For Fox's Sake (#3, Completed)

5. Memories

NATALIA

His eyes darkened before they flashed yellow, his fox pushing to the surface. I could only imagine that it was going as berserk as Ciara was doing in my head. How could they not—we finally found our mates after my wolf and I had almost lost hope.

And yet, the man before me didn't even react. No word came out of him. There was no surprise, almost like... like he knew.

But he couldn't have, could he?

Unless those memories were real, Ciara reached through our link.

I pushed to search deeper in my head, to find the source of those visions. It was like I was running through a foggy forest, the shapes of people blurred in the distance, the sounds muffled. My mind was trying to resist, unwilling to let me in, but I was determined to find out the truth.

And when I succeeded, it all hit me like a train. The cries of the shifters that were being separated from their animals as I lay semi-conscious in the damp, dark dungeon. The memory of their pain as their life forces were taken away from overwhelmed me, leaving me struggling to breathe. I tried to fill my lungs with much-needed oxygen, but all I felt was the suffocation of it all.

"Natalia!" He said in a panicked voice as he shook me gently. "Natalia, breathe. One breath in, one breath out, little wolf. Just listen to me."

His voice steadied me enough to follow what he was telling me, relief rushing through my whole body when I could finally breathe again.

"Good girl."

But before I could snap back to reality, more memories came rushing in. The scene from earlier, where I lied on the bed with him in the room, appeared again, this time clearer, as if it was playing right in front of my eyes. I watched as he dismissed my suspicions that we were mates, telling me I was wrong. That I should never dare bring such an insinuation up again.

I remembered the hole that his words left in my soul. The emptiness that took over, worse than the loneliness I felt in that dungeon, or all the years of being belittled and dismissed by my dad. I had found my mate, and he didn't want me. He didn't want the weak little Omega, the embarrassment of the Macalister clan.

"Look at me, Lili!" His command brought me back to the present. "Are you okay?" His beautiful features were marred with genuine worry, but that couldn't make me forget what I had just seen.

"You knew, didn't you?"

The silence that I got in response spoke volumes.

"What did you do to me?" I used my hands to push myself out of his embrace, but he was strong, much stronger than me, so my fighting was futile. "Why couldn't I remember? You rejected me and then you made me forget?"

"I never rejected you, Lili."

"You are right–lying to me about not being mates and making me feel terrible for even considering it sounds nothing like a rejection," I hissed with an anger that was not typical for me; yet, all these feelings that I had been bottling in were spilling out, threatening to knock down everything like a tsunami.

My belly went tight with knots strong enough to hold back even the wildest of horses. Sadness and chagrin clawed at my throat, while I tried to swallow hard at the tangle of words stuck there. "I spent the last years wondering where my mate was, and you knew the truth all along. Why?"

"Let's just say that I didn't expect someone like you to turn out to be my mate."

My heart stuttered, and there was this falling, spinning down feeling.

There it was again. 

Someone like me.

"I told you already–I'm not for you, little wolf. I'm not Prince Charming, nor a knight in shining armour. That innocent soul of yours? I am the man who will darken it and will break you along the way. I'm not the one for you, Lili, no matter what this mating line says."