Page 65 of Plus-Size Bullied Mate

“I’m not debating it either,” he says, and his tone has shifted to something more careful. “I don’t doubt the bond. I’ve watched you avoid it since you were a teenager, and I know what it looks like when a man is running from something that enormous. What I’m telling you is that the work isn’t done. The pack needs to come to terms with this, and that takes time. In the meantime, you’re going to need to hold the line without letting it make you reactive.”

I look at him, eyes narrowing slightly. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you know it and feel it. I also think it’s worth knowing that more people than you realize are watching how this goes and are prepared to follow your lead. Not because they’ve resolved their feelings about her family’s history, but because you’re their alpha and you’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.” He gives me that same look he always has whenever offering me important advice. “Give them something to work with. They need evidence, not arguments.”

This is Cole’s version of support, and I recognize it for what it is. Despite being a bit gruff or unyielding, even to me, I know he means well.

“I hear you,” I say. “But if they can’t see Tessa’s selflessness in how she helped Brooke’s family the other night, then I’m not sure there’s much else I can give them.”

He nods once, considering that for a moment. Then, he absently rubs at his stubble. “Even so, Hayes is still the more pressing issue.”

“He is.”

“Then what’s your plan?”

We start walking again, and I tell him about all the escalations the others have informed me of. We talk through it the way we’ve talked through difficult things for a decade. Cole asks the right questions, and I answer them, and by the time we’ve made it around the full loop of the path, I have a clearer operational picture than I had when we started.

Still, underneath the topic is a frequency the conversation doesn’t touch, and the very thing Cole can’t feel.

I close my eyes for a moment when Cole pauses to examine the damage to the perimeter fence on the east side, and I reach along the bond the way I’ve been learning to.

I can feel Tessa still within the pack grounds, warm, moving, and occupied by the woods around her.

A moment later, something comes back through the bond in my direction. It’s faint, and more of a sensation and an acknowledgment than a statement.

She felt me reach and didn’t close off from it.

The instincts that are always ready to kick into high gear settle in my chest.

All of my existing problems are still there, between Hayes looking for weak points, some of the pack’s unresolved grievances, Cole’s careful warnings about taking things slow, and the work ahead of me that I should’ve been building years ago.

None of it has simplified, and none of it is going away, but I know what’s expected of me.

I’ve been relatively alone in the middle of this alpha role ever since I returned. I’ve been alone in the final decisions, in the weight of it, but I don’t have to be anymore.

Tessa is on the other end of the line connecting the two of us, and regardless of whatever comes next, I have that.

Chapter 25 - Tessa

The woods smell different after the storm.

The soil is still darker, and the fallen branches have that deep, rich smell, pale and raw where they snapped.

I walk the trail without a particular destination, which is something I’m allowing myself to do again. The aimless walks through the woods because I can, rather than needing an escape from everything.

In ways, I still need to clear my head, but it’s lighter than it used to be.

It has been two days since the storm, and the conversation in our room that I’ve been turning over in my head carefully.

When I get distracted by the way he held me close and completed the purest form of the bond he possibly could, I have to force my mind back on course again. Back to the fact that he knew.

Ever since we were young, he knew, and he left instead of dealing with it.

The leaving and not doing anything about it part shaped a significant piece of my life that I lived inside for years without knowing how to properly handle it, or how to navigate my own inkling.

I felt that information settle in my chest like something falling into the place it was always supposed to be, and while it doesn’t fit easily and I can’t immediately forgive him, I don’t feel like I need to be furious with him either.

I can see the work that’s still ahead of us, which I’m not naive about, but I can see it differently now. Rather than something that was done to me, it’s an unfamiliar thing we both need to navigate, and have been before we even knew it.