He’d been with her for three days and he’d avoided any talk of the joining ceremony. She hadn’t bothered to take him back to Lex and Nina’s and he hadn’t asked to go.

  She had to face that he didn’t want her, not who she was. He wanted a human woman and she couldn’t give that to him. She wasn’t human and damn it, if he loved her, he wouldn’t want her to try and cut out her heart the way he had.

  She knew he run. She saw it in his face. But she wouldn’t push. How fair would it be for

  her to do that? He had to come to her and accept not only what she was but what he was too. She had enough issues in her life, living a lie was just beyond the amount of energy she had to expend. And she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to pass as human.

  She’d had hope when he got there Thursday night and now she had none. All she had was the thought of being bound for the rest of her life to a man who didn’t love her and never would. She cry at the unfairness of it all but she’d wait until she was alone.

  “Megan, are you?” he asked softly.

  “Go to sleep. You have an early flight.”

  “You’ve been distant since Thursday night. I thought you try and make this work.”

  She turned to him. “Don’t do this now. Just go to bed.”

  “Do what?”

  Rage suddenly boiled up and she punch him. “Are you really going to do this now?

  Because I’m not going to play. If you push me, you’re going to get it all. Is that what you want?”

  “Of course I want you to talk to me! I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want it.”

  “Fine. No, I’m not. You’re a damned liar and I am sick of being your piece of werewolf ass.”

  He jerked back as if she’d slapped him but she caught the guilty look in his eye and it only made her angrier. “What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “What wasn’t I clear on? You tell me you want to come up to visit. You tell me you want to get to know me but really, all you want is to fuck me want to know me. You hate what I am and you actually make me feel ashamed. Never in my life has anyone made me feel ashamed of what I am. Until you. You’re supposed to love me and you make me feel like a back alley whore.”

  “I don’t understand. What have I done to make you feel this way? Why would you save this all up until right before I left?”

  “What have you done to make me feel any other way? I have tried to be understanding. I have tried to slowly introduce you to my life. But you don’t want to know want to go on hikes want to meet my friends and family want to know about my life want to fit into it at all. Let’s be honest, Shane, you don’t want me for anything but shoving your dick into.

  And I let you. I love it when you fuck me so what does that make me? Huh?”

  “A woman who likes to have sex with her husband, that’s what it makes you! And you don’t want to introduce me to your life, you want me to be a card carrying member of the werewolf party.”

  “You’re not my husband. You are a man ruled by his cock. You Claimed me because you were hot to fuck me but you don’t talk to me like you talk to Layla. You don’t talk to me at all. And you are so fucked up. You are a werewolf. YOU ARE A WEREWOLF! You really should get some help with your denial. And your mother needs to be slapped.

  Don’t bother defending her, I’ve already had the pleasure of a phone call with her so don’t try it.”

  Confusion, guilt and hurt swamped him, followed by anger and then the last bit of her sentence registered. “You called my mother?”

  “Oh for…” She got up and began to get dressed in short jerky movements. The bitter scent of unshed tears filled the room and he get on his knees and beg her forgiveness.

  He’d been a total prick, cold except in bed since she’d brought him back to her house Thursday night. “Your mother called me. Yesterday when you were taking a nap, as it happens.”

  “Where are you going? You can’t just spring this on me and leave.” He got up to follow as she left the room.

  “To sleep in the guest room. I think it’s best. I can’t take any more rejection from you without breaking and I don’t want to cry any more.”

  He go to her. Wanted to make it okay and yet he stood rooted to the floor, watching his life spiral out of control. “You’re not going to walk away from me. Let’s work this out. What did my mother say?”

  “Ask her yourself, Shane. I’m not her fucking errand girl. She’s bat shit crazy and I am having no part of this mess.”

  “Please talk to me. How can we fix it if you don’t talk to me?”

  “Don’t do this to me. It’s so cruel.” She gasped as her tears broke free and began to stream down her face.

  “Please, Megan, don’t cry.” He moved to her but she held a hand out to ward him off.

  Within him, his wolf pushed harder than he’d ever felt, needing to fix her, needing to comfort her. He fell to his knees with an anguished growl as he fought it.

  And her arms were around him, her scent, bittersweet with anguish, pain, love and regret, calmed and soothed even as it made him want to cry himself.

  “Let it go. You don’t want this. I accept it. I love you so much. You can’t possibly know how much. Because I love you, I’m letting you go. The bond is irrevocable, I can’t make it go away but you can be free. I’ll arrange to have you driven to the airport tomorrow morning. Don’t call me. Just ride out the need and hopefully it’ll lessen.” She stood up and he heard the door open and close and he was alone.

  Chapter Ten

  Dully, he drove from the airport back to his house. She hadn’t come back the night before and hadn’t answered her phone. Layla had come to take him to the airport but had been very closemouthed about where Megan was.

