Chapter 14

I’m hurrying to the car, aware of Winter’s condition. She might seem tough but right now she looked like
a strong

wind would knock her over. The car is too far for her to walk to and I get in and drive around to the front
of the hospital, violently hoping she hasn’t tried to leave on her own again. I can’t believe she tried to
do that. She’s absolutely mad and the most stubborn girl I know and I’ve only known her a few hours.

To my relief she’s still where I left her and I wait, the engine running, for her to come over and get in the
passenger seat. I feel bad but if I try and help she’ll just refuse again. Once she’s firmly buckled in, I
start to slowly drive off, asking her for her address. She answers but in a dull voice as though
frightened that I’m driving her home.

I’m still suspicious of the bruises that litter her entire body but I can’t prove anything or help if she
refuses to tell me.

“What do you do in your spare time?” I ask awkwardly and she shrugs. Great, she’s going to be silent
for the remainder of the trip. I try again. “So how do you like school” and sigh when she just shrugs and
turns to look out the window.

We get to her house and I make a move to help her out but stubborn wench that she is, she waves her
arms at me and tells me to stop. I’m not used to this kind of treatment from another shifter and my wolf
is starting to get pissed off. Not because of her but because she was refusing help. Even without the so
called mate bond he remained concerned about Winter.

“Can you get to your house alright” I call out as she slams the door closed. I close my eyes and try hard
to keep patient.



“I’ll be fine” she says testily and I pull out, looking in the rearview mirror as she begins to shuffle away.

I don’t trust her. There was something about the way she said it, and the way she hesitated before
giving me her

address that niggles at me. Instead of leaving, I travel around the block and park in a side street,
cautiously making

my way to a tree where I could watch what she did clearly without being so close she would be able to
sense me.

As I thought, she shuffled right past the house she’d told me she lived in, and hobbled further up the
street to one of the most run down and shabby looking houses I’ve ever seen. The grass is completely
dead out the front and the mail box looks as though it’s been run over several times, completely on a
lean. The front door’s paint is peeling and there’s empty beer bottles near the front door which she
uses her foot to nudge away. I watch closely as she places a key in the lock. There’s no emotion on her
face, almost as though she’s detached but that could be due to her pain maybe?

She’s clearly poor I think to myself, maybe that’s why she didn’t want me to drop her off? It made sense
but something still rankled. Why would she not at least tell the nurse about her old bruises. I don’t
believe for a second that it’s due to bullies at school. There are far too many of them. As it was, I would
be having a firm talk with the principal tomorrow about his failure to protect one of his students from a
vicious and violent attack. The fact they were girls didn’t matter to me. They deserved to be punished
and as much as my wolf would have loved to get his hands on all of them, I had to let the school handle
this.

Winter walks into the house and I hear a small thump as the front door closes and the click of a lock.
Then nothing but silence. I wait, for what I don’t know, eventually giving up. She was fine, probably



doing homework. My telling her, if only to ease my own curiousity. Part of me wonders what her
bedroom looks like, whether she has

personal items in it or if it was as bare as the rooms in the house. I could see the living room from here
and it contained one couch and an old tv on a crate for heavens sake. where was her parents? I could
have sworn that ne W someone had mentioned a brother as well but Winter hadn’t said one word about
him.

place my hands into my pant pockets and begin to saunter back towards my car, deep in thought. My
mate, or

the girl who would have been my mate was in danger and although I had rejected her, I couldn’t bring
myself to abandon her. Not now. I glance back at the house and shiver. It seemed cold somehow,
completely lacking in everything that makes a house a home. I get into the driver’s seat and slowly pull
out, careful to watch for incoming traffic as I make my way back to the pack house. I suspect my
mother is going to interrogate me the instant I get home, most probably worried out of her mind
because I’m late back. I sigh. She’s so overprotective of me, like all mother’s are. So why wasn’t
Winter’s? Surely no mother would fail to see the bruises on their daughters body? Did

she have a mother? Now that I thought about it, Winter had muttered something about a father but not
anything about a mother.

1 groan. Stop thinking about her already, I scold myself and my wolf just sniggers at me. Shut it, I tell
him fiercely but he just grins even more.

You didn’t completely sever the mate bond. Strange. It only happens when you are not one hundred
percent sure you want to reject someone. I guess you had some doubts huh Johnathon he told me
smugly and I scowled. Had! had the tiniest bit of doubt in my mind when I rejected her? Was there still
a mate bond drawing me to Winter? Was my wolf telling the truth? There was no reason for him to lie



though and I ponder what to do now. I can’t bring myself to reject her a second time, not when I was
already thinking constantly about her. Besides how do you tell someone your heart wasn’t fully in the
rejection without giving them some sort of sense of false hope? I would deal with it later. I pull up at the
pack house and look into the angry, blazing eyes of my mother. I flinch. She looks pissed.