Unwanted: Mate Rejected Book 4 by Bale Eve

Author:Bale, Eve
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

14

HELENA

I pause in the cabin doorway, angling my head back to make sure Bennett is still sleeping beside the fire. When he doesn’t move, I turn away, grip the door handle and push it open, emerging into a morning so early that the sky is still black.

We made love and fell asleep wrapped in each other's arms, but I know it wasn’t what Bennett wanted. He was regretting it last night, and I can’t imagine he won’t be regretting it even more this morning, so it made it easy to slip out of his hold, quietly dress in my jeans, t-shirt, hoodie, and sneakers when the absolute last place I wanted to be was anywhere but in his arms.

Bennett might claim there’s nothing between us anymore, that all our feelings are dead and gone, but they aren’t. What we have—what we had—was so much more than attraction. We were mates, but we loved each other as well. I doubt those feelings will ever go away, regardless of how much Bennett might wish they would.

I grab my bag from the floor and pull the door closed as quietly as I can, blinking back the tears that want to fall. Bennett won’t let me go without an explanation about the men in the forest, and if I told him what I’d done and why they were after me, any lingering feeling he has would truly turn to hate.

There are some things I can stand, but I couldn’t stand that.

Better Daniel’s friends just shoot me. It would be a lot less painful.

I swing my bag onto my back as I set off at a fast jog. Bennett might be asleep now, but it won’t be for long. In New York, he always woke just before me, so to wake first was an opportunity I wasn’t about to waste.

It’s quiet and dark, and the only thing stirring in the forest is me as I jog away from the cabin. I still have no plan about where I’m going, but Daniel will show his face sooner rather than later. For him to have left the newspaper clipping that would have revealed my secret just outside the cabin, he is most definitely close by.

I’ve been running for ten minutes as, in the distance, the sun creeps into the sky, brightening the dim interior of the forest by slow degrees, when a familiar scent teases my nose.

Green apple and juniper.

Daniel.

I slow my jog to a walk, and then I stop.

Daniel doesn’t leave me to wait for long.

Just ahead, a blond man with hazel-green eyes, dressed in a pair of black sweatpants and a gray hoodie, emerges from behind a tree. He looks older than twenty-seven, thinner too, like he hasn’t been eating or sleeping well.

He smiles, and it’s the same expression I grew up with. It’s still Dan, my big brother. “Hi, Ela.”

I don’t smile back. “Daniel.”

He raises his eyebrow. “You used to call me Dan.”

“Yes,” I agree. “But that was a long time ago. You’re not the same, and neither am I.

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