6. Gideon

I’d been officially spending more time in the mountains than in the city. At first, I drove straight from work and then came right back here as soon as my workday was done. The next morning, I’d stop at home to shower and change. Repeat. But yesterday, I called in sick and said I’d be back as soon as I was able. At the rate I was going, it wouldn’t be tomorrow either.

It wasn’t helping the way I needed it to. And yet, I kept doing it, hoping for a different result. I knew better. Instead of forgetting about our run-in with our mate, my bear was getting more and more insistent that we find him. Of course, he freaking was—it was his nature. On this point, he was wiser than me, for sure. I didn’t know why I thought we’d eventually turn a corner and things would suddenly be sunshine and roses or at least heading in that direction, but I’d somehow managed to convince myself that that was the case.

There was one thing the trips did do, though. They kept my beast at bay-ish. The times I needed to be in my skin, he allowed it and didn’t push back. He wasn’t pleased, and he did fare better when I let him out. But there wasn’t any danger of him pushing through and taking over while I was in a meeting or anything like that. Small victories were still victories, right? Only it wasn’t a victory, not really.

He was miserable.

I was miserable.

Something had to change.

It was time to face reality. My mate was still out there, and the longer I was away from him, the harder it was going to be to hold myself together. I didn’t want to be one of those people who hunted him down, looking for posted sightings on the internet as a way of tracking him. Or worse, be that guy, the one stalking the object of my desire and then when I found him, begging him to keep me even after he already left me standing there. Why couldn’t we have met, said hello, and then lived happily ever after? Was that too much to ask?

I was at the point where I was coming to terms with the fact that I couldn’t go on like this. Something had to give… and soon.

If…no, when we found each other again, we’d have a conversation, and if he told me, “No, I don’t want to be with you,” I’d figure it out then.

But for all I knew, he was feeling the same way, too. Maybe he was out there looking for me, but unlike me, he didn’t have the advantage of knowing my name. He’d be looking for a needle in a haystack.

And there was also the possibility that he didn’t know who I was or that I was anything other than some weird guy looking at him, longing for him, and calling him mate. That would explain his departure.

In a way, that was the best-case scenario. He wasn’t rejecting me even though he knew I was his mate. He was just some guy who got scared when meeting an overzealous fan. That could be a thing, right? It didn’t have to mean he full-on rejected me.

My bear ran and ran and ran until he couldn’t run any more. Then he jumped into the lake and looked for fish to eat. And once he succeeded, he climbed out of the water and did it over and over again. When he finally became bored of that, he began to run around the lake some more.

By my third time around the lake, I pushed at him to swim again. He ignored me. Then I suggested he grab one of the foxes we scented. Once again, he ignored me. I offered him option after option. None were good enough for him. He was going to run in circles and that was that. Nothing was settling my beast today. It was time for me to give up and just do what needed to be done from the beginning. Find Kai.

It was a risk—a huge risk. Right now, there was the possibility we might one day be together. All hypothetical, obviously, but it was there. I could destroy that if I wasn’t careful. I might catch up with him and his immediate response could be to flee again. What if I looked him in the eye and told him that I was his and I wanted him to be mine, and he said no? Then what?

I wasn’t sure how I would be able to handle that. It would crush me, break me into a thousand pieces. I’d accept it, but I’d fall apart. Hiding from it wasn’t doing either me or my bear any good, though. There was only one way to find out what my future would hold—and that was to find him and have an honest conversation about it.

First, I needed to pull myself together and get my bear to stop running in circles… literally.

It took a while, but I managed and headed back into the city with exhaustion starting to settle in. I parked my car at home, and before heading into my place, I realized I needed to get coffee. If I didn’t, I was going to crash hard, and when I woke up, my bear would be at it again. There would be time for sleep, but that time wasn’t now.

Thinking of coffee had me remembering a story from when Kai first moved to the city. It was something about him being at a coffee shop and not having any money. I pulled up one of the articles easily and found the location of that coffee shop. If I was going to find him anyway, might as well start at the first place anyone saw him.

He wasn’t going to be there this time. It was ridiculous to think so, and his scent would have long washed away. No one kept a coffee shop unsanitized for that long. It just didn’t happen. At least, not without the city shutting them down for health-code violations. That didn’t stop me from feeling disappointed when I walked inside and all I scented was a group of teenage boys who had obviously just finished some sort of sporting event and were in desperate need of a shower—and a whole lot of coffee.

I walked up to the counter, ordered my regular, and as I was waiting, I saw him walk by the front window. There was no mistaking it was him. Without even thinking, I ran to find him and I did, at the door. He’d been coming here, after all.

“You!” And suddenly, everything felt right. All it took was one single word.