Page 12 of Her Cold Brute
Evan takes a side highway when the interstate turns heavy with traffic, and when we stop for gas around eight, I hang up a blanket to keep the light from coming in through the back window to wake her. The gas station is quiet, most people seem to be at their jobs now, letting me stand in the door of the backseat, watching Mora sleep without worrying that someone will disturb us.
Sammy is inside, getting breakfast from a diner with Evan while the tank fills, and I reach out, brushing the hair from Mora’s face, letting the reddish blonde beauty slip through my fingers. It’s softer than anything I’ve ever felt, and it makes hunger bloom deep within me to learn all of Mora’s soft spots.
I lean down, brushing a kiss to her forehead, pulling a little cry from her lips, and I hate that I could ever frighten her. Her fright of me yesterday was bad enough, but this…it’s too much for me to stay silent. “Shh, it’s alright my mate, you’re safe now. No one will ever touch you again, harm you again, I promise.”
Her eyelids move rapidly but she doesn’t wake, and I let out a breath of relief when she settles more, and I tuck the blanket around her, keeping her covered in the slightly cooler morning air. It’s bound to turn hot on our drive home, but there was rain here overnight, making it cooler here than her home.
I finish with the gas and move the car over to the diner’s parking lot, staying in it until Sammy heads out with to-go boxes. I won’t wake Mora to make her come inside with us and I won’t leave her alone in the car. No matter what my body wants, Mora’s needs will come first, especially while she finishes healing. The damage my mate survived tells me she’s stronger than anyone ever suspected. Strong because she was meant to be my mate, to be an alpha’s mate.
I let the kid slip into the car with Mora, then head inside, using the bathroom before checking with Evan to see if they ordered Mora anything to eat.
“Sammy didn’t want it getting cold or going bad, so he grabbed some muffins and donuts to keep for her along with some juice for when she does wake. I checked the maps, there’s a few towns between us and the next interstate about every thirty to forty minutes so whenever she does wake up, there should be somewhere that we can stop easily.”
“Good,” I muse, paying for the food Evan ordered for us as the waitress comes out with it. “I don’t want to overdo it, so no matter what she says, I think it’ll be a good thing to stop somewhere for lunch where she can get some fresh air and sun, maybe a park or something where she can have a short walk but nothing strenuous.”
“I’ll keep an eye out on places we come across. I should be good to drive for a while still, maybe take a nap after lunch and then I’ll be good to go for the rest of the night if we’re not stopping anywhere,” he says, and I nod in agreement as we head to the car.
Evan eats his food quickly, and we drop off the trash after getting the plug-in cooler from the back and set it up to hold the drinks Sammy bought for Mora in the backseat next to her before we head out on the road again. My attention continuously strays to Mora, every little noise from her makes me anxious. To know she’s not hurting, not scared. To see if she’s awake or still asleep. The need to be near her deepens every moment I sit here breathing in her deliciously sweet scent.
If her blood called out to me, her scent screams at me. It’s soft and sweet, like a honey cake with vanilla icing—something I haven’t had since I left my father’s clan. I may have been a wolf, but that was for certain my favorite treat, and my mate reminds me of it entirely. I can’t wait to see if her true taste is just as good.
It’s just after ten-thirty before Mora begins to stir, not fully waking until we pull off at another gas station just before eleven. I hate having to let Sammy take her inside instead of me, but I don’t want her angry or upset. It’s clear she’s not feeling the pull between us yet. I’m sure it’s because of the pain she’s still in from her injuries. They may be healing, but it will take time for all of them to stop causing her issues. Especially the further from me she remains.
My nearness will help her heal just as much as my kiss, or my tongue to an open wound might, but for it to work best, I need to physically be touching her. Her keeping me at arms-length will only make the healing process take longer.
We top up the car while Sammy and Mora are inside, then head back out onto the road when Mora insists she doesn’t want anything heavy to eat just yet. She picks at the muffin but thankfully, drinks all of the milk Sammy picked up before going on to finish the orange juice.
Around two, we stop in a town that shows to have three different parks, one with plenty of benches and walking paths. Mora argues when we pull in that she’s still not hungry, testing my control entirely. I drag in a deep breath while she’s in the restroom, and Sammy makes a few suggestions for food that she’s likely to eat even if she says she won’t.
While Evan heads off to get the food, Sammy gets Mora’s agreement to walk over to the lake that’s less than half a mile down the path. Her hair gleams beneath the sunlight and I fight to keep my hands out of it.
