To Love and To Leave

17: This Mistake

"No, don't let him in."

Cam stared at the bedroom door, wide-eyed, as Alpha knocked on it and called her name. Melody was still with her, but she held a look on her face that did not appease Cam.

"He is the Alpha, Ca—"

"No," Cam pleaded. "Please, Melody. He's going to make me face Logan."

"You have to face him at some point. It's either that or getting bit again—"

"Can Alpha bite me?"

The question slipped off her tongue in a moment of blind desperation, and she regrets it the moment Melody's face hardens. She never looked mad, but right then she looked quite annoyed. Melody turned on her heel and pulled the door open.

"Mate," breathed Alpha in a calming voice.

He seemed to have worked himself up knocking on the door. After taking Melody's face into his hands and tenderly kissing her mouth, he ushered her out of the bedroom. Cam couldn't tear her wide eyes away from him. Logan might come rushing in if she did.

"He needs to see you," Alpha told her.

"No, he doesn't." She tried to steel her voice but the words came out warbled instead.

"You don't understand what's happening. That is understandable. But neither does Logan."

The line of defense on Cam's tongue abruptly died. "Neither does he?" she demanded. "He is the one to blame for everything bad in my life! If he is so confused, he shouldn't have gone and had sex with someone else. He knew what would happen to me. He probably did it because he sure as hell knew what it would do!"

"Camila..."

"She isn't wrong."

My blood stilled at the sound of his voice, the hairs on my neck standing at attention. Alpha slowly turned to face his Beta. There was undoubtedly disapproval and consternation in the bent brows and lips of his face.

"Will you give me a moment alone with my mate?" Logan queried.

"Choose your next words wisely, Logan," Alpha warned on his way out of the door, his shoulder knocking into Logan's.

Logan glared down at the floor before stepping into the room and closing the door. He lifted his head to look at her.

"How could you?" Cam whispered.

It was more clear now to her than it ever had been how betrayed she felt. She wanted to get out of this bed and punch him in the face. Screw this, she thought, sliding off the bed. Dull pain slithered up from her abdomen but she fought it. Logan remained silent as she limped towards him, fire in her dusty hazel eyes.

"How"—she staggered to a stop in front of him—"could"—her right hand reeled back—"you!" She sent her clenched fist hurtling at his jaw.

A look of surprise filtered through her at the feeling of contact. Then the throbbing pain in her bones sent her reeling backward with a gasp. Logan's head turned slightly from the blow, but he mostly seemed unaffected. Cam realized what she'd done. Cradling her injured hand to her chest, she began scrambling back towards the bed. Logan stalked after her in slow, pronounced strides, his face blank of expression.

"Please," she whimpered, though she didn't know what for. "Please, Logan."

The pain flared up through her organs and she immediately collapsed. She would have knocked her head against the bed if his arms hadn't swept underneath her. At once, the contact between their skin conquered the agony. Cam sucked in a ragged breath. Her eyes met his in fear and wonder.

Pulling her upright, Logan allowed her to stand while still caged in his arms. His eyes pointed down at her in frustration; the blank veil on his face was now gone.

"I am sorry," he murmured.

Cam knew she needed to get pissed again. She knew she needed to summon her inner wrath to make sure he understood the gravity of what he had done. But she just couldn't. Her brain was way more undone by the intensity of his gaze and the warmth of his touch to think about reality.

"I will tell you everything," he said. "You deserve to know."

With that, he delicately sat her on the bed. Cam couldn't look away from him. She was having a horrible time discerning her feelings. Logan lowered himself to sit beside her, taking a deep breath before holding her eyes again.

"We haven't completed the mating ritual," he started. "For wolves, we usually claim with a bite and mate with intercourse within hours or days of meeting each other. But you're human and I have tried to be patient because of that. But that doesn't make this any easier for me.

"The longer we wait, the more restless and..." He hesitated then gritted his teeth and continued, "And more insecure I get."

Cam wanted to say Well, you're never gonna get any from me now! but her tongue felt bound up by some supernatural string.

"When I heard Melody say that you had gone to Crystal Rock with Joey," Logan told her, "I lost it. He's a young, horny, unmated wolf who doesn't yet know the significance of a mate. And you're human, so you don't get it either. I just felt like...I felt like I had lost the last bit of you I had. Things have been strained between us from the start and I have a hard time imagining it ever getting better unless you exert some effort, Camila."

There it was. That insult. Cam straightened her spine and tried to rid all of the sympathy she felt for him. She had to be strong, damn it.

"I am not the one who had sex with someone else," she spat. "As jealous and insecure as you might be, I never would have let anything happened between me and Joey. He's a kid, for God's sake. You were wrong to make assumptions and even more wrong to take them out on me by sleeping with someone else. You're just wrong, you damn werewolf."

Tears watered her eyes, and she angrily wiped them away. She was sick of crying. She had cried enough in the last few days to last her a lifetime.

Logan squeezed his eyes closed and nodded. "I know. I know."

Cam considered what she was about to say, if she really wanted to hear the answer, and decided she had to know. She would never want to ask again if she didn't right now.

"Who was it?" she asked.

"Who?" His eyes peeled open and flashed up to hers. "Oh. She wasn't anyone. Someone from the pack we were visiting for the meeting."

"So another werewolf. You didn't know her?"

He shook his head.

"And what about her mate?" Cam pressed. "Didn't she care about him at all?"

"She hadn't met him yet," he grumbled. "At least, I assumed she hadn't. She didn't have a mark. And she wasn't a virgin."

"Oh, well thank God for that," she snapped sarcastically. "She didn't happen to give you an STD while she was at it, did she?"

Logan's upper lip curled back in warning. "Wolves don't get STDs."

Sighing, she shook her head. "More freaky wolf stuff. Whatever. We're not going to have sex anyway, so it doesn't matter."

A growl rolled out of him, but she bravely held his gaze with a brazen glare.

"I wasn't particularly fond of you before you nearly ripped my ovaries out and slept with a stranger," she said. "What the hell makes you think I suddenly want to have sex with you now?"

"Because we're mates!"

"So what!" she yelled back. "That didn't stop you from pumping into another woman!"

He growled again with more volume and ferocity. "I made a mistake, dammit! Everyone makes mistakes!"

"Not everyone makes this mistake, though."

A dangerous roar filled the bedroom. Cam couldn't process her fear before he leapt up from the bed and fled the room. She stared after him, arms crossed tightly over her chest, and bit down on her trembling lip.