  As she dropped him at the airport she’d turned to him. “If you let my sister slip through your fingers you’re an idiot. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Don’t let your fear fuck this up. Is it so bad? To be a werewolf? To accept what you are as well as what she is? Because it’s pretty wonderful. It’s what I am. What Sid is. What you are. Do

  it, for your sake and for hers. You’re so very close to losing her forever. If you don’t wise up now, you’ll never have a close bond with her. But she has an Anchor, about that. And you tell that mother of yours if she ever calls my sister again unless it’s to apologize I will fly to Vegas and smack her ass down myself. She’s messed your head up big time but I won’t allow her to make my sister feel ashamed of what is right and natural. The bond is right, and you know it. It’s not too late.”

  But she wouldn’t tell him what his mother had said and he’d gotten out of the car and onto the plane.

  His house was empty. Stale. A pretty façade with nothing inside, just like he was.

  He went through the motions as the days passed. He tried to call, over and over but she never answered. The ache of her absence burned a hole into him until heliterallyhowl out his frustration and loneliness.

  At first he’d just dug in. Worked fifteen hour days. Slept when he wasn’t working, but the ache, the need of her sizzled through him every moment of the day, interrupted his dreams. He knew he was wrong, knew she was up there alone and he wrestled with going to her.

  It was as if he were outside his life, looking in while someone else lived it. Had he always been this damned disconnected? He didn’t seem to care about anything. His entire day was shuffling to work, calling Megan and leaving yet more voicemails, trying to get his mother to give him answers and wondering what it would feel like should his fucking life ever get turned on.

  “What thefuckety fuck is your issue?” Layla demanded when she called him two weeks later. “Okay so when I was all, you’regonna lose her and stuff when I dropped you off at the airport did I was practicing lines for some play I was going to be in or what? Shane, what is wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know! Look, why can’t things be easy?”

  “Shut the fuck up. Did you just whine to me? You, a nearly forty-year-old man. A successful doctor, a man with ahella amazing wife who is broken into pieces over his seeming lack of emotion where she is concerned. You have everything and you’re pissing it away to live alone with human women who occupy your bed for twenty minutes and no friends and no real connection to your family? And look at me! You’re making me talk in italics and stuff. You know how I hate that. Why are you not here?”

  He actually laugh for the first time in weeks. God he had so missed Layla, and talking to her just made him miss Megan even more and the laugh died away. “There are no other women. I wouldn’t do that to her. Anyway, she told me to go.”

  “So, you want to guess who came to dinner at Lex and Nina’s on Sunday with Megan?

  Adam. Yeah, he’s being a very good friend right now. An Anchor. Of course Megan just walks around with dead eyes and her skin looks like hell and she doesn’t see the way Adam looks at her. But I do and you’re a damned fool. Get over your childhood already.

  Stop acting like you’re starring in a Woody Allen movie. Put on your big girl panties and get up here. If you don’t I will beat you.Dumbass . Sid sends his love.”

  She hung up before he could argue and he put his phone down with a long sigh. Woody Allen movie indeed. What did she know about it? Her and her damned perfect family.

  He had to get out of the house and he needed to eat so he headed to a diner on the outskirts of town. Away from the lights and the tourists. This was old world Vegas where the food was cheap, came in heaping portions and the waitresses called him sugar and put an extra scoop of vanilla on his warmed apple pie.

  “Hey there! It’s Doctor Shane Rosario.” Gina, the woman who’d been serving up his pot roast and slice of pie for as long as he could remember, winked at him as he came in.

  He kissed her cheek and she squeezed his arm. “The usual? Although we got some cherry pie tonight, better than the apple.”

  “Okay, I trust you.”

  As he sat and looked out at the waning light fading from the bruise-purple sky, he opened himself up and took a look. Not pretty. Sort ofwussy for a man who’d always prided himself on doing the grown-up thing.

  He looked out over the restaurant after his food arrived, taking in the clientele ranging from twenty-something, pierced punk rockemo kids to old guys with sandals and socks.

  “You okay?” Gina propped a hip on the edge of the booth across from him. “You look down tonight.”

  “How’s your husband, Gina? Last time I was in he’d had some problems with his diabetes.”

  She smiled. “Aww, such a good boy you are! Thanks for asking. Don is good. His medication is working and he’s finally taking care of his diet. Him and the sneaking off to eat junk! But you know, in the big picture he chose me over lots of bread and potatoes and boxed food. I’d rather have him alive and with me than not. Thank goodness he feels the same.”

  Her husband was a retired air force pilot. She’d worked as a waitress at the Silver Dollar since his dad had first brought Shane there for pie when he was nine or ten years old.

  They had kids a bit older than Shane. Her husband, Don had developed type two diabetes and had been in and out of the hospital as they’d tried to get it under control.

  “That’s good to hear. You know, I met someone. Married her. I hope some day I can have as many years under my belt with her as you and Don do.”

  She laughed. “Oh that’s wonderful news! You two fighting? Is that why the long face?

  Let me give you some advice, doctor. Love isn’t enough. Love isn’t enough so you have to work your tail off to make up that last twenty percent. Don’t rely on love, rely on your head and your heart and the knowledge that working and being in love is way better than

  slacking off and having it all fall apart later. Some people are doormats, that’s not working love. But some people expect the other person to just drop everything. What do you want? What do you want together? Once you know that and once you’re both working on the same team, you’re unbeatable.”

