Beaufort Creek Shifters (10 book series)
The Wolf’s Bullied Mate Chapter 7

Isaiah

Jada was quiet.

For a whole damn week, she was quieter than a mouse sneaking around in the walls for some extra cheese. The way she stood aside at the top of the stairs when we were heading for the banister at the same time alerted my dominant side, my predator side. True wolves were bound to get the respect they deserved sooner or later. I was impressed with her personality shift and even more satisfied by how she was treating me at work.

But I knew it came with a heavy price.

After a few days, I noticed the sniffling coming from the attic. My bedroom was a decent distance from the attic door, and I was a skilled carpenter. So much so that I knew exactly how to get these walls to mute the sounds from the outside world. That was likely a dramatic change for Miss Sugar Tits upstairs who hadn't known a damn moment of silence being around so many shifters all the time.

I had always been a man of privacy. Whatever problems I had didn't need to be broadcasted to the world unless the world was causing those problems. With Jada right in my sights, I had a good cap on my issues-which seemed to be reducing by the day. Around the fifth day with my supposed mate announced by my not-alpha, the sniffling turned into uncontrollable gasps for air.

Part of me wanted nothing more than to accidentally stumble upon her rubbing herself raw over the memory of me buried in her slit. Nothing could have possibly stroked my ego more. Being such a talented shifter meant carrying the burden of women becoming obsessed with me at every turn. Once they got a taste of what I could do, they couldn't settle for anything else.

It was just the way of the world.

But these gasps weren't the familiar whimpers of a lover in the thralls of passion. These were more like...choked sobs. Interest had nothing to do with the way I crept toward the attic door. It was standing open a few inches, enough of an invitation, something like a small cry for attention, really.

Sounds slid past the wood. A creak here. A shift there. The wheeze of a mattress as weight adjusted upon it. That woman could have had her pick of the king-size bed in my room and the queen-size bed in the spare. Why she chose the crummy cot I'd shoved in the attic to keep as a guest bed for people I didn't like was honestly beyond my care and concern.

Still, it chipped at the perfectly perfect reasoning I had sanded in my mind. It was real simple as far as I could tell-Jada didn't need to interfere with my shit if I didn't interfere with her shit. We could cohabitate. We could even become friends who fuck sometimes at some point. Or we wouldn't do that. I didn't even care.

Or so I kept telling myself.

What I discovered at her door wasn't the throes of personal pleasure but instead the opposite. It killed my boner quicker than my girlfriend trying to introduce me to her parents. That wasn't my style. Family was important enough to keep separate from my dating life. Girls couldn't convince me otherwise.

Jada wouldn't be able to either.

So whatever her crying was about would have to wait because I just wasn't in the mood to try to talk to her about it.

Besides, we were both stuck in a crummy situation. If this was how she processed her shit, then so be it. I had my ways of handling things. I had my punching bag out back and my weight set in the basement. Thanks to Troy and Elias, the basement was the best place to work out that didn't involve me talking to other shifters.

Mostly because my alpha didn't want me to talk to the other shifters. Bad habits persist or whatever he said. It wasn't my biggest problem.

A few days after I caught Jada crying, I sat in the kitchen with a huge mug of coffee and a chip on my shoulder about the noise. The walls were thick with enough cushion to block sound. I had shoved plugs in my ears. I had yanked my pillow over my head and turned up the jazz albums.

Somehow, some way, her sobbing was still making it to my eardrums.

That was unacceptable.

Alright, maybe I felt slightly bad for the sugar tits chick upstairs getting sobby about having to live with me. I wasn't a saint. I knew that. But I wasn't a judgmental d**k either. I wouldn't make huge demands of her as long as she performed her duties as my mate. So far, she hadn't been fulfilling that role. We hadn't fucked. We'd hardly made eye contact. Any time I made food, she took it upstairs with her only to return a picked-at plate later in the evening. She was faltering at work and people were starting to talk. I didn't like it when people talked.

