Page 20 of Mismatched Mates (Special Bear Protectors)

JANE

T he harsh glow of my phone cast shadows across my tear-streaked face, illuminating the damning evidence of Grant's betrayal. There he was, lips locked with some nameless woman, the image seared into my retinas like a brand. I wanted to hurl the phone across the room, but my fingers wouldn't let go.

Downstairs, the cheerful voices of cartoon characters drifted up from the living room where my boys sat, blissfully unaware of their mother's world imploding. I tried to latch onto that sliver of normalcy, but failed.

"I should have known better," I muttered, pressing the cold screen to my forehead. "Way to go, Jane. You really picked a winner this time."

My thoughts spiraled, a dizzying carousel of self-recrimination and what-ifs. The lavender candle I'd lit earlier in a pitiful attempt at zen now mocked me from the nightstand, its sickly-sweet scent cloying in the air.

I should have known better .

It was the only thought going through my head, round and round until it felt as though my entire body was rattling apart from the force of it all.

Grant with another woman.

Kissing another woman.

The day after he danced with me and we’d gone on that run through the woods with the kids. He’d intimated that there was going to be something more between us after our stupid contract ended.

Then again, if we were going by the rules, this thing between us was already over, and he was free to do what he liked.

So why did my heart feel like it was splitting in two?

I rolled off the side of the bed and into the bathroom, splashing cold water on my swollen face. At the very least, the boys couldn’t know about this. In a few days I’d tell them that Grant and I were no longer together, and I’d never introduce them to another man for the rest of their lives.

Hell, I’d never see another man. This was the wake-up call I needed. Don’t get involved with players and expect them to change their colors.

I’d known right from the start what Grant was. Heather had warned me—everyone had hinted that he was a ladies’ man, popular enough to always be inundated with attention, and used to accepting it. Why should he change the habit of a lifetime for me?

I'd built a business from the ground up and survived a cheating ex-husband. I could survive this too.

But as I moved towards the door, my gaze caught on the framed photo of Grant and me at Luke and Victoria's wedding. His gray eyes sparkled with mischief, his arm wrapped possessively around my waist. I'd felt so safe, so cherished.

What a load of crap.

As I patted my skin dry with a fluffy towel, I forced myself to focus.

"Okay, game plan," I said aloud, my voice rough as sandpaper. "Work. The boys. That's all that matters now."

My gaze unwillingly landed on the beautiful dress Grant had gifted me, hanging elegantly on my wardrobe door. It wasn't about the cost—although it cost more than my mortgage, it was the thought, the kindness in his gesture. For once, I had allowed myself to lean on someone, to feel taken care of—but now the gleaming gown was a reminder of a world I didn’t belong in, and a hope I should never have entertained.

Pushing out a labored breath with a whoosh, I ticked off tasks on my fingers, building a mental fortress against my stupid broken heart. Spreadsheets and scented candles and self-care that involved calculations and complicated formulas. I talked to myself out-loud.

"Gotta call the chefs about next week's menu. Check in with the bakers on that wedding cake order. Review social media posts. Oh, and email that snooty bride about her color scheme disaster."

My phone buzzed with an incoming call from Grant, but after a second where I really considered answering and giving him a piece of my mind, I rejected the call. Then I navigated to Grant's contact, my thumb hovering over the "block" button.

"Sorry, Casanova," I muttered. "This show's over."

With a decisive tap, I banished him from my digital life.

A fresh start. Clean slate. So what if my chest felt as though I was feeding it through a cheese grater, and my stomach was rejecting anything other than water, and I felt a little as though I was slowly being poisoned from the inside out?

I should have known better .

Now all that was left was to pick up the pieces.

The next few days were a blur. If I wasn’t at the office, I was at home making food for the boys. If I wasn’t helping them with their homework, I was on the phone with potential customers organizing logistics, or speaking to venues about their catering facilities. If I wasn’t doing that, I spent the hours before bed making cute napkin cranes and swans. We’d need them for something. Probably.

I didn’t so much as take time to breathe; I couldn’t. I needed every moment of distraction.

It all caught up with me one afternoon. I jolted awake, disoriented, my cheek pressed against something sharp. Blinking groggily, I realized I'd fallen asleep at the kitchen table, surrounded by an army of half-folded napkin cranes.

There was a knock at the door.

