Page 79 of Before the Bond
He pushed the mug away entirely this time. He ignored the coffee spreading underneath the salt shakers.
"My father spent years watching the Ashwood line,” he said. “Waiting. He's a patient man."
Something lodged in my throat.
"Caleb caught your scent years ago," Elias said. "On a hiking trail in Northern California. You were eighteen. That you already know.”
“I do,” I confirmed.
“My father had a spy in that region,” Elias said. “He spotted Caleb trailing a human girl.”
I said nothing. I merely stiffened.
“When a wolf finds his mate,” Elias explained. “He begins to move differently. The orientation of his body, the way he walks, it all becomes very apparent. You just need someone who knows the signs. The spy quickly found out that you were Caleb’s.”
I watched his face. He wasn’t pretending. That was the thing that made my chest go cold.
"The attack on the mountain road," I said. My voice had gone very flat. "The animal attack that killed my parents."
Elias looked at me without flinching. "It wasn't random."
The diner noise continued around us — the low murmur of other conversations, the hiss of the coffee machine, a spoon against ceramic. None of it mattered. I wished it could drown out the conversation.
"Caleb told you how a bond strengthens a wolf," Elias said, quietly now. "That’s a threat to rival packs. An alpha not only atprime age but with a fated mate? That would quash any plans my father had for revenge.”
My hands shook. I was quickly piecing together what he was trying to say.
“What did you do?” I murmured.
“I didn’t do anything!” Elias urged. “This was ages ago, and long before I ever got involved.”
“Then what happened?” My voice was now fully shaking.
“My father sent out his wolves against you,” he said. “They planned to kill you then and there. Sever the bond before it could ever form.”
The world around me stopped. Elias didn’t.
“Your parents weren't the target,” he continued. “Youwere. The goal was to make sure Caleb Ashwood never completed his bond."
"My father thought it worked," Elias said, his voice now heavy. "The pack assumed you died from your injuries. They didn't know Caleb reached you in time or that you were alive. It was only recently we learned you were not only breathing, buthere.”
I wanted to walk away. I wanted to throw something at Elias and make a break for it.
I couldn’t hear it. He had to be lying. He had to be playing some trick on me to get on my nerves.
That didn’t stop the steady way Elias was staring at me. It didn’t stop what he said next.
“Caleb knows,” Elias said. “He has the entire time.”
“How long?” I didn’t know how I was able to move my lips.
“Since the day it happened.”
Everything rearranged itself. The diner spiraled around me. I couldn’t think straight or see straight. All of a sudden, I could see his expressions as something else.
Caleb wasn’t just guilty about being my mate. He wasn’t pushing away because he wanted me to choose. He felt bad for me.
He knew. The entire time. Every moment he let me build something in his house, in his family, in whatever existed between him and me, he was holding a lie that would change everything.