Did I want to feel bad for her? No. Yet the feeling remained no matter how many times I tried to convince myself that it wasn't my fault.

I wasn't the one who chose her. It was her heart that had spoken my name, wasn't it? Utter horseshit.

The stairs wheezed in the same spot as always from repeated use. I noticed Jada before I saw her, the scent of mocha infecting the entire room. My mouth salivated. I chugged my coffee, trying to get my body awake before it decided to act of its own volition. I was always in control. Nothing could take that away from me.

Jada slipped past me. Red-rimmed eyes puffed up while a fresh layer of moisture coated her upper lip. Her pigment was light despite her obvious crying. Had she tried covering it all up with makeup? It wasn't working. It just caked to her face and made her look that much more pitiful.

What was worse was the fact that she thought it did anything at all to hide her true emotions from me. Real men were receptive to the energy around them. I was as real as it got. Maybe I was too real for her. Maybe that was why she had clawed my back while I railed her into the ground and to the other side of the world.

Things that were too real were often too frightening to face.

My stomach twisted. I focused on my mug. I squeezed the ceramic handle as much as I knew it could handle-and then pushed a bit past that point. It cracked under my palm. Damn it.

"Coffee?" I offered nonchalantly, though the gesture was hardly nonchalant. I knew she hated the shit. I knew she would say no in her very special way of saying no. "I have tea." "What kind of tea?"

I smirked behind my mug. "Caffeinated."

She sighed. "You know that shit ruins your natural rhythm, right? No wonder you can't sleep at night. You're a mess."

I glared at her over the mug, my smile melting, my entire countenance changing at the drop of a hat.

All because of her. "I can't sleep at night because you won't stop f**king crying."

She sneered. "I wouldn't cry if you had an ounce of respect in your body."

"I'd give you respect if you weren't such a health nut."

"That's rich coming from a control freak."

I stood abruptly enough to scrape the tile with the feet of the chair. Such an irritating sound hardly rivaled the fact that Jada had just insulted me in my own house. "Everything has its place for a reason, sugar tits." She stepped toward the counter and reached for the mug rack. "And if I tip this over-?" She pushed it toward the edge of the counter. "What are you going to do about it?" "Jada."

"If I put it somewhere else," she continued, "will you be mad?" She lifted it and set it on the opposite counter.

Where it didn't belong.

"Stop it," I growled as I marched to correct her error. "It doesn't balance the toaster. It sets everything out of whack. My eyes are burning."

"Your eyes are burning?" She repeated the statement like it was absurd. "Can you hear yourself speak or is it a speech-to-text situation going on in your head?"

I set the mug rack back where it belonged, where it complimented the other items in the kitchen. Control returned. A sense of calm washed over me.

That was all fan-freaking-tastic until Jada snatched the dish towel from the oven and tossed it over the edge of the sink like some kind of chaotic maniac.

I set it back where it belonged. "Stop fucking around. It isn't funny."

"You know, I think you might have a real problem," she said in a voice that could have been close to a singing tone in the right atmosphere, "since you just can't help yourself fixing things." She smudged her fingerprints on the fridge. "I've never seen a man turn that shade of red before."

My vision tunneled. I snatched the towel from beneath the sink along with the pine cleaner. I sprayed the fridge. I scrubbed the prints off. A smear remained where her prints had run oily lines across the perfectly reflective chrome. She was going to pay for that.

I put my elbow into the scrubbing, working my way from one side of the door to the other in the same pattern that I knew would be visually pleasing. Repeated motions felt like strokes in water. Backstrokes, to be precise. The proper kind that could carry me through a particularly challenging tide.

Over the waves. Under the pier. Adjacent to the shore. Perfect strokes carried me where I knew I would be safe. Once the fridge was properly cleaned, I moved to the counters. I worked on the sink. I wiped the table, removing my mug to clear away the circle of coffee, slurping it, and then cleaning the bottom of the mug.

