Lost Lycan's Mate Book 3

Book Three: Waiting in Darkness

TERRIN

I was a horrible person.

Yeah, yeah, I knew.

I knew that I was being an incorrigible ass to my mate even though he had been nothing but nice to me—well, until he’d finally snapped.

It was my fault it had come to this. I had put myself in this situation.

But that didn’t mean I had to be happy about it!

With a shout of anger, I rattled the chair I was securely tied to. It tottered on its legs as I bounced up and down while screaming out my frustration.

My damn wrists were losing blood circulation and going numb behind my back, and my stupid ankles were also expertly tied to the legs of the chair, making me immobile.

Why was I tied to a chair, you ask?

Well, the plate of vegetables in front of me and the stupid lycan sitting across from me with an unamused look plastered across his cold face was why!

I mean, come on! He called me childish?

He was the one who had frickin’ tied me to a chair because I didn’t want to eat broccoli! I was an adult. I didn’t have to eat broccoli if I didn’t want to! Besides, he knew I hated the stuff, and he had made it on purpose!

When I was finished with my little tantrum, I breathed heavily, glaring at him.

All he did was lean back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m still waiting for that apology,” he drawled.

“You can take your apology and shove it up your—” I was cut off when something lightly smacked my forehead.

I looked down to see a mushy piece of broccoli on the tablecloth. It had splatted on the surface after hitting my face.

I blinked at it before snapping my eyes up to my mate who had thrown it at me.

“You just hit me with broccoli!”

“You know how I feel about swearing,” he answered.

“Oh, for the love of—!” I bit my tongue and rattled the chair again, banging my knee on the underside of the table.

“What are you, my mother?” I sneered, glowering at the now soggy vegetables on my plate. “You are a grown-ass lycan warrior. Don’t you have better things to do than force me to eat some disgusting green vomit?”

“My mate is the most important thing to me, and your health is my current primary concern. Since you can’t seem to understand the concept of a healthy diet, I have no problem teaching you.”

“For the love of Lune,” I grumbled under my breath before meeting the lycan’s eyes and punctuating each word. “I. Am. Not. Your. Mate.”

I waited for him to flinch like he used to and then slink away like a puppy with its tail between its legs, but he’d stopped doing that lately.

All he did was stare back at me with scary calmness, the only hint of his frustration being the slight clenching of his jaw.

He leaned forward, the front two legs of his chair hitting the floor with a thunk.

My eyes followed each of his movements as he pushed away from the table, tapping the wooden surface with a finger as he turned to leave. “You aren’t leaving the table until you finish your food.”

Then he left.

He just walked out of the kitchen, leaving me tied to a chair with a plate of cold, wet broccoli in front of me.

“Hey!” I called after him. “Hey, come back!”

My chair bounced up and down with my movements, the sound echoing through the room. “How am I supposed to eat them if I can’t move my hands?”

The only reply I got was the lights going off.

Great.

Now I was alone, tied to a chair, and in the dark.

Cleo thought that she had it bad? Well, at least her mate let her eat what she wanted.

I could do nothing but stare at the clock as minutes went by.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, forty minutes, an hour, two hours, five hours.

Finally, I broke. “Argh! I’m sorry, okay? You win! I apologize, all right?” I waited, listening for the sound of his footsteps, but I heard nothing.

“Come on, Syn!” I called out. “I apologized. Now untie me!” Still, I got no response. “Are you ignoring me now?” I shouted into the empty room. “Look, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. Now could you just untie me?”

Dead silence greeted me.

With a groan, I let my head fall back, and I stared up at the ceiling. All night I stared into the empty and dark room. It was around six in the morning when I finally heard movement.

The lights flickered on.

For several minutes, I heard shuffling sounds from behind me—cabinets opening and closing, the stovetop turning on, and the sizzling of food in a pan—before the delicious aroma of bacon and hash browns wafted up my nose.

Syn strolled around me and made his way to the seat across the table, a cup of steaming coffee and a plate filled with breakfast in his hand.

He ate without sparing me a glance, leaving me to salivate at the food he was eating at an incredibly slow rate.

An agonizing half hour passed before he finished—it seemed to me like years.

Then he stood up and made to leave as if I wasn’t even there, still tied to a damn chair.

“Wait.” My voice sounded hoarse. He paused but didn’t turn to look at me.

I cleared my throat, embarrassed by the dryness of my voice. “Can you untie me now?” I asked. “Please?” I added as an afterthought.

Slowly, very slowly, he set his plate back down on the table and turned to me with a calculating look. “Only if you promise to eat the broccoli.”

I recoiled, my expression twisting into one of horror. “What?” I demanded, aghast. “I’m not eating that! No way in hell!”

His eyes hardened, and he clenched his jaw. “Fine.” With a scowl on his face, he picked up his plate and marched away.

“Syn!” I screeched out in fury, squirming in the chair and making as much racket as I possibly could. My violent motions caused the chair to topple over. I landed roughly on my shoulder, feeling it pop.

Tears of frustration prickled at the back of my eyes.

