If he hadn’t taken my virginity and then proceeded to break my heart with his brutal rejection the next day, I wouldn’t have left.
I’d have remained oblivious to the taunts and mockery I faced growing up, and I would have continued seeking solace in the pack library with my face hidden in a book.
Those vanilla and oak-scented pages held more beauty than this life could ever show me. Scoffing internally, I can hardly believe this twist of fate.
There’s always a common denominator, and he’s standing right beside me, silent as if he’s awaiting thanks for saving my life.
What was the point of any of it if I’m back at square one?
I'm back here, in Girdwood, thrown to the wolves who despised me all my life. Sure, my standing in Moonshine wasn't any better, but at least their only reason to look down upon me was because I was a single mother.
Here, Snehvolk hates me because of the past transgressions of my family. I'll just be back to being the hated outcast, shunned at every turn.
But Moonshine now holds the deaths of their betas over my head.
“Why…” I pause for a breath, though it's still impossible to look at Dawson. “Why did you bring me here, Alpha Dawson?”
An uncomfortable silence stretches all around, pulling taut like a rubber band that finally snaps and draws my face to the side to find him staring at me through the deep pools of his blue eyes, as if he's searching for entry to my soul.
My breath hitches in my throat.
Did he mean what he said when he declared to Moonshine that I was his mate?
Have the words I once dreamed about him saying finally arrived?
They don't have the effect I thought they would on me. Too much time has passed. What would it matter now, anyway?
It's not like I'll ever forgive him for rejecting me back then.
“I…” Dawson begins, smoothing a palm over his nape as he lowers his intense gaze, releasing me from the suspicious scrutiny that holds me in confusion.
“... I had to bring you here when you passed out. You used to be a Snehvolk wolf. I wasn't gonna abandon you out there.”
My lips part involuntarily, a protest to that claim dangling on the tip of my tongue. But I snap my mouth shut when I let the emotion it evoked subside.
Sure, Dawsondidabandon me in the past…
But, if that's his reason for bringing me back to Girdwood, it means that when he said I was his mate, he was only saying that to get Moonshine off my back.
A wave of relief washes over me.
“So, that's the only reason?”
Dawson stops rubbing his nape, looks up with the crystalline depths of blue eyes that I can easily get lost in, his dark brown brows knitting in the center.
“Of course,” he concedes with a curt nod. “I brought you here to protect you, Yvonne.”
Nodding as I process this, I wonder how much protection I'll receive when I'm sprung back into a pack that despised me before. The old life I thought I left behind almost six years ago is back to haunt me, and there's nothing I can do about it.
It's worse that Dawson is claiming to be my protector when he's the one who caused the upheaval in my life when he broke my heart the most.
This isn't going to be easy.
***
“You've healed well, Yvonne,” the healer, Rissa, informs me as she reads through her notes on a clipboard. “It's only been twenty-four hours since Alpha Dawson brought you in, but your speedy recovery means you have the clearance to leave the clinic.”
Nodding thoughtfully, a fleeting frown passes my face.
