Page 25 of Plus-Size Bullied Mate

“Tessa, I’m serious.”

I take a small step back, shaking my head to deflect. “Don’t use that against me.”

“I’m not using it against you. I’m asking you to stop pretending it isn’t real.”

“It’s not real!”

He goes quiet then, almost to a painful degree. Regardless of how suffocating the space between us becomes, I keep myself in it with my chin up and my heart hammering against my ribs.

“I was hoping that you’d come to this on your own terms like I’m trying to,” Hunter murmurs, expression a bit more grave now. “But it seems you won’t.”

The way he says it makes my skin feel like ice, and I narrow my eyes at him. “What does that mean?”

He meets my eyes, and his remain steady while he takes a slow breath.

“It means that you’re going to be my mate, and I’m claiming you in front of the others,” he says, but it lacks any real affection, since genuine warmth is impossible right now. “I don’t want to force this on you, Tessa, but I won’t leave you unprotected and unclaimed in a world that just tried to take you.”

The cold front penetrates beneath my skin and spreads throughout my body, forcing me to freeze up entirely.

Staring at him in complete disbelief, I barely manage to speak.

“You wouldn’t.”

Hunter says nothing, and that feels like the worst answer he could give me.

He’s entirely serious, and regardless of what I think or feel, he plans to follow through with the most absurd idea I’ve ever heard.

Tessa, the pack outcast and the daughter of apparent traitors, was claimed by the new alpha. Nobody will believe it, least of all me.

Chapter 8 - Hunter

I’ve made harder calls than this. I’ve endured worse in situations with much higher stakes.

I tell myself that asI’m standing at the kitchen counter at six in the morning, while my coffee goes cold in my hand, and I listen to the silence from the hallway, which means Tessa is either still asleep or awake and refusing to make a sound.

She’s been doing that lately… moving through the house like she wants to deny me even the knowledge of her presence. As if I wouldn’t know she’s here, as if I haven’t known, on some frequency I don’t have a name for, exactly where she is in every room since the moment I brought her here.

I’m more attuned to her than she could imagine, and it isn’t going away just because she doesn’t want it. I spent long enough avoiding this thing that wants to grow between us to know that it won’t just fade. After all these years, it still hasn’t, and part of me is tired of pretending.

With her safety on the line, that fact has ballooned tenfold, and as much as I don’t want to force this on her, I’ll risk her despising me even longer if it means knowing she’s protected.

Pouring the coffee down the sink, I exhale and try to wrap my head around everything, which makes me restless.

I’m annoyed with myself after yesterday, when I handed her an ultimatum instead of something that might’ve gone down easier. The look of pure shock on her face when I said it, only for it to go cold and hard when I pushed further, isn’t something I’m particularly proud of.

After spending a long time working through situations that required me to be precise and deliberate, I wasn’t either in that moment. I was a man at the end of his rope, informing her of exactly what was going to happen, hoping the authority in my voice would fill the gaps that patience should have.

My patience ran out far sooner than it should have, and now, Tessa’s furious with me. Maybe even that’s an understatement.

I call the meeting for noon, despite how these things would normally wait until later, when the humans are tucked away for the night and less likely to stumble upon pack business. But right now, I can’t wait.

It goes out through the usual channels, and by quarter-to, the clearing behind the main community building fills up with pack members arriving in clusters. They keep their voices low, with what I can only assume is current speculation from people who know something significant is looming, and they want to figure out what.

I watch from the tree line for a few minutes before I walk in, and I see the moment the energy shifts when I emerge. Conversations taper off as bodies orient themselves to seem more attentive, and they look at me with the reverence every alpha hopes for.

This is the part I’ve never had trouble with. The authority and the silence that follows me in… I was made for this, and later trained to know exactly how to handle it.

My father used to say the pack doesn’t follow the title, but it follows the weight and conviction behind the one given it. Later on, Cole proved it to me, too.