Don't Do Mates

Chapter Six: I Don't Do Mates

I step back the second my balance returns.

The movement is sharp, almost violent, my heel scraping stone as I put distance between us. My wolf howls at the loss of contact like something's been physically torn out of my chest. Every inch I put between us costs something, a pull under my ribs that doesn't care what I want. I ignore it. I've spent five years ignoring worse.

Kai doesn't chase the distance. He stands there with his eyes still burning red, fangs still down, breathing controlled in a way that tells me exactly how much effort the control is costing him. He looks like a man who spent years bracing for a hit he never fully believed would land, and now that it has, doesn't know what to do with his own hands.

"Don't."

One word. I don't explain it. I don't owe him the rest of the sentence.

His voice comes out rough when he finally speaks, testing my name like he isn't sure it still belongs to me. "Rose."

I don't answer that either.

The terrace doors burst open before either of us can decide what comes next.

Derek breaks through the first line of security, tie loose, voice raw. "Rose — we need to talk. The company is collapsing. You can't just walk away after what you did in there—"

Behind him Rachel is being hauled upright by two staff members, champagne still dripping down her collarbone, one side of her face already swelling. "She attacked me!" Her voice cracks across the terrace, aimed at anyone still holding a phone. "Someone throw the fat ex out of here!"

I don't turn toward either of them. I keep my eyes on Kai.

He glances once at the doors. Whatever he sees there makes something in his expression go colder, and he steps half a pace in front of me — not gentle, not protective in any soft sense. Territorial. A claim staked without asking my permission.

I hate it instantly.

I step around him.

Derek reaches the terrace edge, "Ghost — Rose—" both names colliding in his mouth like he can't decide which one still has power over me.

"You already got your answer in the ballroom." I don't look at him when I say it. "Leave before I decide the debt conversation is over permanently."

"Rose, please, you're still my—"

"Finish that sentence and find out how permanently."

He stops. Somewhere behind him, Kai has gone very still, watching the exchange with the kind of attention that files everything away for later use.

Rachel finds her voice again, louder this time, playing to the last of the cameras. "Look at her. Standing here acting like she's better than everyone—"

I turn my head and look at her. Just look. No words. I watch the performance die in her throat, watch her falter under nothing but the weight of my eyes, and then I turn my back on both of them and walk further down the terrace, into the dark where the party noise thins out.

Kai says something low to someone near the doors — I don't catch the words, only the effect, because thirty seconds later Derek's voice and Rachel's are both being escorted, loudly, elsewhere. Derek is still shouting my name — both of them, tangled together — right up until the doors swallow the sound completely. Rachel's isn't shouting anymore. I catch one last look at her over Kai's shoulder, mascara ruined, dress ruined, being walked out past a hundred phones still recording, and I feel nothing that resembles satisfaction. Just an accounting closed.

Then it's just the two of us and the bond, live and humming, feeding me pieces of him I never asked for. His heartbeat. The edge of something raw under his composure. I hate that I can feel it. I hate more that some traitor part of me is listening.

"Stay away from me." I don't turn around to say it.

"That's not how this works, and you know it."

"I don't care how it works." I finally face him. "I've already survived one mate who treated me as something to use and discard. I will not survive a second claim. So whatever you think just happened out here, undo it. Bury it. I don't care how."

"I don't deny what it did to either of us." His voice stays level, but there's nothing soft underneath it. "I'm not going to pretend it was gentle. But I've spent years waiting for that exact thing to happen, and now that it has, I'm not interested in pretending it didn't."

I try to walk past him.

The bond pulls, physical, a hook set somewhere under my ribs, and my steps slow against my will for one humiliating second before I force them forward anyway.

He follows. Not close enough to touch. Close enough that I feel him the entire way, which is worse.

We end up at the far railing, away from the doors, away from anyone who might still be listening. The city spreads out below us, indifferent, still lit up like nothing in it just changed. I turn to face him because there's nowhere left to walk that gets me away from this.

Up close, the bond doesn't quiet down. If anything it sharpens, some traitor sense mapping the exact distance between us down to the inch, tightening every time he shifts his weight like it's counting down to something. I catalog the reaction the way I'd catalog a threat, because that's what it is.

"I don't want a mate." I say it flat, final, the way I'd close a deal I have no intention of reopening. "I don't trust the bond. I built this entire life on one decision — that no one gets to own any part of me again. Whatever this is to you, I am already working out how to kill it."

He doesn't flinch. He doesn't raise his voice either.

"I've watched men find their mates and waste them. Lose them. Destroy them out of fear of exactly what you're doing right now." He holds my eyes, steady, nothing performed in it. "I'm not interested in becoming one more story like that. Now that I've finally found mine, I'm not going to disappear because it's inconvenient for you. I'm not going to pretend this doesn't exist. And I am not going to make it easy for you to ignore me."

"You don't get a vote in what I do with my own life."

"No." He takes one step closer, close enough that the bond flares hot under my ribs, close enough that I have to work not to react to it. "But the bond isn't asking either of us for a vote. It already made its decision the second I caught you. Everything after that is just you and me deciding how much damage we do fighting something that's already finished."

"I don't do mates." The words come out colder than the night air. "Mates are a waste of time."

I turn to leave. For real, this time.

His answer catches me just before I reach the doors, low, certain, aimed at the back of my neck like he already knows I'll feel it there.

"I've been waiting years for my mate." A pause, deliberate, letting every word land where he wants it. "Now that I've finally found her, I'm not going to let her leave easily."

I don't look back.

The bond burns under my ribs the entire walk to the car, refusing to quiet down, refusing to be reasoned with — and somewhere underneath the fury, I'm already calculating exactly how to kill something

that apparently has no intention of dying.