Beaufort Creek Shifters (10 book series)
The Wolf’s Bullied Mate Chapter 6

Jada

Then I guess you better hurry.

The gods were truly testing my patience with this one. How many times had I stood up to assholes like Isaiah in the past? What kind of woman would I have been if I hadn't stood my ground in front of my supposed mate with my entire pack and my family watching-

with my alpha watching?

I would have been a coward if I hadn't stood up.

Maybe I should have said more than I did, but I'd spotted Blake's pleading glance over Isaiah's bulky shoulder. My alpha meant well. He'd paired me with Isaiah because he knew I could handle the man. He wouldn't have done it otherwise.

A spark of electricity shot through my core. Isaiah was a big man in many ways. I could handle plenty of things about him including the parts of him he didn't allow other people to see. What we had done in the toolshed lingered in the back of my mind like a bad decision. And like a good one too. Which didn't make sense for anybody.

Me, myself, and I were perfectly capable of coping with bad decisions. You know, until that bad decision was made with a guy like Isaiah Carney.

We were tense, I recalled. We were just blowing off steam.

I shuddered.

It was definitely steamy in there.

That temper, though, that was something else. He was more sensitive than an injured rabbit who hadn't yet acclimated to the softness of a predator like me. Bullies weren't made of steel and brick. They usually had fleshy parts that were painful when exposed. If I could locate those parts of Isaiah, then I could ground him back into reality.

The reality that I wasn't much of a fan of right now.

I stared at the stairs leading into the space below my loft. It was such a sweet setup. My parents had built it ages ago as a dance studio for me, complete with soft floors and mirrors lining the walls in the practice room. Glorious gray mats absorbed shock from my pounding feet. Many a night had been spent dancing myself raw in this place.

As soon as I was old enough to be on my own, they'd converted the attic into a loft. Dark teal carpet with tan curtains and matching modern furniture with a bed fit for a queen. The sage-green canopy hanging over my head seemed new to my tired eyes. And only because I knew I wouldn't be seeing it much once I was under Isaiah's thumb.

I snorted. If he thinks he can control me, then he's sorely mistaken.

"It's not the end," I told my sacred space as I made my way to the stairs. "I'll be back soon. I promise."

Maybe not to sleep, sure, but to dance? I would certainly be back. As often as I possibly could.

The gods of every dimensional space surrounding me could likely see all the pressure points that would send me running back to this place. Even as I trudged down the stairs, out the door, and up the dirt pathway to the new condos built for Isaiah and his remaining pack friends, I could sense precisely the divots in my soul impressed by his rotten energy.

There was something else there too. Something that seemed to spark in me a desire to see what was going to happen. Curiosity, maybe. Was that it? Yeah, it was curiosity. Nothing more than a little morbid interest.

That and only that. Nothing else.

Because if it was something else, then the gods wouldn't be able to help me. Nobody would be able to help me.

And I would surely fall.

***

The sun set the moment my tennis shoes touched the porch. I hauled my two bags with me and dropped them to the ground. The door popped open. A bulky and grumpy Isaiah took up the doorway, bulging at the seams with muscle and disdain, dripping with the kind of condescension that came from collegiate scholars rather than experienced shifters.

I mean, it wasn't like wolves weren't the proud type. We had our pitfalls and our preoccupations. Many wolves were obsessed with being strong enough. That had been true across the board for as long as I could recall. We were pack-oriented with family placed first -and that meant any family. It wasn't always blood. Though it often involved a lot of blood.

Whether it was bonding or spilling that blood was always just circumstantial.

Anyway, it was enough to get my blood boiling seeing how he was looking at me with that critical stare he always shot my way when I was doing something he didn't like. Which seemed to be everything. Which seemed to be all the time.

The uptight prick of a man crossed his arms, flexed, and then stepped aside. He barely nodded to the living room. I took that as a command and responded in kind, standing with a blank expression on my face on the porch, my body lit up by the lamps that were slowly winking on. Brand new lamps. Brand new light. That meant this was the brightest side of the pack ranch.

Isaiah huffed. "Get inside."

"You could ask nicely."

"You could obey nicely."

I rolled my eyes and stuck my chin forward, allowing my pride to lead me into the condo. The neighbors were watching us. They were going to report what they saw back to Blake. I had to make sure I was doing the very least to uphold my side of the pairing. So long as Isaiah did the same, we wouldn't have a problem.

That certainly meant we were going to have a problem.

Three steps put me inside the quiet living room. I had to blink a few times, turned about three times, and gaped at the room.

It was practically empty.

I knew plenty of people who practiced minimalism. But this condo was threadbare. One couch sliced diagonally through the plain tan carpet of the living room with a television mounted like a work of art on the cream-white wall. Tall windows guarded the right side with the left opening up into a tiled blue and white kitchen that held a box table and chair. The table swallowed the chair, creating the perfect square shape against the wall.

Every pair of curtains matched the kitchen, blue and white. Steel chrome appliances sat in the kitchen with a squeaky-clean sheen to them. I could practically see my reflection from all the way over here. I sniffed a few times. Pine-Sol and maybe jojoba oil. Something like that. It was odd to sense that before his smell.

Until he walked toward me. His scent smacked me in a way that should have happened when I was standing on the porch. All shifters had sensitive noses. We could smell each other from a mile away. But Isaiah had done something to mute his smell. Or maybe it had been there the whole time and I was just now recognizing it.

I couldn't tell.

All I could gather from what I was seeing in the living room was a muscular man with a red-orange mullet who needed a damn attitude adjustment.