The benches near the lake are all hard metal, and I hate the wince that crosses Mora’s face as she nearly collapses into one. It pains my wolf to see her like this, to know that we could help, erase all of her pain if she just let us claim her, but I know that’s not about to happen today—or any day in the near future if the look in her eyes means anything.
“It looks like there’s a store just down the street,” Sammy states pulling my attention over to him finding him on his phone. “Shouldn’t take me more than ten minutes to get there and back.”
“For what?” Mora asks him, her focus solely on him and my wolf huffs about it once more.
“I can grab you a pillow, so the bench isn’t so hard. It’ll likely take Evan thirty to forty minutes to get the food and get back here and that’s too long for you to sit on just the metal there.”
“Why do you have to go get it?” Mora questions and my jaw tenses with pure and utter frustration knowing she’d prefer to stay in her brother’s presence than be in mine.
“Because I know what kind of pillows you like so it’s easier for me to just get them, plus the walk sounds good. You’ll be safer with Cole with you than alone,” he adds, and Mora’s eyes roll a bit, but she doesn’t argue it further. Sammy gives a little jerk with his head, and I move down the path several feet while grabbing my wallet. “I’ve got money to get whatever my sister needs. The only reason I’m leaving her alone with you at all is because I don’t see you trying anything stupid while in a public spot, and as pathetic as you’ve looked all morning, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you really aren’t going to do something to hurt her, or pressure her in the least.”
“She’s my mate, of course I’d never to do something to hurt her,” I growl at him, furious he’d ever think it—that anyone might.
“Your reputation leaves a hell of a lot to desire Cole. Everything we’ve ever heard about you is negative, not to mention, you attacked our pack and nearly killed our dad yesterday,” he returns, and I drag in a deep breath to keep my wolf in check.
“He tried to keep my mate from me. You all did.”
“No, we were keeping my sister from being attacked again. You attacked our pack, your man attacked our mom and when Mora woke up from a nap and saw it happening, realized none of us were around, she went out to help her, even though she was still healing from the attack at her graduation. Your man attacked a human mate, then attacked a human girl—was about to kill her or bite her leg clean off by the time me and my brothers got to them. Then more of your pack showed up while we were trying to get our sister inside—our human sister who each and every one of them should have recognized was human and backed the hell off no matter if we were shifters or not. When you showed, all it seemed like was yet another lunatic from your pack was attempting to attack a human girl.
“If you’d stopped being a wolf for two damn seconds and explained to any of us that Mora was your mate rather than trying to throw us off her and then hover over her growling and snarling like a maniac, then she might not be so worried about being your mate now,” he says, and my wolf howls in pain inside my chest at those words. “She might not be fighting the connection tooth and nail because the sight of you almost killing our dad wouldn’t be in her head. The sight of your wolf coming for her for some unknown reason, being so focused on her after your pack member already attacked her, along with several others being there ready to attack wouldn’t be what she’s seeing when she looks at you. You may not have known she was attacked at her graduation, but you knew she was hurt when you arrived. Had to know that she was hurt before yesterday because of the brace on her leg, but you let your wolf take the lead and terrified her more by coming for her moments after you nearly killed our dad.
“The only dad she’s ever known, the only male not related to her by blood that’s ever protected her, kept her safe. It’s different with my brothers and me. She’s our blood, but Dad…he chose to love and accept her as his, to protect and keep her safe. In a place where she was very much an outsider, that meant the world to Mora, and you almost took it from her. So maybe you should think about that while you’re huffing and puffing in irritation that she won’t just accept you. Give her some time and some space to see that you’re not just some heartless brute that thinks he has every right to take what’s his simply because you say she’s your mate. We might believe it because we saw you heal her leg, but Mora’s human. Despite growing up with shifters, there are plenty of things she’s never seen or felt because of that. So, how about you stop thinking about what you want, and start thinking about how this is affecting her, yeah?” Sammy adds, his eyes glowering at me and if he wasn’t Mora’s brother, and if his words weren’t immensely true, I’d teach him some things about respecting alphas.
“One day when you find your mate, you might understand that rational thinking isn’t in the forefront of your mind, but I get what you’re saying,” I add calming him down some. “Believe me when I say, I will never hurt Mora. She’s my mate and to me, that means everything. Nothing will ever get near enough to hurt her again.”
“Good, because if it does, we’ll all be out for your blood,” Sammy warns, before heading across the bridge over the lake and onto the far pathway that leads to several stores.