For Fox's Sake (#3, Completed)

6. Lili be damned

NATALIA

All the revelations of the day kept playing in my head. The people involved were different, and so were the circumstances, but all boiled down to the same-I was weak. Fragile. Too delicate for the truth, too frail for my mate. Not strong enough to be a Macalister, nor to be embraced by the man who was fated to be by my side.

Yes, I was an Omega. Yes, I was shy and reserved. I kept my emotions to myself-well, most of the time-because the emotions of others were already enough for me. And yet, everyone mistook my calm, my quietness, my need for avoiding conflict as helplessness.

I was no pushover... or so I wanted to believe.

And yet you let your mate walk away from you without a fight, the voice of doubt kept whispering in my head.

That I did. I gave up before even trying to fight for my mate bond.

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I was not good enough for him. Not strong enough.

He is hiding something, Ciara mindlinked while she kept running through the forest, setting further away from Windfire. I tried to mindlink his fox, but the human blocked me.

She was right. There was something there, amongst all the anger and darkness that he was keeping inside. I could sense that something was troubling him, and it was more than him being mated to me.

Or maybe I was just looking for excuses, something to justify why he wouldn't want me. Something that was not about me not being what he wanted.

Ciara's stomach pitted in tight coils, while blood coursed chaotically through her veins, reflecting my emotions and the dread at the possibility that perhaps I was the problem indeed. She pushed to go faster in an attempt to rid both of us of that idea, but while she focused on the trail she was taking, my thoughts still lingered on the horrifying thought that my mate truly didn't want me.

I was relieved to see that Scarlett and Callum had made it back to their place by the time I got the Highland Bears sleuth. It was not my intention to come here when I left the tribe's estate, but I remembered they left early because of their toddler and it was the one safe place I knew Rafe was not going to look for me, as I was certain he would have checked with Riley's brother and his mate at Blackwood first.

Shifting back, I used the ring that Seraphine and Victor, Riley's warlock adoptive parents, had gifted the whole family with to help us materialise clothes after shifting, to change back into my party dress. To be honest, they were probably fed up with having Rafe and Aiden show up naked every so often, so the rings were more for the Boswells' benefit, but they certainly came in handy.

Luckily, I had shifted back right next to Callum's Alpha cabin because it would have been pretty complicated to trek around the sleuth in high heels, even if I took them off pretty quickly.

"Nat?" Scarlett's surprised face greeted me when she opened the door with Ben in her arms. "Is everything okay? Shouldn't you be at your party?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to show up unannounced like this. I needed to clear my head, and I ended up here. Hope that you and Callum don't mind."

"Of course not! Come in, come in," she said as she ushered me inside the cabin. "Callum is out for some Alpha business, and Ben and I were just going to play in the living room."

I remembered the last time I was at their place, when Riley and I visited just after Ben was born. Their home had always been cosy and welcoming, but back then, it still had the vibe of a couple's home. Now, it was a proper family cabin, with the little boy's toys spread across the entire ground floor and the smell of home cooking lingering in the air. It was different and much more intimate than the environment that Maggie was growing up in back at the tribe house, even if Rafe, Riley and Aiden had their own wing.