Chapter Four
Boone was stunned. Elated, but stunned. His mate. He was holding his mate in his arms, and Jackie was clearly a man, which was even better.
Boone frowned when Jackie started to push away from him. “Jackie, wha—”
“Get away from me!”
Boone’s jaw dropped when Jackie started striking out at him with his fists. He grabbed Jackie’s wrists and pinned them to the countertop. “Jackie, knock it off.”
Jackie stilled.
“What’s wrong with you?” Boone didn’t understand why Jackie was so upset. He should be just as elated as Boone was.
The hatred and fear in Jackie’s eyes as the man turned to look at him cut Boone to his soul. “You’re a shifter.”
“Yes, I am.” And, until this very moment, he had always loved being a shifter.
“Get off me!” Jackie started struggling again. “Get the hell away from me!”
“I can’t.” Even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. “Not until my knot goes down.”
Jackie narrowed his eyes as if he didn’t believe Boone. “Knot?”
“When a shifter meets and claims his mate, a knot forms at the end of his dick, keeping him locked inside of his mate.”
“Make it go away.”
“Baby, I can’t.” When Boone reached up to smooth the auburn curls back from Jackie’s face, the man flinched and jerked back. Boone pressed his lips together and lowered his hand as anguish filled him.
This wasn’t how a mating was supposed to go. He didn’t understand why it had all gone to shit. Jackie obviously knew about shifters. How could he be denying their mating?
“Jackie, I—”
Boone groaned when the knot receded and he was able to slide free from Jackie’s body. Jackie must have felt it, too. He began pushing at Boone’s shoulders. Boone’s heart sank, and any hope he had for a future with his mate crashed and burned.
When he stood back, Jackie jumped down from the counter and grabbed his shirt. He held it up in front of him like a shield.
“Get out.”
“Jackie.”
“Get out now, Sheriff, unless you want me to call the council and report you for rape.”
Boone sucked in a painful breath. “I didn’t rape you, and you damn well know it. You were just as into what we did as I was.”
Jackie’s look was pure venom. “I didn’t know you were a shifter.”
“Why do you hate shifters so much?”
“Because you’re all evil, vile creatures.”
Boone stiffened at the revulsion in Jackie’s voice, in his face. The sorrow that had been circling his heart turned to stone. He yanked his pants up and buttoned them. After making sure he hadn’t dropped anything, he started for the door.
He paused in the archway of the kitchen and glanced over his shoulder. “I used to watch my brothers with their mates, the love that seemed to be so much a part of what was between them, and I was jealous. I wanted what they had. I wanted a mate who loved me unconditionally, one who I could love back.” Boone’s lip curled back as bile rose in his throat. “Now, I wish I had never met you.”
The look of loathing on Jackie’s face pounded in Boone’s head over and over again as he stalked out of the man’s house and down the driveway. His anger and hurt spurred him on at a fast stride. The horrible words Jackie had spewed swirled around in his head and kept pace with the painful, thudding ache in his chest.
God knew he hadn’t grown up in a world where matings were happy. His parents weren’t even true mates. His asshole of a father had forced his mother. Up until a year ago, he hadn’t even known a happy mating was possible. All that had changed when his older brother met his mates. He had watched the strong alpha melt like butter in his mates’ hands.
