And for the first time I can hear their voices clearly.
“You bitch!” Clayton yells. “I’m your mate!”
What?!
Aisha never told me she was mated to Clayton. But now it’s beginning to make sense, the way she warned me against him, the way she always bristled when he was brought up. They were mates once. But not anymore.
“I don’t want to be your mate, Clayton,” Aisha says, not missing a beat. “And you better believe I never will.”
“You’re confused. You don’t understand what you’re saying.”
She stabs at him with an angry finger. “I know exactly what I’m doing. I reject you, Clayton. Do you hear that?”
He grips his chest.
“I reject the mate bond. Find someone else to claim.”
Without another word or glance, Aisha turns and walks away. Despite the shock of learning Aisha and Clayton were mates, I want to cheer and clap, I want to jump up and down. Aisha really did that. She was destined to be with a jerk and a creep, and she said no. My respect for her skyrockets.
Back under the tree, Clayton’s knees give way and he crumples to the ground. He digs his claws into the brick footpath and howls. Tears stain his blood-red face as he screeches to the clouds. So that’s what it looks like when a wolf is rejected.
The world turns to liquid around me as the vision ends and I’m pulled backward—everything floats away, and I’m brought back to reality.
High-velocity winds tear at my cheeks as I open my eyes. Clayton’s slick jaw is barely an inch from my face, his frenzied eyes boring into mine.
Aisha broke the mate bond with the most entitled dick I’ve ever meant. I can’t help but think this has something to do with why he’s so desperate to hold onto Jasper and his position in the pack. But none of that is very useful right now.
Clayton still has his paw on my neck; I’m still leaning halfway over the edge of the roof as traffic drifts by a hundred stories below. Clayton is still huffing hot, sickly breaths into my face, rage and violence shining in his yellow eyes.
With a growl and a roar he lifts me from the ground and readies to throw me over the edge.
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
Aisha was mated to this monster, the wild animal clutching me in its paws and about to throw me off the roof of a hundred-story high-rise.
But she was strong enough to walk away. And I’m not about to let him hurt me anymore.
Clayton’s claws dig into me as he lifts me higher, and I can feel the shift in the air as he holds me out over the drop. I grunt in pain but manage to lift my hands to the sides of his face. With all my energy I force him to look at me, and as soon as our eyes meet I channel his pain, the agony of losing his mate, the pang of rejection, that howling sensation that still sits deep in his subconscious. I pull that pain into myself—like blood I let it flood my veins, course through me, and I feel every moment of it.
Then I give it back, serving his pain to him like a fresh steak, hot off the grill.
I let Clayton’s hidden feelings escape me and float, in glowing red tendrils of energy, back to him.
His eyes widen. His grip loosens. He stumbles backward.
Distracted and distressed, he drops me, and I flop onto the concrete of the roof. Safe.
Clayton huffs and spins. He shakes his muzzle.
Staggeringly, I’m able to push myself to my feet.
“You think we’re different,” I say. “But I’ve felt what you felt, and it’s the same.”
He stomps and claws at the roof.
“Your love is the same as mine. It’s burns as bright. And it hurts the same too.”
Finally, he lifts his nose and howls to the waning moon.