  Love wasn’t everything or she’d be there with him now, having given up her entire life to be his wife. And if he really loved her, would he want her to do that?

  “Your kids are lucky to have you and Don as an example.”

  She shrugged. “We had our moments. Our thin times. People make mistakes, sometimes big ones that hurt. Sometimes you can forgive but forgetting is another thing. But I love that man and he loves me enough to give up all thosecarbs and refined sugars.”

  Squeezing his shoulder, she dropped off the check. “You be sure you work hard for this girl. And bring her around here so I can check her out. I’m off shift and I need to get home or I’d stay to hear all about her. You come back in here soon, you got me?”

  He nodded. “Tell everyone I said hello.”

  “You tell your daddy the same.”

  Dropping the money on the table, he headed out. Was he supposed to go to therapy now?

  Have someone tell him his mother issues keep him from having a real relationship with…holy shit, he was acting as if he was starring in a Woody Allen movie.Hekick his own ass.

  Yes, his mother was the source of a lot of this but so was his father and he was way past the age where he could be blaming his damned parents for being an idiot.

  Since his mother doggedly refused to answer his questions about her discussion with Megan, he finally drove over to his parents’ house to demand answers. He needed to move forward in his life.

  His mother waited at the door for him as he approached. “It’s about time you showed your face around here. Youhaveto tell me, don’t you?”

  He opened the screen door and dropped a kiss on her cheek before going into the house.

  The house he’d grown up in and had always felt like he should appreciate but one he was relieved to move out of for college and medical school.

  “I hear tell you’ve had a little chat with my wife and I thought I’d see just exactly what you said to her since you wouldn’t tell me over the phone. I figured Dad would have told you about me and Megan.”

  His father sat in his favorite easy chair, near the big picture window looking over the wildness just a few blocks away. Shane suddenly got it and part of him ached for his father while another part raged.

  “Don’t expect me to do your work for you, boy. Anyway, what exactly would I be telling her?”

  “Hey, Dad.” He paused to kiss his dad’s temple and a bloom of emotion unfurled, comfort, he realized and wondered if it had to do with a father-son thing or a werewolf thing. God he was messed up.

  Tension thickened the air in the room though. Expectancy hung heavy and he realized it was all the avoidance he’d built up over the last month.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Shane, and I hope you’re here to tell us you’re moving to Seattle to be a husband to your mate? Or is it that you chose the easy route of self loathing and stayed here while your beautiful Megan floundered? What will you feel when she finally gives up and finds some measure of happiness with another man?”

  He looked at his father, hurt stinging his eyes and all the words built up over his lifetime threatening to explode.

  “That’s rich coming from you!”

  His dad heaved a sigh. “It is.”

  “Enough! So you went to Seattle to see her then? Did you turn furry at her beck and

  call?”

  He turned slowly at the verbal slap. “What did you say to her?” He tried to keep his temper down. She often made him antsy, made him feel his skin fit all wrong.

  “What did she tell you I said? I imagine it was quite a tale. Her kind doesn’t seem to know her place.” The bitterness in his mother’s voice cut at him. Why was she so unhappy?

  “Haven’t we done enough to mess with him, Sheila? He has the chance to be happy, why can’t we unite to help him? And if you recall, I’m her kind. Your son is her kind.” His father rarely engaged with her but anger flashed in his eyes just then. “Why don’t you tell us both what you said to the girl?”

  “Mess with him? By keeping him away from that world and grounding him in one where there are no monsters? We did what was best. You and I agreed! As for the girl as you call her? I told her she wasn’t good enough for him and she isn’t! This chemical mumbo jumbo makes him want to rut on her but that’s all it is. Sex. He can’t love her. She’s a monster. I told her she’d make his life a hell unless she gave up being a werewolf like you did.” She turned back to Shane. “He did it for me and she could do it for you if she wanted to. But she won’t because she’s an animal. You’re better than that. I was just saying what had to be said. I love you and I want what’s best for you. If you wanted this girl you wouldn’t be here, you’d be there. That’s proof enough.”

  And it hit him then. Hard. God, she was right. He’d been dancing around this crap and it was right in his face.

  “How can you look at him for forty-three years and think he’s a monster?” Shane turned to his father who’d moved to stand. “And you?Packless . How? Why? Don’t you miss your people? Your family?”

  “I love her. I loved her then and I love her now and she was so afraid. So I got caught up in it and I thought it was best because it made her happy but now I look at it, at you, our

  son and I see we both failed. You are not a monster. Neither is Megan. The mate bond ismiraculous. You’re not bound to her to your detriment, it makes you better. You are a werewolf. She is a werewolf. So strong your woman. She has a Pack who will take you in, shelter you, give you the connection you need. Take it! Don’t hide from what you are because I did you wrong. I’m sorry. I love you, Shane, and I want you to be happy. You can’t be happy if you deny what you are.”