Page 33 of Plus-Size Bullied Mate

So I read, I look out the window, and sleep as much as I can manage. I let time do the only thing it can, and by the morning of the second day, I’m at the window with my coffee when I hear him come in from outside.

When I hear the door close and the familiar weight of his footsteps crossing the floor, I fix my eyes on the tree line, all while pretending not to track his movement through the room.

He stops somewhere behind me, and I refuse to move.

“Are you planning on hiding the whole time we’re up here?”

I turn the mug in my hands and brace myself for what’s surely to come. “I’m not hiding.”

“You’ve been staring out windows, sitting in chairs, and lying in bed facing the wall for two days. That’s hiding.”

“That’s preference.”

“Tessa,” he says, voice shifting from conversational to something more direct. “I’m not going to spend these few days here talking to myself.”

“Then stop talking. Problem solved.”

The silence behind me is heavier than usual, and it feels more like he’s at a loss than anything else.

Before he can say anything, I turn around to face him.

“I’ve been very clear about how I feel about all of this. I was clear before the ceremony, I was clear after it, and I’m being clear right now,” I tell him, letting more slip than I intended to. “I don’t know what you’re expecting from me, but if you think I’m going to change my mind just because we’re in a nice place, then I think you’ve misread everything.”

His brows pinch slightly. “I’m not expecting you to let everything go. I’m expecting you to be human, and to give me even the slightest chance.”

I scoff as the implication stings. “I’m plenty human. You just can’t stand the fact that I’m not giving you what you want.”

“You’re being a wall with a face.”

“Excuse me?”

Hunter stops himself and recalibrates with a breath. “I mean that you’re here, but it doesn’t feel like you’re present, and I don’t know how to do this if you won’t give me anything to work with.”

“You, the one who decided all of this, and who told me how it was going to be, are feeling out of your depth?” I question, setting the mug down while I look at him incredulously. “You’re standing in front of me right now, frustrated because I’m the one not cooperating?”

“I know how this started—”

“Do you? I’m not sure you have any idea what it felt like to stand in front of the pack while people used my parents like ammo, while everyone made it very clear the only reason they were tolerating this was that you said so. Not because I’m worth tolerating, and not because any of them reconsidered anything about me.” My chest feels tight, but I push through it. “And now I’m supposed to be here, in the retreat cabin, at the hot springs, bonding with you as if I asked for any of this, as if this is something that came to be naturally.”

Hunter’s expression darkens with irritation, but he keeps himself calm anyway. “I know this is complicated, Tessa. I know you didn’t ask for this, but I didn’t ask for this feeling gnawing at my chest either. I just wanted to keep you safe.”

“Yet you decided to own me! You decided the bond you had ignored for years was suddenly worth acting on the moment someone else tried to take me, and you didn’t stop to ask if what you were doing was any different from what Hayes was trying to do.”

The silence that lingers after feels even heavier now, but I don’t do anything to walk it back. I can’t because it’s true, and as much as it looks like I’ve slapped him with it, he needs to face it.

Hunter’s expression seems to go through too many emotions at once for me to read properly, and whatever exists beneath it feels like far too much to unpack right now while the tension between us feels stifling.

“I didn’t do any of this to own you,” he says, quietly, letting me hear the strain in it while he keeps his eyes on me.

“Then tell me why you did it.”

“I claimed my mate because she was in danger, and I already wasted enough time. I know that.”

“I’m not yours because of something we were born with that neither of us chose. That doesn’t make something right, Hunter. It doesn’t give you any right to assume you have any claim over me.”

He looks at me with the kind of hurt and dejection that makes my inner wolf want nothing more than to soothe it away, but I can’t bring myself to soften like that. Even if ignoring it aches.

Feeling too overwhelmed and frustrated to make sound decisions, I turn away and head for the door, putting as much space between us as I physically can.