Page 20 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)

AUDREY

The pressure from Cyrus’s power grew, crushing inside my frozen chest. “I won’t let you endanger my pack,” he said, his voice low. “If someone from your world woke and summoned Tzanagoth, someone here could figure it out, too. What are you hiding?”

“It’s not important.” Please. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to confess I was so weak and desperate that I’d believed someone powerful like Royce was destined for me.

But Cyrus’s power kept growing and it didn’t matter how hard I clenched my jaw, the words still poured out. “An incomplete mating bond. They needed an incomplete mating bond.”

The pressure vanished and the icy emptiness roared back in. “The only way for that to happen—” Cyrus said not needing to finish his sentence.

He was a shifter. If he knew about mating bonds, then he knew I was stupid enough to initiate one and was then rejected.

“Yeah.” My throat tightened with emotions I really didn’t want, and I collapsed forward, sobbing, the shame and frustration and aching cold too much to hold back.

It will pass. It will pass. Please, God, make it pass.

It’s not going to pass, a voice filled with burning anger snarled in my head.

It will. It has to. If it didn’t, I had no idea how I was going to hold out. I already teetered dangerously close to the edge of complete surrender. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out before the incomplete mating bond made me think the only way out was death.

I hadn’t thought the grief would be so strong. It was just incomplete, a connection between my soul and Royce’s hadn’t been made so I shouldn’t have felt as if a piece of myself had been ripped out.

It won’t. It isn’t incomplete, the voice growled.

What? How?

But the second he said it, I knew it was true. I could feel the bond around my heart, partially woven into my soul, and I could sense it was linked?—

Oh, God.

It was linked to whoever was speaking in my head. I didn’t even know who he was. He didn’t sound like Cyrus or Bishop. But I recognized his scent, the dark rich aroma of wood smoke, and every cell in my being knew he was mine. Forever. My mate.

I felt cold and empty not because the bond was incomplete, but because he’d frozen our connection. He didn’t want me and was fighting the bond with everything he had.

My gaze jerked across the greenhouse to a large, black wolf stalking across the uneven floor toward me.

“Why?” I gasped. It didn’t make sense. If he didn’t want the bond, why accept it? Why say the other half of the vow and finish it?

I didn’t. He curled his lips back, baring his long canines, and growled at me. I refuted you and you forced it on me anyway.

“I what?” How could I have done that? Even if I’d been aware of what I was doing, I wouldn’t have been able to force the bond on him. He had to say the vow and accept it.

You forced it on me. He captured my gaze with his strange black eyes, and I knew, through the bond he didn’t want, that he meant every word he said. I don’t want it and I don’t want you.

His words shot ice into my heart with an agony more painful than anything I’d experienced before.

I was nothing, weak, unwanted. Not even my mate wanted me. He didn’t want me with every fiber of his being.

His hate and anger tore into my soul deeper than his claws could have. It would have been less painful if he’d attacked me.

“Not true,” I gasped. “It’s not true.”

It is, my mate snarled.

No. It couldn’t be. I am worthy. I deserve to be loved. I’m stronger than this.

But the icy hollowness crushed inside me. I couldn’t catch my breath. I kept gasping, kept trying to draw in air, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was going to be enough.

I scrambled to my feet. I needed space, air. God, please. Why can’t I breathe?

The pressure from Cyrus’s power crashed over me. He said something, but I couldn’t understand his words, could barely hear anything beyond the rushing in my head and the anguish in my heart.

My mate didn’t want me.

No one wanted me.

I didn’t want to feel that way. I shouldn’t. I was strong enough to survive living with Sterling and strong enough to survive almost being sacrificed to a monster. I could survive this. I just needed to get away from them, away from him , from everything, and breathe.

I staggered, fell to one knee, pushed back up, and kept going toward the door.

I had to escape this madness, even though I knew there was no escape. No, that wasn’t true. There were two ways to escape. His death or mine, and given his strength and the strength of the others around me, it was going to be mine.

I should just give up, stop fighting, and face the inevitable. I might have escaped that monster, but I couldn’t escape this. My only way out was death. I couldn’t even run away. Even if I could somehow evade my mate, the emptiness and anguish would always be with me.

And yet my body kept trying to escape, trying to find enough space within me to breathe, because a small, desperate voice inside me was certain that if I could just breathe, I’d be able to fight the overwhelming emotions. Please, I need to breathe.

“Stop,” Cyrus roared, his voice cutting through the rushing in my head.

His power surged and dropped me to both knees, but my body kept fighting, crawling even as the pressure pushed me down. I needed to escape.

God, why had I been so stupid?