Terrible, he wanted to say. How could he be anything else after pushing away the most important person in his life? “Good,” he said instead. “I met my mate,” he added.
Brianna’s smile wavered, and she licked her lips. “Oh?”
“Yeah. She’s amazing. She’s the one who took the photos.”
“Are you going to have the bonding ceremony soon?”
Marcus sighed. “Honestly, I messed things up, so there’s never going to be a bonding ceremony.” Their rejecting each other had ensured that. “But she’s the one, you know. So I’ll keep loving her even if she can’t love me back.”
“That’s… incredibly sad,” she told him.
“And you? Grams told me your mate was a no-good piece of shit.”
Brianna threw back her head and laughed. “She said that, did she?”
“Well, maybe not in those exact words,” he admitted
