ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (173 page)

“The point is that you know now, that I did tell you, and that I want to fix it with you,” I said. I hoped that was an answer she would buy.

She looked up at me, and her eyes were dark and liquid.

“I don’t want to lose you, she said and then she started crying. I walked to her and took the spatula out of her hand, dropping it in the pan and turning her to me. I wrapped my arms around her and held on tightly. She was small in my arms and her body quivered against mine.

Whatever had gone wrong, we could make it right. I knew we could.

“Do you love me?” she asked, mumbling against my chest.

“I love you so much, it hurts every time I leave,” I said, and it was true. It always felt like I tore apart. She took a deep shaky breath, and spoke again, still keeping her head down.

“Please will you stay?” she asked again. I nodded, because she was the one that had hinted she wanted to leave, not me.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

She shook her head and looked up at me, and there was something in her eyes that I couldn’t place. Fear? Guilt? I breathed in, trying to find her emotions riding the air, and it still didn’t give me a hint. It was disconcerting not knowing.

“I mean permanently,” she said. “Please stay.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.

“Just leave the army, Reid. Give it up and stay home with me. Be with me.”

“You want me to retire from the Army?” I asked, trying to make sense of what she was asking. She nodded slowly, her eyes still on mine. I blinked at her. She wanted me to give up my life. My pack. Anger started at the pit of my stomach and started coursing through my veins. It was like molten lava, flowing through, and everywhere it touched I turned to stone and all the feeling was gone. Only the rage was left.

“You’re asking me to leave,” I said again. It wasn’t a question, but I couldn’t believe what she was saying. “You’re asking me to choose?”

“I guess I am,” she said looking down. I grabbed her upper arms with my hands and held her at arm’s length.

“Reid, you’re hurting me,” she said, her voice suddenly panicky, but all I could see was white light and her voice floated to me from somewhere in the distance.

“You’re asking me to give up my pack, for you?”

I could smell her fear now, wild and real. And the wolf in me got a nose full and ripped through me. My skin burned so much I felt like I was going to go down in flames. My muscles bulged under my skin, and then tore through it. A howl ripped from my throat and I felt my bones stretch. It hurt, a lot more than usual, and I growled and scared. I only saw white light. My eyes hurt like I was looking right into the sun, and I felt fur creep over my skin until I was covered.

When I could finally see again Allegra was cowering against the wall in front of me, and we were on the other side of the kitchen. I didn’t know how we’d gotten here. She had her arms over her head and her whole body trembled. She wouldn’t even look at me. I could smell her fear, complete now, and I wanted it. I wanted her, and not in a way that made me happy. Her fear was egging me on, bringing out the predator in me.

And I was scared. For the first time in my life I wasn’t just scared that she would fear my monster, I feared it myself.

I forced myself away from her, turned, and ran. I crashed through the house, my body feeling foreign although I knew my wolf form as well as my human form. I was dimly aware of the dining room chair that I left in pieces. The vase on the floor that her mother had given her. The front room window that I’d chosen to exit through instead of the front door.

I turned my attention to my heart, to the pulse, and I called my back. I sent out the signal through our bond, I let my thudding heart fuel them too, and I knew they would come to me because I needed them. I was losing control completely, and I had to choose between my wolf and my wife.

And I didn’t know which I could live with anymore.

Chapter 8

Allegra

I’ve never considered divorce. Not until now. I didn’t think being with someone that was never home could be an issue. You would think that if he was never home we couldn’t really fight, right?

But now we’d fought. Sort of. And I was going to leave. The more I thought about it, the more it hurt, and the more it looked like the only thing I could do.

“God, it’s not even about the fact that in my loneliness I want to find someone else,” I told Charlene. I’d cried on her shoulder about it because she was the one person that could understand. John was a wolf, John was a soldier. And she’d known he was a Ranger. I wondered how it had never come up in conversation. I guess you don’t hear what you don’t know to listen out for.

“Don’t you want to think about this? Your relationship with Reid is so special. You can’t just marry a werewolf and break it off again without losing a part of yourself.”

And she was right. Being married to a werewolf just wasn’t the same as being with a human. I think it had to do with the fact that there wasn’t one but two people I was in a relationship with. Or rather, one person and one animal. But I was sharing. And somehow it made it more intense, fiercer, and more dedicated. Because an animal will give itself over wholly to a person.

I sat curled on the one end of her couch, she was curled on the other end. She’d poured me coffee but I’d only had half. We could talk about everything because John wasn’t home. Big surprise, if he was anything like Reid he wouldn’t be. They were probably together. I doubted Reid was home.

“I just don’t know how to keep doing this,” I said. “I’ve tried everything to make sure that I’m there for him when he comes home. He was the one that pulled away from me. What did he think was going to happen?”

Charlene sighed. “He might be a werewolf, but he’s still a man, and men don’t think. No matter who they are or what they do.”

I wrapped my hands around the warm coffee cup, trying to drink in some of the warmth. I was cold all over, and nothing felt like it would warm me up. Since I’ve decided I wanted to leave him, it was like the source to my heat was gone.

I wondered if he felt it too. It was something that bothered him as much as it bothered me. I thought about his team mates, his pack and something dark and bitter swirled inside of me. His pack. His family. And what was I? What was left?  He probably didn’t feel anything about losing me. He had them, didn’t he?

“Maybe it’s better this way,” I said. “If I’m out of his life he won’t have anyone forcing him to open up about stuff he obviously doesn’t want to talk to me about.”

Charlene shook her head and I could see she fought the urge to roll her eyes at me.

