He should tell her. He knew he should. But he wanted her to figure it out. For her to realize what he was to her. The call of the mate bond hadn’t just eluded him after all.
Pip had known Major was hers, regardless of the meds. Had Cinda known and simply evaded it?
When his Bear growled, a deep bellow that the man longed to release, he knew that was exactly what Cinda had done.
There was no other reason to go on birth control. Not unless she’d known, had always known, that he was her mate.
Rage washed through him, followed by a hurt so deep it was worse than any blow he’d ever known in a fight. Goddess, it was worse than the time he’d been sprayed by bullets on a field trip into another gang’s territory.
“How long have you known?” he asked softly, but his words were more a hiss than anything else.
“What do you mean?” she asked warily.
“Why are you back in Houston?” Jarvis asked, changing the subject. He wanted answers, and if he pushed too hard in one direction, she’d run off.
He could already sense her nervousness and could see in her body language she was prepared to rush off. She’d come to him but that didn’t mean he could shackle her here until he got all the answers he needed. Screw that. Deserved.
She didn’t mimic his pose. She hadn’t relaxed into the seat even though they’d been having a conversation. She was sitting upright, her elbows on the table as she leaned toward him. Perfect for immediately jumping into action and running away from him.
Again.
She frowned at him. “I was reassigned.”
“To Houston?”
“Yeah.”
“That was lucky, wasn’t it? Coming back to your home turf?”
She firmed her jaw. He could see the muscles tense and clench as she stated, “I might have put in a request for a transfer.”
The confession didn’t ease his anger. “Finally decide you were ready to meet your mate, did you?” he asked in a far softer tone than he’d realized he was capable of.
She immediately flinched and he knew he’d hit home.
“Why, Cinda? Why?” He shook his head at her. “Why would you do this to us?”
“You haven’t suffered,” she told him angrily. “You’re not the one who…”
When she broke off, he leaned forward, copying her posture. It was interesting that she chose that second to back away. “Who, what? Tell me, Cinda. Explain why you’ve avoided this. Us.”
She gulped. “I was too young. You were too young.”
His eyes flared wide at the bullshit excuse. He slapped his hand against the table, so hard that the sound rang around the room and his palm stung in response.
When the chatter of a two hundred teenagers came to an abrupt halt in response to his move, he sucked in a breath, seeking control. The last thing these kids needed was to see him out of control, to believe that he wasn’t the source of safety he’d always tried to project onto them.
“Lies,” he hissed before he turned to the crowd and forced a smile. “It’s okay,” he called out. “Enjoy your dinner.”
He knew the kids carried on watching them and he felt their eyes crawl over them as they slowly but steadily went back to their earlier conversations.
In the time it took for that to happen, Cinda had started to tremble; a fine quiver overtaking her limbs, and he watched, unfeeling, as she unraveled before him.
“I wasn’t ready to mate,” she whispered, closing her eyes as though that harsh truth was more than she could stand.
Goddess, she thought it was hard for her to say aloud. How the fuck did she think it felt for him to hear it?
“But you’re ready now?” he snarled at her, uncaring that she flinched. His Bear didn’t approve of his line of questioning. All the Bear wanted was to wrap her in his arms, take her to the nearest flat surface that was in complete privacy, and Claim her as his.
The Bear didn’t want to talk. He wanted action.
Pity for the Bear that at that moment all the man wanted was answers.
And until he had them all, until he knew exactly what in the hell kind of game she was playing, there would be no Claiming.
For years his brother Chris had fought the mate bond. As had his mate, Mars’s daughter, Ava. For weeks, Mundo and his mate, Christie, had had to withhold the mate bond. As had Jessie and Spyder.
And so too had Cinda, it would seem.
He’d known her for nearly forty years. She’d lied to him for forty years.
Four wasted decades of loneliness, and all because she hadn’t felt she was ready to mate.
If the tables had turned and she’d suddenly decided she was ready, then there was no way he was going to make it easy on her.
If it made him a bastard, then that was her fault. Not his.
A rejection spanning nearly half a century was the reason for that, and she’d just have to accept the consequences for her stupid, stupid decision to avoid him and their mate bond.
JARVIS Chapter 2
Seeing Jarvis was always bittersweet.
Bitter because of the choices she’d made long ago. Choices that had set her on a path which led her on her current course of action.
On the other hand, it was sweet because, Goddess, he was her mate.
Her She Bear hated leaving him. Every time, it grew harder and harder. This time, it would be nearly impossible. The conscious decision to go off the human birth control was one that had been decades in the making. Living without the limitations on her hormones had made the past six months very interesting.
Interesting read tortuous.
She let out a sigh and deciding that neither defense or offense was going to work here, so she sat back against the uncomfortable dining chair. It had a spindly back and those spindles dug into her spine in all the wrong places. Regardless, comfort was never going to be a factor in this conversation.
She could be sitting on a goddamn cloud and would still feel uncomfortable as fuck.
That was her punishment, she guessed.
Or, at least, it felt like one to her. In Jarvis’s mind, she probably deserved an ass whooping.
