Unforgivable - Sample Only! *To Be Published Oct 30 2020*

5 A Bargain - Sample Chapter

Lyri

I pull the soft cotton up to my thighs. I have no strength to stand up, yet. With a little wiggle I manage to move the panties up into place. It's all I can do for a few minutes. My body is heavy. My eyes ache from the endless tears that have been leaking out all night. My limbs feel dead. All of me feels like it's not really part of me. My body is this foreign mass, just a tumor within a tumor. I lie back down, exhausted just from that little effort.

Sometimes I think that everything that has happened over the last three years is just an illusion. A terrible dream. Before that night I used to think that the rejection was a nightmare and I would wake up and my mate would smile at me, be with me, praise me, protect me, love me.

My wolf knew before I did that it was hopeless. Our mate may be a strong, powerful male, but he is not ours. I would like to say that he is a terrible mate, but that's not true, is it? All of his praise, his protections, his smiles, his love, all of it went to her. Every bit of true affection was given to her while I begged and fought for the scraps. The sad thing is, every scrap thrown my way I lapped up as if it meant something real.

Now that I am lying here, in someone else's house, on a borrowed bed in borrowed panties, I have all the time in the world to think about every encounter, every word, every look. Three times he threw his scraps at me. The first, he told her friends once to stop calling me an ugly slut. The second, he stopped one of his friends from flirting with me. The last, he told Drew that it was partly his fault that we fucked.

What sort of affection was any of that really? I'm not an ugly slut. Well, I wasn't an ugly slut. That's up for debate now that I have scars on my stomach, my thighs. My wrists, maybe my face, who knows? That second time? He had to defend me. He would have defended anyone. That was early in our game, just a year after I realized that he was meant to be mine and finally felt whole enough to fight for him. I started to train harder, study more. I grew in popularity because I thought I could prove myself to be good enough. Truthfully, I thought I could prove that I was better than her, than his Choice. When his friends started to notice me, pay me more attention, he stopped it. I thought it meant he cared, that he was jealous. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. In the long run it hardly mattered. Now I am an ugly slut. I'm completely ruined as a female.

The last scrap of attention is the one that I wish I could forget. Minutes of true bliss only to be so shattered...

More tears slip out. Unlike last night it turns into real crying, my body heaving in ways that cause echoes of pain in my abdomen.

The door creaks open. Thjis walks back in. "Enough with the fucking tears," he grunts.

"Does it make my ugly?" I laugh. "Uglier?" I amend.

He doesn't care about my tears and I don't care about my nakedness. What do I have to hide anymore? My virtue? A tortured giggle escapes and I clamp my hand over my mouth, breathing ragged because my nose is stuffed up.

He walks over and stares down while I stare up. I think I'm hysterical. I can't stop the tears or the giggles. Maybe Thjis will probably do what he has wanted since the beginning and finally get rid of me. I hope he doesn't ruin the pretty quilt with my blood.

I stare up into his dark, fathomless eyes. Abruptly he reaches out and plucks the button-down shirt Ezra left for me. Strong hands manipulate my body, putting one arm in, then pulling the fabric behind my back and tucking my other arm in its sleeve. Fast fingers button me up, ignoring the nakedness underneath.

He picks me up. My giggles stop, but the tears are still flowing. I hate this. I have lost all control of my life. Thjis doesn't care about my inner turmoil. He kicks open the door a little and carries me out and into the kitchen.