Jada was far too quiet for my liking. She was watching me with round eyes near the porch door, a curious expression on her face. Not curiosity, but an expression of a truly curious nature, one I couldn't determine. Her brows were rigidly set in a strange arch over her eyes and her mouth was twisted slightly. Lines outlined either side of her mouth. Hardened eyes. She was judging me with those hard eyes.

So what? I didn't care. I had to make sure things were in order. I had to keep things in line because nobody else was going to do it. Jada didn't seem particularly concerned about the cleanliness of the condo with her irresponsible tossing of clothes into the bin of the laundry room under the stairs. She was too chaotic for my calm seas.

No wonder we weren't getting along.

"I have a system," I explained as confidently and calmly as I could, "that you shouldn't disturb. Is that clear?"

"I don't give a damn about your system."

I set the cleaning items away, washed my hands thoroughly, and turned to face the tyrant who had moved into my home. "Excuse you."

"No, sir. Excuse you. You're literally a control freak, but you sit there and you call me names and you call me a health nut when all I'm doing is trying to help you? Fuck you."

I glared at her. "I would have by now if it would shut you up, but it only seems to make you louder."

She gaped at me for a long time. Her lips tightened into a line and she seemed to stiffen. Too far? Good. She deserved a metaphorical slap to the face. I wouldn't reduce myself to being physical with her unless she was physical with me first. Words would always be fair game. She should have understood that by now.

But apparently, she needed a lesson.

I cracked my neck. "If you disturb my system again, I'll be sure to make your life a living hell just like you've done to me." I stepped quietly around her to get to the porch door, leaning in to get uncomfortably close, spiritually satisfied by her twitch. "Believe me, Jada. You don't want to get on my bad side. What you've seen so far has been remarkably tame."

The way she flinched away broke me.

Not entirely. Not fully. Not in a way that truly mattered.

Yet it still mattered. I couldn't figure it out, so I left her where she stood and marched onto the back porch, dropping to the ground to cradle my head in my hands. It was a monstrous thing to carry around, this weird cleaning burden. It was something that had been with me for a long time. It was something that made me feel better.

It was something that wouldn't quit.

Much like my drinking, it got in the way of other things. It forced me into weird routines. It made me feel nauseous to see anything out of place. Most of my mornings were spent pouring over every detail of this stupid place, trying to make sure dust and cobwebs hadn't accumulated in places where they didn't belong.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't easy.

My shoulders crunched together while a tidal wave slammed into me. The world spun. White noise filled my ears as bubbles exploded around me. That gaping teal void returned, breaking open beneath my feet, threatening to swallow me into its murky depths. What lurked beneath the surface of the tide was scary enough to keep me above it.

That was the point of the routine crap. That was why I cleaned everything so much.

Those things kept me floating.

Jada? Gods, she was too unpredictable. I didn't know what she was going to say or do next. I didn't have a handle on her behavior despite being a stern gentleman about my expectations. She was f*****g crying in my damn house even though I hadn't done anything to her personally other than offer her a cooked meal every night after we worked our asses off in the field.

No great demands. Just expectations.

Why did she break all of those things apart with a weak jab to my ego?

Whatever. It didn't matter. It wasn't important. She wasn't important. She was just a command from my alpha to fulfil. Nothing more.

Warmth slid between my shoulder blades. Comfort tickled the back of my neck and curled into my hair, massaging solace into the very follicles of my hair. Consolation came next and placed me gently on the shore where I noticed my vision shift. Blue skies weren't hanging above like I had anticipated for the early morning. Stars didn't twinkle. The moon didn't wink its milky sliver.

None of that.

Just a pair of calm eyes soothing me with a comforting gaze that spoke of experience. Torment gathered beyond my mind and then disappeared the longer I stared into those cosmic planets.

Almond-brown belonged to Jada. She was holding my face now. She was running her thumbs along my cheekbones and holding space for me. She was the one making it all better.

If that was the case-if she was the cause of my comfort-then why did that terrify me right down to my soul?