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I shook my head. “I already asked. It was like a mental block or something along those lines. Kylie tried desperately to connect with her lycan. She told me it felt like her lycan just wasn’t strong enough to connect with her.”

Eli walked over to the new chair in the office to sit down. This one was made of stronger wood, apparently, but that wouldn’t stop me from turning it into splinters if I lost my temper again. He grabbed my laptop and started searching for things on the internet.

“It’s no use. I already searched everything about her condition.”

Eli scoffed. “What makes you think I don’t have a different idea than you?

I might find something about what we’re looking for that’s better than what you found.

” He pulled up the browser and looked past me, still trying not to provoke my lycan.

He still wanted to let loose, but I managed to keep the chain I had around him in place.

“Elena had a mental block. Did you search anything on that?”

“Kylie didn’t have a mental block! It’s no use to search for something she doesn’t have.”

Eli shook his head. “What makes you think she didn’t? Have you forgotten her childhood?”

As if I could forget what she had gone through. I executed her father for what he had done to her. If he were still alive, I would rip him apart again. Sometimes, I wish I could talk to a witch to bring him back to life just so I could.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

He sighed. “Everything.”

This intrigued me. Even my beast wanted to hear what he had to say about this.

I walked over to my chair and plopped down into it.

It was hard for me to sit for long periods anymore.

Sleeping had been difficult for me, too, as I didn’t want to give my lycan the power to shift without me having a grip on him.

But if Eli had information I hadn’t considered, I wanted to hear it.

“We didn’t grow up in the conditions Kylie did. At any given moment, she could anger her father and then be physically and mentally beaten into submission.”

The snarl ripped through my throat at being reminded of what she had endured. Eli let out a small growl as well. He liked Kylie, and his mate adored her. He hated the idea of her being abused as much as I did.

“She’s had to retreat so far into her mind to escape the pain he caused her,” Eli continued. “Think about what that does to you. How you would have to retreat into your mind to escape the reality of your life.”

I didn’t want to think about it. My parents would never have done such a thing to me.

They treated pups like most lycans did—with care, love, and unwavering priority.

Pups were the future of the pack, and they were always protected.

Females, too, were valued and treated with respect.

But some lycans—those with something twisted in their brains—did horrible things, things that went against everything we were taught.

That was another reason I didn’t let Alexander live that day I had visited the pack.

“It messes with people’s psyches.” He pulled something up on the browser and turned the screen toward me. “It damages people to the point of not knowing how to connect with others. They don’t have the self-worth to feel like they could bond with someone.”

The article he found stated those very things. Constant abuse caused damage to so many aspects of a person that they had trouble forming social connections. What was bonding with a lycan other than a social connection? It was a deeper-rooted connection that lived inside of us.

“I think the fact that she can’t connect with her lycan the way she should is causing her body to reject everything our lycan provides us.

The blurred lines of our kind regarding these matters mean she may not survive much longer without that connection.

She felt stronger with you because it helped her connect with the things she was denied her entire life: a pack, people to count on, and support to get her through life.

She only had Amara in her pack. One person isn’t enough when the rest of the people who are supposed to love and care for you are all telling you how you aren’t good enough. ”

My hand slammed on the desk, my claws lengthening into the wood from the thoughts of what Kylie went through. I never considered this in the way Eli just explained.

“So what you’re trying to tell me”—I struggled to hold in the anger boiling within me—“is that my mate could die because I was too stupid to understand she needed someone to help her through the hell she endured before I found her?”

Eli frowned. I could see he didn’t want to answer that question, but he never let me down. Eli called me out on my shit a million times throughout our lives.

“Yeah. I told you not to do this.”

I surged to my feet and walked toward the door. “Stupid” didn’t even cover what I felt for rejecting Kylie. I didn’t even know if there was a word for that level of stupidity.

“Where are you going?” Eli asked.

“To bring my fucking mate home.”