I was so upset with everything, and it all got to me at once.

Syn was by my side in a flash, slicing away the ropes and pulling me half into his lap while examining my shoulder, which was obviously dislocated. Tears burned their way down my cheeks in salty trails.

Syn, despite how awfully I treated him, was clearly concerned. Murmuring soft words of comfort to me, he tried to cut through the fabric of my shirt with a claw.

I shoved him away, hurting myself in the process.

“Go away,” I tried to hiss out at him, but my voice was clogged with tears and came out as more of a strangled choke.

“Terrin, let me help. For once, just let me—”

“I don’t need you!” I screamed at him, sick and tired of the way he continually tried to force himself into my life. Why didn’t he get it? I didn’t want him!

I had been humiliated my whole life, only escaping it when Cleo had entered my life. But now she was gone, too busy with her stupid lycan pack to bother with me. Now I was just a joke again.

Everyone just saw me as the childish mate of a poor lycan. I was weak and pathetic in their eyes, punished and lectured all the time by my mate. I had lost my masculinity in their eyes because, next to my mate, I was nothing.

I was just a clumsy, mouthy, shrimp of a male, obviously in need of guidance and direction from my superior lycan mate.

And I hated it.

I wanted to be worth something. I wanted to be respected, not pitied.

But with Syn constantly inserting himself into my life, I was never going to achieve that.

The only thing the lycans knew how to do was take, take, and take.

They took my home from me. They took Cleo from me. They took my new life from me.

They took away my chance at having a normal mate and life. They took away my job. They took away my freedom, my self-worth, my pride, my purpose, and they left me with nothing.

“But I need you…” Syn’s quiet and dejected voice pierced its way through my thoughts.

My eyes flicked up to him. He was sitting on the floor a foot away from me, to where I had pushed him.

The stone mask of indifference I had seen all week was off now, revealing the vulnerability the lycan felt.

His tormented gray eyes couldn’t hold mine, and his gaze drifted to the floor.

I felt a little guilty—and also like a complete ass. I was his mate after all, and unlike werewolves, lycans only got one.

It was only natural he’d fight for me to stay with him, but I needed him to understand that this was just never going to happen.

“Too bad,” I spat out.

I knew I was being harsh, but I also knew that the moment I showed kindness to him, he would get hopeful, maybe even misunderstand me. That was why I insisted on being rude to him.

Maybe he’d finally get tired of my attitude and drop me.

“You’re my mate,” he said for the thousandth time, as if that was supposed to make a difference. His eyes pleaded with me to understand, but that wasn’t the problem.

I fully understood why he was so desperate to get me to accept him, but I just couldn’t place his needs, his happiness, before my own.

“That’s your problem,” I mercilessly attacked him. “Because as far as I’m concerned, you aren’t mine.” I grabbed my shoulder and popped it back into place before moving to stand over my mate, who remained sitting on the floor.

“I refuse to submit to anyone, mate or not.”

“I never asked you to submit to me!” The sadness was gone in an instant, a spark of anger lighting up his gray eyes as he jumped to his feet.

What a load of crap.

There was no way he was going to be the one submitting, and I called him out on it. “Well, we can’t both very well be dominant!”

“Why the hell not?” Syn snapped. “Cleo and Hakota are both dominant.”

Really?

He wanted to use them as an example? Did he really want me to go into all the issues they had to face because of their battling prides and egos? Besides, they were two different kinds of dominant. “That’s different.”

“How?” Syn hissed through his teeth, his hands balling into fists at his side. “Because we’re both male instead?”

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t want to sound hateful.

I had nothing against same-sex mating; I just knew I could never be in such a mating bond.

I wanted a female mate because I was attracted to them. I felt nothing for Syn—even with the mating bond. He was like a stranger to me, and he knew it.

“So you’re saying that if I were a female, things would be different.”

“Yes,” I answered truthfully, “that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t that I wanted to exert my dominance over a female.

I admired Cleo for how strong she was, and I wouldn’t mind having a strong female mate. I didn’t want to be above my mate; I just didn’t want to be below them.

“You won’t even give me a chance just because I’m a male.”

Underneath his anger, I could see how heartbroken he was, but I couldn’t show him any softness. He needed to hear the bitter truth, as cold and harsh as it was.

“Just give up already, Syn. I don’t want you now, and I won’t want you ever.”

The fire in his eyes died, swallowed up by the stone mask that he put back in place. A new, bone-chilling aura surrounded him as he stared me down.

I refused to flinch or even look away.

He then let out an inhuman growl and snapped his teeth in my face, causing me to stumble back several steps.

The heavy weight of fear settled on my shoulders. It pushed the air out of my lungs and quickened the beating of my heart. I could sense the danger radiating from him.

Never in my life, not even from Hakota, had I ever felt anything like this.

My head bowed under the weight of dominance he was imposing on me. With another growl, Syn strode past me, knocking into my shoulder as he stormed away.

I stared at the floor, trying to calm my frantically beating heart while regaining my breath.

I couldn’t break.

I couldn’t lose the last of my freedom.