“Don’t be like that. You and Reid have been perfectly happy for a long time. It’s just a rough patch. It happens.”

“I get that, but it’s not about the fact that we’re struggling. It’s about the fact that he doesn’t think he can trust me with the truth. That he doesn’t think I’m capable of handling who he is and what he does.” I took a shaky breath and flashed on the bizarre scene in the office block the day before. “And the thing that scares me the most as the he might be right. I don’t actually know if I can handle who he is.”

Charlene got up and took my half-cup of coffee from me. It had gone cold.

“I just think you’re making a mistake,” she said. “You can fix this.”

I left her house after thanking her for the advice. I can fix this, she’d said. But the problem was that I didn’t believe her. How could I fix it if I wasn’t the one that had made the mistake?  I’ve always been perfectly honest with him about who I was, what I thought, what I did. He was the one that had been hiding stuff.

When I got home Reid was there, surprisingly. He was watching sports on the television, but I doubted he really saw anything even though he as looking at the screen. He had a far-off look in his eye, the one that led me to believe that no matter how normal he tried to be, how much he did what other men did, he just wasn’t like them.

And he would never be.

There was a time that I loved that about him. Now I wished it was simpler, because even if it was boring or average, I would have been able to figure it out and cope with it.

I looked at him the way a stranger might. He was beautiful to look at. Handsome and fierce, rugged with something wild. His hair was always just right and his face just made him look like he was assertive, the kind of guy that knew what he wanted in life. His muscles trained against his shirt and even sitting on the couch he looked ready to jump to action if it was necessary.

And I realized that no matter what happened, he would always be the soldier. Ranger. Whatever. It was a part of who he was. It was just as much another side of him as his wolf was. I walked to the television and turned it off. He just watched me, eyes tracking my movement.

I went to sit down next to him on the couch, perching on the couch with my hands on my knees. He looked at my posture, and I knew he was making assumptions and summaries about me. And he would be right, too, because he was good at what he did and he had an extra instinct that came with the wolf. An instinct that I would never have.

I wished now more than ever that I did have that. Maybe it would have helped to tell me if what I was doing was the right thing.

“I’ve been thinking about it all,” I said, looking at my  hands and not his face. “I get that it was wrong of me to ask you to leave your team, to quit from the army. It’s who you are, and no matter how much I want life to be different for us, I can’t change that. I knew it when I married you. So I’m sorry.” I took a deep breath.

“You don’t mind me being a ranger then?” he asked and his face was worried, like it would have consequences if I didn’t.

I shook my head and glanced up at him. His face was calm, his eyes a bright, human green.

I took another deep breath and steeled myself against what I was going to say next.

“I don’t have a problem with you being in the army,” I said. “I’m not going to make you choose. But I can’t be in the army with you, and lately it feels like if I can’t do that, I can’t reach you. I’m not going to make this any worse than it needs to be.”

He sat forward, his face already crumpling before I said the words.

“I don’t think we should keep doing this. We shouldn’t be together.”

“Are you leaving me?” he asked and his voice was laced with emotion. It made it harder. Why now?  Why was he showing me emotion now, when I was about to leave? Why not when I needed him to show it earlier?

“I can’t keep doing this, and I can’t keep doing this to you.”

Reid pursed his lips and an array of emotions flitted over his face.

“I didn’t want this,” he said finally and I felt my stomach sink to my feet because I’d wanted him to at least try and fight for me. Something. Anything.

“I know,” I finally said. “I didn’t either, but I don’t think we have an option anymore.”

He looked at me for a moment longer, and then he nodded slowly. He looked down at his hands.

“I’m being deployed again,” he said after a moment of us sitting together in silence.

“When did you hear?” I asked.

“This morning.”

Either it was bad timing or he wanted to leave. I didn’t want to guess which it was anymore. I nodded and got up.

“I’ll make sure your stuff is clean,” I said and walked out.

The rest of the time was strained silence, and by the time he was ready to go we were both relieved about it. He leaned down and gave me an awkward hug.

“Take care of yourself,” he said. He didn’t kiss me, and somehow that hurt even though I knew I couldn’t expect it from him now that I’d ended it.

“I’ll send whatever papers arrive through to you,” I said, and he cringed like I’d physically hurt him. I didn’t have to say ‘divorce papers’ for him to understand. He nodded and walked out the door, his camo duffel bag over his shoulder and his hat on his head. He looked amazing in uniform, neat and well put together. Attractive. And not mine anymore. When he walked away I felt my heart break, and I was sure I would never be able to put it together again.

Chapter 9

I couldn’t stay in the house. With him leaving on regular deployment it was torture, never mind knowing it was the last time I would say goodbye to him. So I left the house, got in the car and started driving. I left the base, and kept driving, following the roads’ curves until I didn’t know how far I’d gone anymore. The sun was setting on the horizon when I finally turned back and started the long drive home.

By the time I reached the house it was dark, almost midnight. I looked up at the moon and noticed it was almost full with a pang. The moon and what it meant to lycanthropes wouldn’t matter to me anymore. I always kept track of the moon and her cycles, even when Reid was away because it was such a big part of him. Now it didn’t matter anymore.

Good riddance, I tried to convince myself. No more abnormal life. I could get back to being a normal woman. Maybe one day when I was over this and I’d managed to pick myself back up, I could find myself a normal man, and we could live a normal life.

I tried to make myself believe that that was what I wanted, that being normal was the thing to go for. I tried to ignore the fact that I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what normal was anymore. I unlocked the door and pushed it opened, walking into the dark living room. I blindly hung my keys on the hook, working by feel and habit. I flipped the light on and turned away from the wall.