’s what matters. That Shane and his father haven’t tracked me down is a good sign. I just have to keep moving and never let up my guard, not for a moment.

After Mack left me just inside the bathroom, I used the toilet and hopped over to the sink so I could wash my face and brush my teeth. I know a shower is impossible with my inability to stand on one leg for too long, and the thought of me going anywhere near a slippery surface seems like a terrible idea.

So, I tug my shirt over my head and leave it on top of the sink, trying not to think about Mack undressing me after the accident. I grab a washcloth in a small wicker hamper filled with clean towels that Mack left close beside the sink. Although I’d love a shower or a long soak in a bath, I settle for a sponge down instead.

With one hand clamped around the sink as I balance on one leg, I do the best I can to clean as much of my body as I can, doubting I’m any cleaner several minutes later. I certainly don’t feel like I am.

Before I pull the t-shirt back over my head, I wipe the steam from the mirror and stare at the bite on my neck.

It healed a long time ago, minutes after Shane bit me at our mating ceremony, and as always, when I see it, my thoughts turn to Bree and Shane.

How could he bite someone when he already had a mate? Surely his wolf would’ve reacted in some way because not only is the human side of me Shane’s mate, so is my wolf side. It’s what makes us mates. We’re fated to be together. Both halves of us.

I force my eyes away from the bite and think of Shane. I think of all the ways he made me think I didn’t matter, that I was worthless and in the way. That I was weak.

But he was the weak one.

He was the one who couldn’t say no to his father. If I had known what he would be like—what my life would be like, I would’ve forced myself to ignore the mate bond. But I wouldn’t have had to if Shane had told his father—told me—that Bree was what he wanted and not me.

“I reject you, Shane Dacre,” I murmur so softly that I can barely hear myself, much as I’ve done every single day since I ran away from the Dacre pack. “I reject you, Shane Dacre.”

They say saying things three times gives it power. So I lean closer to the mirror, staring right into my eyes, pretending it’s not my wide blue-gray eyes I see but Shane’s bright blue. “I reject you, Shane Dacre.”

And then I wait, but of course, nothing changes.

Nothing will. The mate bond is still there, and it will always be there until I say it to his face, or he says it to mine. But whispering it under my breath is one thing. To meet an alpha’s gaze and reject him in front of a pack… well, that’s another thing entirely.

“You okay in there?”

Mack’s voice has me jerking my head to the door, which, other than my choosing Winter Lake as a hiding place, proves to be one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made so far.

My fingers skid off the edge of the sink and no matter how desperately I try to cling to it, it’s no use. I go down with a heavy thud and a strangled gasp of pain.

I lay on the cool bathroom tiles, one hand reaching for my leg to check it’s still there because it felt like it snapped off. The level of agony is unreal.

I don’t hear the door open, but Mack is suddenly in the room beside me, his cool hand on my brow, asking if I’m okay, but I’m in too much pain to reply and I can barely see him because my eyes are filled with tears.

If my leg hurts when he lifts me to carry me back to the bedroom, I don’t feel it. I’m still suffering from the agony of my collision with cold tile.

It isn’t until several minutes after I’m back under the sheets with two cushions on either side of my leg that I realize I didn’t put my shirt back on. That it’s still, if my memory is correct, at the back of the sink where I left it.

My eyes snap open, and I stare at the door. “Oh God, he saw me naked.”

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t completely naked because I was and still am in my panties, but that’s still a whole lot more skin than I wanted him to see. And he covered me with a sheet, which means he didn’t want to see any more of me either.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t see much.”

His quiet voice has me spinning my head to my other side, cutting off a cry of pain when my leg twinges, and there on the floor beside the bookcase, with a book draped over a raised denim covered knee, is Mack.

I should’ve known he was already in the room, but with his scent everywhere, I wasn’t paying attention.

“Uh, thanks?”

“No worries.”

After closing the book, he shoves it back in the bookcase before rising smoothly to his feet. I’m desperate to know what he was reading, but I’m also desperate for him to leave so I don’t have to look into his face and know he saw me naked, stretched out on the floor like a beached whale.

I know I’m not fat since I’m built like most shifters, lean and athletic, but still…

At the door, just before he leaves, he turns and regards me steadily for a long moment. “My priority was making sure you were okay.”

Relief surges through me.

“And are you okay?” he asks when I don’t respond.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

“Good,” he murmurs, and then he pulls the door open, keeping his back to me. “But what little I saw, I liked. A lot. Now, get some rest and I’ll bring up some lunch.”

Then he steps out and closes the door behind him.

For an eternity, I do nothing but stare.

Why does the thought of him liking me make me feel warm all over?

And why for the first time since I ran from Shane, is there a smile stretching across my face as I settle back in bed?