She guessed she had to be grateful that even back in the days when a man hitting his wife didn’t raise an eyebrow, Jarvis had never been like that. He’d always been courteous. Kind. Respectful of women.
An anomaly.
It was one of the reasons why it had been so hard to leave him behind and go off on her own. But writing was a vocation. It wasn’t something she could give up easily, and she’d had to explore those ambitions or forever have regret for failing to fulfil those goals.
She didn’t fold her arms even though it was instinctual to do so. She sat there, arms at her side, vulnerable with her head bowed down, eyes glued to the table. Slowly, she flickered her gaze up until it washed over him.
His rage was… well, it was far worse than anything she’d ever seen from him.
Jarvis was one of those guys who looked terrifying, but was actually a BFG. He was nearer seven feet than six, and nearly three-fifty pounds in his skin—and yeah, she’d seen him in his skin. Just the memories made her grow hot inside and out.
Shivering a little, she saw the rage contorting his usually gentle features. He had a stubborn jaw and a look about him that reminded her of Chris Hemsworth. Except Jarvis had been around a lot longer than the Australian had, so maybe Chris looked like her man.
Not that she had the right to call Jarvis that.
Not yet, at any rate.
Soon, though. Hopefully.
She gulped as his dark blue eyes seemed to ripple with emotion. The cerulean depths were like an ocean shore that was being bombarded with waves.
His Roman nose, always prominent, was flared at the nostril as his outrage manifested itself physically. The skin about his lips and chin were blanched, bleached of color as he tried to process his rage and ultimately failed.
It was hard to stay back in her seat. She wanted to lean forward, needed to
implore when Cinda had never begged for shit from anyone. But this was her mate.
And she’d denied him his mate for decades.
Not accidentally. Not for any reason like his Prez’s daughter who had discovered her mate at far too young an age—her brother’s mate, Christie, had told her all about that.
No, she’d avoided the bond for ambition.
Sheer, ruthless, bloody-minded ambition.
Goddess, what had she been thinking?
“I’m sorry, Jarvis.” She hadn’t planned to say that, but the words had just blurted free.
She’d been helpless to keep them back because they were the truth.
“You’re not. You’re sorry that you have to tell me now. That you can’t finagle your way into making me believe the mate bond is a new chapter for both of us.”
She blew out a shaky breath. “That’s another reason why I’m sorry. But this can’t start out with more deception.”
“And you think you have the right to decide that, do you?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing dangerously as he leaned into the table, making the damn wood groan with the pressure he was exerting upon it.
“I-If I hadn’t come here today, you would still be in the dark about all this,” she said on a low whisper, dropping her gaze because those waves in the expanse of blue were more intense than she could cope with at that moment.
“So, you expect me to be grateful then?” he asked, his tone close to conversational now.
She eyed him warily, and biting her lip, stated, “Of course not. I-I didn’t have to come.”
“It’s all about you, isn’t it, Cinda?” He shook his head at her. “Everything you’ve done, every decision you’ve made, it’s always been about you. Your life. Your future. Your world, and undoubtedly, your career.” He was seething and the words attacked her like shrapnel from a dirty bomb that embedded itself in the softest, most tender parts of her body.
She could feel herself bleeding from the cut of each shard.
“No, it wasn’t like that,” she tried to defend herself.
“Of course it was,” he snapped, loud enough to make the room fall silent once more. He inhaled roughly, took a quick look around the dining hall and tried to convey that all was well with a false smile.
It didn’t work.
These kids could read faces. They knew something was going on. They could see it as well as smell it.
They didn’t have to be Shifters to know all was not right with their usually placid friend.
“You never took into account that I’m nearly Mars’s age. That I’m nearly two-fifty, did you?” he demanded. “You never thought about me. What a separation would do to me. All you thought about was how the bond would affect you.”
Stung, she sat upright. “That isn’t fair. How is what you said anything other than what you’re accusing me of?”
He shook his head. “Because I’m two-fifty, and you’re barely sixty. There’s a huge difference, and don’t try to pretend you don’t know it because that would be bullshit. Oh, but wait, that’s what you’re used to spewing at me, aren’t you?” he snarled. His hands came up to cover his face a split second before he rubbed the palms over cheeks and pressed into his eyes. “You know the older a Bear gets without its mate, the lonelier he feels. The more isolated he gets. And the more aggressive and volatile he becomes as a result. You didn’t think about that, though. You didn’t care.”
Her bottom lip trembled. “I was young.”
“That’s no excuse,” he snapped, his hands falling away so he could lance her with his glare. “We could have done it together. You could have gone around the country and done whatever the fuck you wanted. But we’d have been mated. We wouldn’t have been alone.”
“It was something I needed to do by myself,” she said softly, dropping her gaze to her lap. “I needed to know I could do it without help.”
He let out a snarl. “I need not to be seated opposite you right now,” he confessed gruffly.
She blinked, astonished, as he scraped back the chair and got to his feet. When he started to walk away from her, her shoulders dropped in further bewilderment. Leaping to her feet, she demanded, “Where are you going?”
