I raised a brow and sipped from my coffee without responding.
“None of my business, huh?” It was Dane’s turn to sigh and when he did, it was deep and heartfelt. “Yeah, sorry.” Offering me a tight smile, he raised his coffee cup in a mock salute and slid past me to head down the hall. “Have a good meeting.”
That left me alone in the kitchen, wondering why I suddenly felt like I’d kicked a puppy when Dane was the one who had tossed me aside. Shaking my head, I steeled myself for what I knew I needed to do. My car was in the shop, so locking the condo door behind me, I walked to the corner to wait for the bus that would take me to my way-too-fucking-early meeting one town over in Bear Lake.
To make the morning complete, I was halfway through the forty-minute trip when my cellphone vibrated with an incoming message from the person I was headed to meet.
Mitch, sorry but I have to cancel this morning due to an emergency. I’ll call you later to reschedule. Robby
Well, crap. At least he warned me before we’d left the city limits.
Pulling the cord to request the next stop where I could hopefully catch the express heading into Unity from Bear Lake, I settled back in my seat and raised my coffee cup.
It was a crappy start to the day, but at least I had caffeine.
ChapterSixteen
Dane
I waited until I heard the front door close behind Shelly to release the iron grip my bear was fighting. I barely felt the steaming coffee from the crushed mug scald my fingers as his roar echoed through the room. My beast was pissed at the thought of our Omega with another man and for once, I really couldn’t blame him.
The bear prodded at me, demanding that I bring Shelly back to us and I already knew that no amount of reasoning was going to help. One disadvantage of being a shifter is that animals can usually be controlled, but they rarely respond to reason. Clenching my fists, I waged my inner battle until the bear finally backed down with a snarl and a huff.
Once the adrenaline had dissipated, the throbbing in my right hand slowly began to take precedence. Glancing down, I growled in annoyance at the blood dripping along the streaks of white reddening into burns before moving on to the pile of shattered ceramic swimming in a puddle of coffee on the hardwood floor. It wasn’t bad enough that I was up at the ass crack of dawn and no closer to resolving things with Shelly, but now I’d broken my favorite coffee cup and had a mess to clean up before I could even go back to bed.
And it wasn’t even fucking Monday.
~*~
“Dane!”
“No!” I snapped in response to Myke’s cheerful greeting.
“Uh, no what?” Myke asked in confusion.
“No, I won’t answer any more questions,” I growled, spinning around to glare at him as he walked up behind me in the hall that led to my classroom. “No, I won’t be part of this fucking Omega training course you want to take. I’m fucking done.”
“Okay,” Myke said slowly, raising his hand in a conciliatory gesture. “What’s wrong? And what happened to your hand?”
My lip curled as I automatically glanced at the white bandage. “It’s nothing.”
Myke quirked a brow at me and nodded toward my closed classroom door. “Uh, why don’t we take this inside before the kids start to arrive?”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I ground out between my teeth, struggling to pull my keys from my coat pocket with my bandaged hand.
“I got that,” Myke said seriously, “but if any of the kids hear you going on like this, you’ll scare the shit out of them and most of them are already dealing with enough. Let’s go in and you can tell me off.”
To my chagrin, my bear liked the idea of taking our anger and hostility out on the Alpha behind me, the interloper who was after our mate.
Except, Shelly wasn’t that. Would never be that. Could do so much better.
That struck in a sore spot and the bear whimpered and drew back, making it easier to get my anger under control. I exhaled sharply, finally pulling my keys free and opening the door.
“I’m sorry, man,” I sighed, gesturing for Myke to enter before me. “I’m a little pissy this morning.”
Myke side-eyed me as he walked into the room ahead of me and instead of taking his usual seat, leaned against the wall by the window. “You want to talk about it?”
I started to shake my head but quickly realized that that wouldn’t work. “Not really, but I think we have to,” I admitted. “Ever since that night you were at the condo, Shelly’s been pissed at me. He won’t talk to me or tell me what I did.” I drew in a deep breath. “It’s killing me.”
