The Bed

Chapter 1

"Don't look at me like that," Kate said, pulling the sheet up to her chin. "It's not like he was ever gonna mate with a wolf who can't shift."

I was still holding two coffees. One for me, one for him. The cardboard was burning my palm and I couldn't make my fingers let go.

Karl didn't sit up. Didn't cover himself. He propped one arm behind his head like he'd been waiting on me to walk in and get it over with.

"You're early," he said.

"You're in my bed."

"Technically it's my bed." He yawned. "You just sleep in it."

Kate laughed. Actually laughed. She reached over and took the coffee out of my right hand — the one I'd bought for him, two sugars, the way he liked it — and sipped it.

"Mm. Still hot."

Something in my chest pulled. Hard. The bond. That stupid, invisible thread that had been yanking me toward this man since I was fourteen, telling me he was mine, telling me to be patient, telling me he'd come around.

It didn't hurt the way I thought it would. It felt like a rope going slack.

"How long?" I asked.

Karl shrugged. "Define long."

"Karl."

"Since the harvest moon."

That was eight months. Eight months of me making his coffee. Eight months of him telling me he wasn't ready, that the bond was complicated, that I needed to be patient with him.

Kate set the cup down on his nightstand. "Don't be dramatic, Ella. You've known."

I hadn't known.

"You've known," she said again, slower, like I was stupid. "Come on. Everybody knows. Dad knows. Mom knew before she died. You were the only one walking around with your little coffee cups like a golden retriever."

I looked at Karl. He didn't argue. He didn't even look uncomfortable. He looked bored, and that was worse than anything he could've said.

"Say something," I said.

"What do you want me to say?" He sat up finally, sheet pooling at his waist. "That you're the love of my life? Ella, you can't shift. You've never shifted. Not once. You get winded walking up the hill."

"I'm still your mate."

"You're a problem." He said it flat. "The pack's laughing at me. My dad's asking questions. You think I want to stand in front of the Council and present a Luna who faints at the sight of a full moon?"

Kate swung her legs off the bed and stood, wrapping herself in his shirt like she'd done it a hundred times. She probably had.

"He needs a mate who can actually stand next to him," she said. "Not a girl who needs a babysitter."

I set my coffee down on his dresser. Carefully. Right on the coaster, because I'd bought that coaster set and some part of me was still being polite.

That was the moment it changed. I felt it happen — the exact second the begging died in my throat.

I wasn't going to ask him to pick me. I wasn't going to cry in front of them. I'd spent four years crying in front of him and it had bought me exactly nothing.

"Okay," I said.

Karl blinked. "Okay?"

"Okay." I picked my bag up off the floor. "You want her, keep her. She's got a great personality."

Kate's mouth opened. Closed.

"You're not gonna fight for me?" Karl asked. He actually sounded offended. Like he'd paid for a show and I'd walked out early.

"No." I got the door open. "You're not worth the cardio."

He laughed. It wasn't a real laugh. It was that ugly, wounded one men do when you get the last word and they hate it.

"You're gonna regret this," he called. "You're nothing without me, Ella. Nothing. You'll be back in a week, and I'm gonna remember this."

"Write it down," I said. "So you don't forget."

I shut the door on the sound of Kate saying something sharp and him saying something back. I didn't listen. My ears were ringing too loud.

I made it down the stairs. Out the front door. Across the porch.

Then I stopped on the third step, because my legs quit.

Not because of the bond. The bond was quiet — quiet in a way that scared me more than the pull ever had. It was like a phone going dead in your hand mid-call.

I sat down on the step and put my head between my knees and breathed until the ringing stopped.

You can't even shift.

I'd heard it my whole life. From teachers. From cousins. From Karl, mostly. He'd said it sweet the first year, like a joke between us. My girl can't shift, guess I'm stuck carrying her. And I'd laughed, because what else do you do when your mate calls you a burden in a nice voice.

Nobody ever asked why.

Nobody ever asked why the Alpha's son's fated mate — the daughter of a family that had produced strong wolves for six generations — couldn't shift. Not one person. Not even me. I'd just accepted it, the way you accept weather.

I sat up.

Across the yard, past the fence, the light was on at my father's house. The study light, the one he never used unless there was money involved.

And there was a car in the drive.

A black one. Long. Too clean for our road.

I stood up. My knees held this time.

I walked down the path, and the closer I got the more wrong it felt — not dangerous, exactly, just wrong, like walking into a room where people had been arguing. A man was standing on the porch with my father. Suit. Folder under his arm. They were shaking hands, and my dad was nodding, and my dad never nodded at anybody.

The man turned to leave. His eyes passed over me on the path, and they stopped.

Just for a second. Just long enough.

Then he got in the car and pulled away, and my father saw me standing there in the dark with mascara all over my face, and he didn't look surprised. He didn't look sorry.

He looked relieved.

Chapter 1 Ends