Saving Briar

The door shut behind the massive hulk of a man as Briar stared up at the ceiling. She had willed her body not to turn to look at his back as he had walked away, afraid that if she did she might do something insane, like call after him, or something humiliating like begging him to crawl into the bed. For a moment she imagined him holding her against his chest until she stopped trembling. But she wasn’t about to allow herself to do either of those things and so instead she gathered up every ounce of self control, along with what remained of her pride, and forced herself to stay in bed until she could manage to get to the shower without doing something incredibly embarrassing.

Briar was not going to dwell on what he’d said, because she knew that if she did, it would give her hope and hope was the last thing that she needed. Torin had made it clear, repeatedly, that he wasn’t interested. Getting up into a sitting position, she stared at her reflection in the large mirror that hung on the wall across from the bed. Her cheeks were pink, her hair tousled, and she was surprised to find that she looked better than she had in quite a while. She was still half starved, it would take more than one meal for her to regain what she needed to be a healthy weight, but somehow she didn’t look nearly as rundown as she had on the previous day.

And that seemed impossible. Nothing had changed. Except she might be losing her mind. Why was she so distracted by the hulking Bear Shifter who, when she paused and strained her ears, she could hear pacing in the living room, when she had a mate?

“A mate that you’ve hardly thought of,” her wolf pointed out in the most unhelpful observation ever.

“What the Hell does that mean?” She asked as she stood up and realized that her legs were still a little bit shaky from the orgasm.

“You should ask the Kodiak out there for help getting into the shower. I bet he’d do it.” Her wolf was full of unhelpful tips this morning.

“Maybe you should keep your little slutty suggestions to yourself and focus on helping keep us alive. Think you can manage that?” She could practically feel her wolf’s ears laying flat against her head in annoyance.

“Listen Lovely,” Briar forced her tone to soften, even though she wasn’t feeling like being particularly gentle with anyone’s feelings, even her own. “I like him. You apparently like him too. But he’s made it clear that he’s unavailable. And right now we have more important things to worry about like where those wolves are that were out there yesterday and the fact that Cara still wants us dead, probably after she’s had us gang raped by half the pack, and I know that I’d rather avoid that fate, so let’s focus on staying alive and escaping our pack. Does that sound good to you?”

“Really hot Kodiak Bear shifter sex sounds better.” Briar’s eyebrows shot up, but she decided now wasn’t the time to argue with her wolf, because on this sort of thing the little furball would never give up. It was best just to ignore her antics.

Searching the floor she found Torin’s discarded t-shirt and pulled it on over her head with a sigh before walking out the door and heading straight towards the bathroom. She heard his cell phone ring as she closed the bathroom door behind her, not bothering to lock it. If she ended up needing help again she didn’t want him to have to break the door down to have to get to her. Hanging his shirt over the towel rack she tried to push all the thoughts of both Torin and her mate out of her mind as she turned on the water before tying her hair up. She hoped that she could wash away the embarrassment she was feeling at being shot down repeatedly by a man who’d had her laying naked in front of him on both his bed and his couch.

“First my mate and now this.” Briar let the water slide over her body as she tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “Going rogue has never looked this good. Maybe I can build my own cabin in the middle of nowhere and never speak to anyone ever again.” She rolled her eyes at the idea, which she knew would never work out. Eventually she would need to find out what was going on with her mom and sister.

“I didn’t think it would turn out like this either.” Her wolf’s voice was barely more than a whisper in her mind, but she was only saying what Briar already knew. It was something that Briar and her wolf had talked about since she had first transformed when she was twelve.

The young girl had been many things, but unlike most of her peers, she hadn’t been a hopeless romantic.

While just about every girl in her class had dreamed about being mated to an Alpha, Briar had wanted to be mated to someone steady and kind, like her father, someone who put his family first. He didn’t need to be a high ranking wolf. She didn’t have much use for the ranking wolves in her pack that she’d met. The sons of those men had never been particularly kind to her, even when they were all young, and she had learned early from her mother that kindness was important, especially in a mate.

Briar didn’t even care if her mate ended up being another Omega. If a family had two working adults they ought to be able to make it in the pack, and comfortably feed and clothe their family. The main problem that Briar and her mother had was that Briar was trying to go to school and take AP classes and get good grades, while also holding down a full time job. That was where things started to get a little more difficult. There still shouldn’t have been a problem though. The pack was supposed to take care of its own. Especially since her father had been killed defending the pack.

Still, while she’d wondered now and then, and discussed it with her wolf, Briar had never spent a huge amount of time thinking about her mate. There had always been too much to do and not enough time to get it all done, and when she fell into bed at night she was always so exhausted that the moment her head touched the pillow she was almost already asleep. But while it wasn’t something she thought about every day, she’d always assumed that she would have a mate. Everyone did. It was just how life was when you were a werewolf. Rejection was exceedingly rare and Briar wasn’t vain but she knew that she wasn’t hideous. Besides, who would give up the one person in their life that they were destined to be happy with.

Frowning, she tried to push the answer out of her mind, because she didn’t want to face it, even though she knew that it would be staring her in the face every day for the rest of her life. Her mate had decided it would be better to sever their bond, hell to do it before it even had a chance to fully form, and to probably have her killed too, rather than be with her, even though she was the one the Goddess had intended for him. It was nearly impossible not to be gutted by the realization that she’d been trying to push out of her mind.

Briar rinsed the soap from her body and turned off the water before grabbing a towel and wrapping it around herself as she searched for the t-shirt before remembering that she’d hung it over the towel rack. Was there really not a better option than that enormous thing?

Swinging open the door she kept the towel wrapped firmly around her body. She didn’t want to make Torin any more uncomfortable than he obviously already was. Opening the door she poked her head out, looking around for him, before the scent of coffee hit her nose, beckoning her towards the kitchen.

“Torin?” she called out softly, not wanting to go all the way to the kitchen dressed the way she was, or really wasn’t, but also hesitant to bother him. She was half tempted to turn around and grab the same shirt she had been wearing and throw it back on for a second day. It wasn’t as if she’d really been doing much of anything in it.

“Is everything all right? He made his way over to her in a matter of seconds, stopping short when he saw that she was only wearing a towel, her dark hair still piled on top of her head in a messy bun.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just wondering if you had anything else I could change into.” Her eyes dropped to the floor, unable to meet the intensity of his gaze as it swept over her, a confusing mix of desire and frustration written across his features.

“Let me find something. Come with me.” When she looked up again his brow was furrowed and he hadn’t moved as he stared down at her for a moment longer before shaking his head as if he were freeing himself from some spell. He nodded in the direction of a staircase that she had noticed, but hadn’t had the time to even think about, much less explore. Trailing behind him she kept one hand on the top edge of her towel, clutching it tightly. She tried not to imagine what it might feel like if Torin finally lost control, if he gave in to the desire that she saw reflected in his eyes, and tore the towel away from her body, letting them both have what they so desperately needed from one another.