Page 13 of Iced Out Mate

Well, at least I thought I’d been immune.

Then again, this was an unhinged loon we were discussing here. I assumed it was the fated mate connection that scrambled my logic. It was hard to ignore now that we were sitting together, our legs only a couple inches apart, his fingertips splayed out on the wooden bench and brushing against mine. That tiny fraction of physical touch blended with the intense and alluring scent that wafted off him every time a strong breeze whipped up to create this undeniable pull in my core. As if someone had tied us together with invisible string and wanted us pressed together.

“I think so,” Miles answered. “It started with texts at first, and they were innocent enough. Like a friend or possibly an old lover I’d lost the number of. But things escalated after I refused to continue talking to this person because they wouldn’t reveal who they really were. Then the physical letters started coming. That’s when threats started, which really only happened a couple months before I moved to Burlington.”

“What were the threats?”

“Silver bullets to the heart or an iron collar around my neck.”

My entire body stiffened. As if someone dumped that gallon of ice water over my head that I’d been asking for. I rubbed at my neck, I could almost feel the iron collar still locked onto me.

There were only two things that were able to strike fear into a wolf shifter’s heart. Mine skipped a few beats. There was a connection there that I wanted to grasp at, but I couldn’t push past the feeling of having that fucking collar on my neck. It happened months ago and the feeling was still as fresh as if it happened yesterday. The instant it closed around me, it completely sapped my energy and—even worse—my will. I had no choice but to agree to every single command given to me. Like a professionally trained dog at their master’s heel, except I was a human who’d gone from being free one second to being captured and used as a pawn the next.

“What? What is it?” Miles asked.

Now it was my turn to close off. I hadn’t really talked about that time with anyone except for Chris. I thought that conversation with my best friend had worked like a balm over the pain of those few hours being held literally fucking hostage, but being asked to bring it up again made me feel a massive spike of anxiety. My mouth dried up. I balled my hands into fists, which ended up breaking that butterfly-light connection with Miles. That, in turn, made my anxiety worse.

Fucking hell.

I couldn’t have a panic attack here. Not in front of Miles. It had been years since my last one. I thought I was good now. Cured, even.

But the second the curtains started to close on my vision was the second I realized it was happening.

Oh shit. This isn’t good.

Chapter Six

Fresh Air

MILES

Dylan’s complexion blanched. His entire mood shifted in the span of a single heartbeat. “What? What is it?” I looked around the empty park, wondering if he saw something that had him spooked.

He rubbed at his neck and shook his head. His leg bounced up and down, shaking the bench. “Nothing.”

It clearly wasn’t nothing. “You can talk to me,” I said. Without thinking twice, I reached over and put a hand on his bouncing leg. It didn’t mean anything more than a simple sign of friendly support. The fact that my heart started to beat a little faster and my core became warmer at the touch didn’t mean anything. Nothing at all.

He looked down at my hand and stilled. He took a deep breath. I left my hand on his leg, not wanting to break contact in case this helped with whatever he was going through. He closed his eyes and tried to smile again, his lips twitching. “Iron collars and I have a fucked-up past. It’s been seven months now, but, well, long story short… I was kidnapped by a rival pack because a rogue hunter wanted to bring us all out into the open so he could kill us.”

He said it all in one single breath. My jaw dropped and my head fell forward. “Excuse me, what? You’re going to need to give me the longer version of that.”

And so he did. Dylan started at the end—just like he had taught me—and walked me through everything that had happened. I was shocked. Emmy had told me about something going down but he didn’t go into full details, and certainly didn’t tell me about what happened to Dylan. As he spoke, his voice became choked up by the painful memories, and a protective flare flashed inside me. I wanted to find this hunter and tear him apart limb from limb for causing this, then I wanted to throw an iron collar on the alpha of the rival pack so that he could get a taste of his own bitter medicine.

Fighting and confrontations weren’t my thing, but listening to Dylan’s trembling voice made me want to burn the world down for him.

I’d sit with these feelings later and try to figure out where they were coming from. For now, I wanted to make Dyl feel better. I rubbed his leg. His muscular thigh twitched under my hand. I ignored the heat that flooded up from his skin through mine. “Fuck, man, I’m so sorry you went through that.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.”

“It’s clearly not.”

“It is, though. I guess I haven’t talked much about it, and thought it was dealt with, but guess not. This helped.” He offered me a genuine smile, showing me a set of perfectly aligned pearly white teeth. Rare for hockey players, but not for shifters. “Are you sure you’re just a trainer and not a secret therapist on the side?”

I chuckled at that. My hand was still on his leg. I didn’t want to move it, but the longer it remained on him, the more I wanted to inch it upward. I removed my hand and placed it on my lap.

“I’m just an anxious person,” Dyl continued. He started to bounce his leg again. “I’ve gotten better at handling it. I don’t spiral nearly as much as I used to. I can sort of confront the bad thoughts and rework them, but sometimes shit creeps up on me.”

“I get that. Anxiety is a beast, it grabs you by the—” Shit, that was a bad metaphor.