Finding Home

Chapter Seven-Nathan

They waited for over an hour for Paige to return. Nathan was getting more agitated the longer they waited, fueled by Malcom who was beginning to rage. It was full dark now and Nathan was pacing. His worry for his mate was off the chart. When her sister also came back with out Paige, it only got worse. Sandra tried to feed them, but they refused. They had exhausted most topics of conversation and were now just sitting and waiting. They heard the door open another time and he smelled her scent. He immediately began to relax.

"I'm back!" She called as she entered the house. "Sorry I'm late, my phone died or I would have called. You didn't have to hold dinner for me. I-" She stopped as she entered the living room and saw them all. Nathan sighed when he saw she was alright. For a moment she just stared at him, and he thought for a moment she might be feeling the mate bond awaken. He started to take a step toward her but before he could she said,

"The fuck are you doing here?"
"Paige!" Her father said, shooting to his feet. "That is not how you speak to an Alpha."
"Good thing I don't see and Alpha then. Just a lying son of a bitch." Her gaze didn't waver from his. Her father blanched as Patrick and Allen shot to their feet. Werewolves tended to take offense to that word.

"Hold." Nathan said to his officers. "Paige, I just want to talk." He looked at her pleadingly.
"As I told you this morning, I have nothing to say to you. There's nothing for us to talk about, so you can leave now."
"Why don't we give you two the room." She mother said, motioning for everyone else to stand and follow her. They didn't get far.
"That's okay, mom. The Alpha and his men were just leaving."

"Rook, please." He said, hoping that the pet name he had for her would calm her down. It had the opposite effect.
"No!" She shouted at him, taking a few steps into the room. She shoved past his officers and got right in his face. "You do not get to call me that ever again!" Her scent washed over him and he struggled not to stumble. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her just like he had years ago.

"Paige, just let me explain," he pleaded.
"There is no explanation I care to hear from you." She said stepping back. "Nothing you say can take back what you did. If you aren't leaving then I am. Goodbye Nathan."

She turned and started to walk out when her father grabbed her by the arm. Malcom let out a growl inside his head. He did not like other people touching his mate so aggressively like that, family or no. She looked up defiantly at him.
"Paige," he said, letting his own growl slip out as he talked to her. "I don't care what sort of history you have here. The alpha has asked to speak to you and you will listen to him." She held his gaze for a second longer before lowering it.

"Yes father." Nathan's chest squeezed seeing her submit herself like that. She had told him once that she was never going home because she would never be submissive again. Seeing her do it now, under her fathers threat made his heart ache. This is not how he wanted this to go.

Her family all left the room. His men looked at him expectantly. "Go, I'll be fine."Patrick looked like he didn't want to go.
"We'll be in the hallway sir." He said looking back at Paige. His words were thinly veiled threat for her.

All to soon they were left alone together. She was staring at him with a hard gaze and he no longer remembered what he was going to say. He'd been thinking about it all day, what he'd say to explain what happened. To take back what he'd done. But now he was at a loss for words.

"Well?" She prompted. "You wanted to talk. So talk." She crossed her arms and leaned against the door everyone had just walked out of. As if she couldn't get far enough away from him.
"I don't..." he trailed off unsure of how to move forward.
"You don't know what to say?" She finished for him. "Imagine my surprise. You seemed to have plenty to say in Sydney.  And Auckland,  Borneo, Chang Mai," she listed cities he had tried to talk to her in. In every one of them, she had told him to get lost. "Hell, you even had plenty to say even Bali. But they were all meaningless words weren't they? Nothing of substance. Nothing real."

"Everything I said to you then was real. Every word. I never lied to you."
"Oh you never lied did you?" She asked with a cruel smile playing at her lips. "But you never told me the truth either. You left out some key bits of information. Even after I told you everything. You neglected to tell me you yourself were a wolf. That you were a fucking Alpha. You lied by omission. And a lie by any other name would smell just as rotten."

"I wasn't an alpha then. I was a second son, I was never supposed to be alpha." He said, a note of pleading crept into his voice. "I was going to tell you who I was. I was trying to find the words to tell you." She scoffed. "I just didn't know how you'd react. You spoke of your childhood with such hatred I was sure you were going to hate me too." She huffed out a laugh and looked at the ground as if it held the answers she wanted.

"I always knew you were a wolf." He looked up at her in shock. There was no possible way she could have known that. "I knew from the moment I saw you harassing that girl in the bar that you were a wolf." She looked back up at him. "That's why I told you off in Sydney, in Borneo. I wanted nothing to do with you." Her voice lowered as she pulled out the memory. "I thought you were just like every other wolf I've known and you were, at least in the beginning." She gave him a tight smile. "It wasn't until I saw you again in Chang Mai, that I began to think differently."

She paused and he waited for her to continue. "I saw you, three days before you saw me at the hostel. You were with those orphans. You were so kind and tender with them that I thought that maybe you weren't as bad. Maybe you were a softy at heart and the big bad wolf thing was a act. Maybe a wolf could actually be decent individual." She huffed out another laugh, "Guess you proved me wrong though didn't you." Her anger had faded and now hurt and bitterness laced her tone.

"Paige I-" he began. He wanted to go to her, to gather her in his arms, to make her pain go away. He wanted to say anything to make it better. But she cut him off again.

"Don't, Nathan. Just, don't. I can't do this with you." She sounded exhausted. "I can't go through this all again. You left me. You left me all alone on a beach in Bali. You just disappeared in the middle of the night with not even so much as a note." He was speechless. He didn't know what to say to that. It was true. He had done that and he'd regretted it ever since. He opened his mouth to say so but before he could form the words she started again.

"I waited, on that beach. I waited for two days thinking maybe you'd just gone to get supplies and got stuck. I convinced myself that you had written me a note but that it had been blown away in the wind. Then, when it was clear you weren't coming back I went back into town and I searched for you. I searched for you for three days." Her voice almost cracked from the pain. It made his heart ache, Malcolm whimpered at her pain.

"I was ready to contact the local packs to ask them to help me find you and you know how hard it would be for me to do that." He did know. Paige was adamant about cutting herself off from the packs. The thought of what she was willing to do for him stung a little. She was willing to do what she swore she never would to find him. And he had left her.

"It wasn't until I got back to Surabaya that I had access to the internet and I read your email. And then when I tried to reply, the automated message came back saying it was no longer in use. Three lines in an email that I couldn't even reply to. It was clear then what you thought of me." A tear she had been holding back escaped and rolled slowly down her cheek.

"I gave you all of me, Nathan. I gave you everything and you took it and disappeared and-" her voice hitched, she cleared it before continuing, "And you broke me." She wiped the tears from her face. "It took me a long while but I've pulled myself back together now. I have fixed myself up." She said, a hard edge entering her voice once more.

"I have a life that I love, with friends and people I consider family out in the human world. I am about to defend my dissertation and receive my doctorate. And then I'm going to do the work I love. I have a good life. A happy life. I don't want- I don't need anything from you. Not your reasons, not your excuses. Nothing." Her words cut through him like a knife. She pushed herself off the wall where she had been leaning.

"I will give you deference in public. I will be the perfect, submissive human in the wolf pack, but it is only for my family that I do that. Do not fool yourself into thinking it is out of any sort of care or respect for you or your title. As far as I see it, we are nothing. We do not need to speak to or interact with each other at all. I will attend my brothers binding ceremony and then I will leave. I will go back to my life and you will go back to yours and we need never think of each other again. Goodbye Nathan." With that she walked out door, and he feared, if he didn't find a way to fix this, out of his life forever.