He found her in the kitchen making coffee. “Why do you let her get away with it?” He hadn’t wanted to snap at her, but his anger at Kathy was still fresh in his system.

Avoiding his eyes, she said, “Let it alone.”

Cupping her chin, he lifted her head to meet her gaze. “Roni, you don’t deserve that. Why do you take it? Why do you accept it, day in, day out?”

“She’s my mother. I’m supposed to take whatever she does.” As pain briefly flickered in his expression, she sighed. “That’s not what I meant. Or, at least, that’s not how I meant it.” It was a completely different situation with his own mother.

“I know.”

“Kathy . . . She’s had a bad time of it. When my dad died, she sort of . . . latched onto Nick, Eli, and me like we were a lifeline. She could have let go and died with my father, but she didn’t. She fought to live for us.”

“That’s not a reason for you to take her shit. There’s no reason for you to take Nick’s either.”

“You don’t know what they went through because of me.”

He framed her face with his hands. “Roni, none of what happened was your fault.”

“I know. The blame belongs to those fuckers who tried to rape me—I know that. But the aftermath . . . it was bad, okay?”

“Tell me.” He could see the struggle on her face. “It’s not weak to lean on someone, Roni. It doesn’t make you helpless; it makes you normal. In fact, it requires strength to let someone else take some of the weight.” He guided her into the living area and over to the sofa. Sitting down, he then positioned her between his legs, and began massaging her shoulders. “Let me take some of the weight, sweetheart.”

“I’m not good at confiding in people.”

“Then think of it as telling me the story.”

Relaxing slightly under his touch—damn, the guy was good with those hands—she spoke. “People think that if you’ve been attacked, those around you will give you the support you need. It doesn’t always work that way. The court case put our pack under the spotlight—no one liked that, and it bred resentment. I was basically alienated.”

“Alienated how?” he asked softly, hiding his anger.

“Some of the kids used to torment me about what happened, claimed I really had been raped, used to laugh that I’d probably lost my virginity to a human rapist. The worst was the Alpha’s son, Nolan. The extremists had poked into his father’s background, revealing that the Alpha had actually been banished from his old pack when he came “under suspicion” of laundering drug money—it caused a lot of conflict within the pack, and some wanted him to step down from Alpha.

“Nolan blamed me for that. He made up different versions of the assault, spread them around. He even managed to get hold of the photos that were taken of my injuries—he made copies and posted them all over our territory.” She rubbed Marcus’s thigh when a chilling growl rumbled out of him. “I lost my friends. As for Nick’s friends . . . they hated me because he’d been sent to juvie, so they made my life as miserable as they possibly could.”

When she remained silent, Marcus prompted, “I take it things didn’t get better?”

“No, they got worse. So bad that my mother transferred us to another pack. Things were okay until the Alpha we had was replaced. The new one was an absolute bastard, ruled by intimidation and fear. He made Eli, along with many others, fight in an illegal fighting ring, threatening to add me to his little harem if Eli refused. The Alpha used to keep me in the main house as insurance. He did the same with siblings of the other fighters. He was just evil. When Nick got out of juvie, he took over.”

“But your family’s grip on you tightened,” he guessed.

“Like you wouldn’t believe. You think they’re bad now. Back then, it was worse; it went beyond protection. Even though we were all safe, my mother tried to control my every move, Nick scared off any male who showed interest in me, and he used his position as Alpha to tighten the reins on me until it was suffocating.”

As he began to work his hands down her back in a kneading motion, Marcus kissed her shoulder. “You must have come very close to leaving.” For a dominant female, that type of treatment would be unbearable—enough to make her wolf snap.

“I did. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t have a life, but I couldn’t desert them either.”

It all suddenly fell into place. “Ah, that’s why you do it.” That was why she disappeared in her wolf form—it was her only escape that didn’t involve abandoning her family. He pulled her back to lean into him and nuzzled her neck. “I’ve never bought that you spent a lot of time in your wolf form to escape the memories and guilt. You let other people believe that it is, because you want to protect your family’s feelings.” He grazed his cheek against hers. “You know you can’t do it anymore, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“You can’t disappear on me, Roni. I won’t let you.”

She glared at him over her shoulder. “Won’t let me?”

Turning her to face him, Marcus brought her to straddle him, and wrapped his arms around her. “If you still don’t feel you can tell your mother to butt the hell out, fine. But you don’t get to run. If you shift and bolt on me, sweetheart, I will track you down. You’re mine.” She simply rolled her eyes, and he realized that to her, those words were nothing more than a possessive statement. She didn’t see how much she mattered to him, because not only did Roni not see herself clearly, but also he hadn’t told her how much he cared.

Marcus had never been much good at expressing how he felt. He could give smooth compliments, but voicing serious feelings was something totally different. He had a tendency to keep things inside, but this wasn’t a time when he could afford to do that. Roni needed the words, needed the truth in its entirety. And what was the truth? Something he’d known on one level from the very beginning. “I had a conversation with Trick once. He told me to ignore what the Seer told me . . . because he thinks you’re my mate. And so do I.”

Roni tensed, sure she’d misheard him. “What?”

“I think you’re my mate.” No, he knew it.