Plus size Mate for my Brother’s Three Best Friends

Wren

The keys felt warm in my palm as I climbed the porch steps of the house on Silvercrest Lane. My house, technically. The one I bought eight months ago and put in Kellan's name because he said a warrior needed a home of his own, and because I loved him too much to argue.

Tonight was our anniversary. Two years since the mate bond snapped into place between us at the Harvest Run. Two years of me cooking his favorite meals and cheering at his training matches and telling myself that the way he never held my hand in public was just how warriors were.

I had a basket of honey bread on my arm and a speech in my head. I was going to tell him I was ready. Ready to complete the bond, to stand in front of the pack and make it official, to stop waiting for the perfect moment because every moment with him already felt perfect to me.

The front door was unlocked.

I stepped inside quietly, planning to surprise him. The living room smelled like the candles I bought him last month. Vanilla and cedar. His jacket was thrown over the couch I paid for, next to the boots I bought him for his birthday.

Then I heard laughter coming from the bedroom.

A woman's laughter.

My feet carried me down the hallway before my brain could catch up. The bedroom door was cracked open, spilling a strip of gold light across the floorboards. I stopped just outside it, my back pressed to the wall, my heart beating so loud I was afraid they would hear it.

"You're terrible," the woman said, still giggling. I knew that voice. Selene. She trained with Kellan. She had legs like a dancer and a waist I could probably wrap one hand around.

"I'm honest," Kellan said. "There's a difference."

Bedsprings creaked. Fabric rustled. My stomach turned to stone.

"So tell me honestly then," Selene said. "What's the plan with her? You can't keep this up forever."

Kellan laughed. Not his warm laugh. The other one. The one he used when he thought someone was beneath him.

"Did you really think I'd spend my life with that fat girl?"

The basket handle bit into my arm. I stopped breathing.

Selene laughed with him, light and cruel. "Then why accept the mate bond? You could have rejected her at the Harvest Run. Everyone would have understood."

"Because she's the Alpha's sister," Kellan said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Think about it. Dating Wren got me a seat at the head table. It got me private training sessions with the Beta. It got me status, respect, connections. Nobody looks at me like a nobody from the border packs anymore."

"So she's a ladder."

"She's a very generous ladder." I could hear the smirk in his voice. "You know she bought this house? The furniture too. The truck. She covers most of my expenses and never asks for anything back. All I have to do is kiss her forehead once in a while and tell her she's beautiful."

Selene made a sound of disgust. "And she believes you?"

"She's desperate. Desperate girls believe anything." The bed creaked again. "Relax. Once I make Elite warrior next season, I won't need her brother's name anymore. I'll reject the bond in front of the whole pack if I have to. Let her cry about it. She's had two years of a man like me. That's more than a girl like her ever should have gotten."

Something inside me cracked. Not loudly. Quietly, the way ice cracks under your foot right before the whole lake gives way.

I don't remember dropping the basket. I remember the honey bread rolling across the hallway floor, and Selene saying, "Did you hear something?" and my legs finally, finally deciding to move.

I ran.

Out the front door, down the porch steps, into the cold blue dark. Tears blurred the streetlights into long smears of gold. My lungs burned. My wolf was howling somewhere deep inside me, wounded and furious, and I couldn't tell where her pain ended and mine began.

Two years. Two years of shrinking myself into smaller and smaller pieces so I would be easier to love. Two years of thinking I was the lucky one.

That fat girl.

I wasn't looking where I was going. I turned the corner at the end of Silvercrest Lane at a full run, half blind with crying, and slammed into what felt like a wall of solid muscle.

The impact knocked the air out of me. My feet slipped on the wet pavement and the ground rushed up to meet me.

It never did.

Strong hands caught my waist and held me like I weighed nothing at all. Heat rolled off him in waves, and beneath it, a scent hit me. Pine and smoke and something darker, something that made my wolf go completely still for the first time all night.

"Easy," a low voice said. "I've got you."

I looked up.

And up.

Dark eyes stared down at me. Eyes I knew. Eyes that belonged to a man I had spent years avoiding, because he was dangerous, because he was my brother's best friend, because girls like me did not survive men like him.

Zephyr Nightbane.

His grip on my waist tightened, just slightly. His nostrils flared like he was breathing me in. And then he said the last thing I ever expected to hear.

"You're crying." His voice dropped to something rough and quiet. "Tell me who did it, little wolf. Give me a name, and I'll make sure he never says it again."

Wren

I should have stepped back.

That was the right thing to do. Step back, wipe my face, mumble an apology, and walk away before Zephyr Nightbane could look at me too closely. That was what a sensible girl would have done.

But his hands were still on my waist, steady and warm, and his voice was still hanging in the air between us, and something inside me had been cracked open so wide that I had nothing left to hold myself together with.

"Little wolf." He said it slower this time. His dark eyes moved over my face, taking in the tears, the shaking, the way I couldn't seem to breathe right. "Something's wrong."

It wasn't a question. Zephyr never asked questions when he already knew the answer. That was one of the things that had always scared me about him. He saw everything.

"I'm fine," I whispered.

His jaw tightened. "You're not."