The note of panic in her voice was unavoidable. It didn’t stop her from grimacing at it though, or at herself.
She sounded positively scared, and Jarvis, for all his might, wasn’t a man she could ever fear. Not only because he was her mate, but she’d seen him at his very best and his very worst. Of course, those parameters would be affected once they mated, but for now, her memories worked in her favor.
When he paused, hovering in his tracks down the middle of the dining area, she saw tension fill his plaid shirt-shod shoulders. “Please,” she whispered softly, and the word was barely spoken; mostly carrying on the sound waves by desperation alone so quiet was it. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”
He didn’t move. His back still turned away from her.
She watched his shoulders heave, saw the tension fill his body as though he was about to move, and felt more fear shudder through her. He was going to leave her.
He was going to abandon her.
The agony hit her square in the gut.
She knew it was unfair. Knew that her actions had placed him in her situation, that she’d effectively abandoned him. But he hadn’t known. She did. She knew that if he walked away now, it was intentional.
Designed to hurt.
She’d never wanted to hurt him.
She’d just hated the conformity that would be demanded of her once she was mated.
Things were different now.
Back when she’d been of Claiming age, it had been the eighties, dammit. Shifters had been even more behind than humans when it came to equality amid the sexes. It wasn’t exactly great now, but back then? It had been a nightmare.
She’d been terrified of being like her mother.
A slave to her father, tied to the kitchen stove. But worst of all? Enslaved to his lusts. Because those lusts were mutual. Her father could get her mother to do anything.
Nothing had ever been said between dam and daughter, yet nothing had ever had to be said.
She felt certain there had been no abuse between her parents, but still, that lack of control was abhorrent to her.
She’d been too terrified at the notion that she would be like that. And when her brother had brought Jarvis home, and she’d realized what he was to her, she’d known that she’d share a similar fate.
That if he but ask it of her, she’d do anything he wanted. Be anything.
Even now, after all these years later, her independent forged a different woman who had made her stronger and more secure in her own capabilities. Maybe, if she explained, he’d understand.
That all depended on whether or not he remained or turned away from her. Whether he stepped off and left her alone.
She was as frozen as he. As frozen as the rest of the dining hall’s occupants. She knew the kids were all watching them. Knew they were intrigued as to what was happening.
Cinda didn’t even have to wonder why.
Jarvis was one of those guys. Always even-tempered. Extremely slow to anger. Only she’d been able to prick his mood, piss him off and have him raging faster than a Ferrari hitting sixty miles an hour.
He should have realized that only a mate would have such a hair trigger effect on him.
His shoulders heaved once more, hunching down as he turned around. He trapped her gaze with his, his jaw still stony as he stepped toward her.
The tic on his jaw flickered as he gritted his teeth. He didn’t say anything. She had his presence, that was something. Words, at this moment, had to come from her.
“Do you remember my father?”
He jolted a little at the question. Good. She’d obviously taken him aback.
“Of course. I went to his funeral.”
There was a reprimand in his voice. And she knew why. “I was in Bosnia.”
“Doesn�
�t matter.”
“Sure it does,” she confessed, bridging her fingers together and staring down at them. “I nearly caused an international incident trying to get back.” Her mouth quirked up at the side, but there was no humor buried in the half smile. Only pain. “Almost decked a general to force him to bring me home. Nothing worked. They couldn’t get me on a flight in time.”
He blinked at her. “Do I want to know?”
“I can tell you. Some other time. In any other circumstance, it would be quite amusing. It’s also a classified situation.”
That had him gawking at her. “Classified?”
She waved a hand. “I’ve been around the block or two, Jarvis. What can I say?”
“Goddess, I think I need whiskey.”
Her smile was a little more at ease at his desperate words. “Driven to drink already?” she teased.
“You always were a minx,” he retorted gruffly. Shaking his head at her, he continued, “Carry on with what you were saying.”
She nodded. “I loved him, don’t get me wrong. My father wasn’t the greatest man. And if you asked Mundo, I’m not sure if he was even a good one. But with me, I felt like he loved me. He didn’t show it often, but I felt loved.”
“You were his only daughter,” Jarvis said darkly. “Of course he loved you.”
“Is anything really as simple as that?” she asked, shaking her head at him. “My point is, I loved him, but I’d watch the way he was with my mother and I was terrified I’d end up the same way.”
“They weren’t happy together?”
She hesitated. “I couldn’t say.”
“What do you mean?”
“They appeared it, but my mother was… she was chained to him in a way that terrified me. If he asked her to jump, she’d ask how high. That kind of thing.”
Jarvis rolled his eyes. “I can see why that would terrify you.”
“Don’t joke, Jarvis,” she whispered, suddenly deadly serious. “That’s why I had to go. Why I had to be my own woman. The minute I scented you, I knew things were changing. At first, I wasn’t sure how, and then I didn’t care. There was a class at school, a program for birth control. They thought I was a human so they assigned me standard birth control, and I took it. I sensed the mate bond flourishing between us, but you didn’t so I knew it worked.”
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