I swung the door open. There stood Luke and Victoria, their faces etched with worry. And behind them, emerging from her car with the brisk efficiency of a military general, was my mother.

"Oh, joy," I mumbled,"the calvary's arrived."

Heather didn’t know about Grant’s supposed new girlfriend because she was far enough away and had blocked all notifications but it sure looked like Luke and Victoria did.

“Mom told us everything,” Luke said before I could get a word in and tell him to leave.

Oh, I bet she did.

But for all her brashness, at least my mom had the good sense not to gloat.

Victoria stepped forward, her warm hazel eyes searching my face. "Can we come in?" she asked, her voice gentle but leaving no room for argument.

Mom hurried up the drive toward the house, locking the car over her shoulder. “Jane,” she said, and shook her head, clucking her tongue. Things between Mom and Victoria had been frosty for a while, but I guess they had fixed their issues because they exchanged a determined look. “Let’s get you inside.”

“The boys are at soccer practice,” Mom added to Luke and Victoria. “I’ll pick them up once we’re done.”

Well if that wasn’t ominous.

But there was no putting them off, so I just waved them in. The living room, usually a cozy haven, felt like an interrogation chamber as we settled onto the couch. Sunlight streamed through the windows, casting long shadows and highlighting the piles of laundry I'd been ignoring. Great. Now I was a mess AND a slob.

They sat in a row on my sofa and stared at me.

“This is creepy.”

Mom sniffed. “You’ve lost weight.”

“No I haven’t.” My answer was a knee-jerk response, but considering how little I’d been eating, if I had lost weight, it was hardly a surprise.

“We know about Grant,” Victoria said gently. “And I know—losing your mate is hard.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted. The words on the tip of my tongue that he wasn’t my mate hovered there. Since I’d hit puberty, I’d been aware of the discourse around mates. One person, destined to be it for life. The whole thing seemed ridiculous, even after Luke and Victoria found each other. Yes, they were clearly designed for one another, but she had literally moved across America to be by his side. That, I could just about get a handle on believing.

But this? Grant, the brother of the man who had broken my best friend’s heart, the wolf pack alpha’s eldest son, a man who had lived in Pine River his entire life, just the same as me, being my mate? That was too much. I’d been able to dismiss it as being so improbable as to be untrue.

If it hadn’t been for the constant tug in my gut and my bear howling her insistence in my chest, then maybe I could have gone on believing that it was an impossibility. But all my arguments were crumbling in the face of the quiet part inside me that already knew .

Grant Elston was my mate. And he’d betrayed me.

“We know you’re not okay,” Luke said, elbows braced against his knees. “But you can’t keep telling everyone you’re fine and pushing them away while you kill yourself with work.”

“I have to be okay,” I whispered. “For the boys—for everyone. I have to be okay.”

Mom stood and pulled me into a rough hug that reminded me of when we were kids and grazed our knees, the way she would enfold us in her arms and hold us until the pain went away.

Except this time I didn’t think the pain was going anywhere.

And just like that, the dam broke. Tears I'd been holding back for days spilled over, and I found myself enveloped in a group hug that smelled like my mother's perfume, Victoria's shampoo, and Luke's familiar woodsy scent.

"I'm such an idiot," I sobbed into someone's shoulder – probably ruining a perfectly good shirt in the process.

"No, you're not," Victoria murmured, stroking my hair. "You're human. Well, mostly," she added.

Until I’d met Grant, I hadn’t had this sense that a part of me was missing. I’d been whole. I hadn’t needed him. But when he’d burst into my life, it was as though he’d brought the color with it, like I’d taken a breath for the first time in my thirty-two years on this earth.

Now without him, I couldn’t breathe. I’d lost half of myself and I didn’t know how to put all the missing pieces together without him.

“Maybe he is my mate,” I said, my voice cracking. “But we were never together.”

Luke went still. “What?”

The entire story came spilling out, piece by tortuous piece. The way Luke had caught me in a lie—and how I’d used Victory Matchmaking to cover for it.

“I should’ve known better,” I said again, as they led me to the sofa. My voice cracked as I recounted every red flag I'd willfully ignored, every instinct I'd silenced.

“No,” Mom said firmly, stroking my hair. I needed to pull myself together for when the boys came home, but right then, they weren’t there and I didn’t have anyone relying on me.

I felt like an old tree, cracking and bending until it finally broke.

If this was what it meant to have a mate, I didn’t want one.