Boy, was he in for a treat living with me.

He squeezed his arms over his chest again. "Don't act so shocked."

"I'm not. I'm just-"

"That's another thing you won't do, sugar tits," he spat. "You will not lie to me."

I blinked up at him, unsure of how to actually respond to that. Mostly because my body chose to respond for me in the form of a titillating shiver.

The way goosebumps flushed my breasts and tickled my stomach made me want to lay on the couch and pop my ass into the air. And then the way I thought about actually doing it made me flush with heat. Cold waves. Hot breeze. I was about to start losing my mind.

I swallowed hard. "Where can I put my things?"

"Pick whichever room you want. I don't care."

Well, that didn't track. Either he wanted complete control of me, or he didn't. It couldn't be both.

My brows knitted together. Is this a test?

No, this had to be a trick. He did care. I could sense the edge of anxiety in his flickering gaze, how it fluttered between me and my bags repeatedly. He looked at the stairs. He looked at me. He looked at my bags again.

I hoisted them up. "Alright."

I headed for the stairs. I climbed them slowly, allowing the carpet to cushion my tennis shoes. I'd never felt such fine carpet in my life. Had Blake spared no expense on these new units? There were so many of them now, given how many members had just joined us. About half of Gilbert's old pack had come along and then the handful from the deranged hospital where Isaiah had been held with Gwendolyn and Neil.

My heart sank into the pit of my stomach. Good gracious, how had Isaiah survived that? Was he just bullying me because he was upset about being a walking experiment?

Determination returned at full throttle. There was no excuse for his poor behavior, regardless of his motives. If he couldn't cope with his nightmares or his trauma, then that wasn't my problem. He loved his damn alpha so much. He could go to Troy if he needed help.

I dropped my bags in a modest guest room located in the attic. Since we had gotten so many new members, I assumed maybe Blake would double up houses. But it seemed like he didn't want anyone to feel pressured to be paired.

An amused sort of chuckle escaped me. Except for the paired mates part, right?

It wasn't like me to doubt my alpha. It wasn't even like me to think about doubting my alpha. But I was sure having my doubts. I was having enough of them to feel like they wouldn't go away any time soon. And that was a problem. Because I wasn't the type of person to cause problems.

I solved puzzles. I didn't create them.

However, Isaiah was a lot more than just a puzzle. He was an entire Tetris battle where the opponent had so many more advantages than me. With so many pieces falling so quickly, I was bound to get buried and lose.

I couldn't let that happen. I had to try my best. For my alpha and my family.

The stark realization that Isaiah was about to become my family made me pivot toward the bathroom. Fluffy white towels lined the white shelves on the walls along with an assortment of soaps and shampoos. Well, at least he wasn't the sort to cut corners on luxury. And with the clawfoot tub behind me, I would surely have plenty of good baths in here.

If he didn't need me for something, I had to guess.

Tears stung my eyes. Heat boiled in my gut as my throat tightened.

This was stupid. I didn't want to bond with a bully jerk like Isaiah. It was deeply unfair that my alpha had given me such an insurmountable task. While I didn't doubt Blake's belief in me, I did doubt my ability to rise to the challenge. It was different standing up to a bully when I could go home to a completely separate house at the end of the day.

How was I supposed to live with said bully if I couldn't get away?

I closed my eyes, squeezing hot tears down my cheeks. They pooled under my chin, dribbled down my neck, and soaked into my yoga top. Within seconds, my skin cooled. And then I just got cold.

This was the end of my freedom. I would forever be stuck with this inconsiderate prick who could only function as a great life-sized masturbator at best. Sure, maybe the s*x would break up all the tense moments of bullying, but was it really worth it?

I wasn't even sure why I was considering another round of sex with Isaiah. It wasn't like I was being forced to sleep with him. It wasn't like Alpha expected that. He might have paired us, but he wasn't the kind of guy to demand reproduction or weird coupling rituals. All that was supposed to happen organically.

My chest heaved. Anger soon joined the medley of vegetables in my last-minute gazpacho. That something I had felt downstairs was becoming a lot more apparent, like the defrost vents clearing away the frost on a car's windshield. I could finally see what had been bothering me so much.

If I hadn't slept with Isaiah, would my heart have still spoken his name?

Blake had explained his process for choosing mates. We were all curious about what made him so special-and that had truly cemented it for us. Because every pairing he had named had turned out to be a beautiful couple. It was hard to believe that my relationship was going to be that beautiful, especially with a man who was so insecure that he had to tear everybody else around him down.

How many arguments had some of those couples had in public? Sheesh, it had become common gossip at this point to name the most opposed people as becoming mates. Was that what truly drove Blake to choose Isaiah and me?

If only I had kept the whole thing under wraps. I wouldn't be in this mess. I would be happily seated in my loft with a high-speed vibrator between my legs instead of this strange mixture of hot excitement and anxiety swirling in my core instead. Would that help? Or would that make things worse?

Goodness, it really didn't matter. I was trapped here. I was stuck under Isaiah's watchful eye. Everybody else was watching us too, waiting for the moment when we fell apart. We had likely joined the columns of gossip erupting around us. Surely this was entertaining to the neighbors.

I shook my head while angrily yanking comfortable clothes from my bag. If I was trapped, then I would take a long soak and clear my head. That would give me the illusion of having some kind of freedom.

Only some.

As I filled the tub with hot water and chamomile bubbles, I tried not to look at myself in the mirror. I tried not to focus on the fact that I was stuck with a bully.

And this time, my parents couldn't save me.