TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 320

Three hundred and twenty

Isabella POV

“Guess we can stop pretending now.”

Wesley’s words made me nudge him, silently begging him not to make this worse. But Wesley, in his usual fashion, didn’t seem to care.

With Harrison standing there, the covered plate still in his hands, I didn’t know what to say, except that I had somehow turned everything into a tangled mess. How could I explain that the future Alpha was my mate? That he was the man I couldn’t stop thinking about? That we’d already been kissing long before Wesley singled Harrison out?

“Good evening, Alpha Wesley.”

Harrison straightened and cleared his throat. His voice stayed level.

He held the plate toward me.

“I brought you some food.”

I reached for it, but my hands shook so badly the plate almost slipped.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

He nodded and walked away. Wesley wore a knowing grin as Harrison’s footsteps faded down the

corridor.

“Why does he look so shocked? Didn’t see that coming, did he?”

I closed my eyes and dragged in a breath. Wesley raised both hands in mock surrender.

The moment he left, I hurried down the corridor and knocked on Harrison’s door. It felt like forever before

it opened.

He pulled it back halfway, and contrary to what I expected, he wasn’t glaring. If anything, he looked unreadable, and that frightened me more than anger would’ve.

“I can explain.”

He stepped back without saying a word, and I walked inside.

His laptop sat open on the table. Spreadsheets covered the screen, and folders lay stacked beside it. Looking at them reminded me of what Wesley had put him through.

“I don’t even know where to start, Harrison, but what you saw isn’t exactly what you think.”

“It looked pretty straightforward to me,” he said, lowering himself into the plastic chair.

“It’s complicated.”

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He looked at me and shook his head.

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“Here I was thinking you were different. Innocent and filled with enough experience from life that you’d

never choose to hurt somebody else. Guess I was the fool.”

“Harrison, please hear me out.”

“Wesley rejected those reports again and again, even when Emma herself approved them. He made me rewrite more than two hundred pages. I barely slept, and you stayed with me while I worked, pretending to check figures with me. You brought me food. You kept saying none of it made sense.”

He sighed.

“Turns out it made perfect sense. You knew the whole time and yet watched me work myself into the ground instead.”

“It wasn’t that simple.”

He spoke over me, as though he hadn’t heard a word.

“So what was that? Guilt? Damage control?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are. But that doesn’t change anything. You told me to pretend because Anita wouldn’t leave you alone. So I became your fake boyfriend because it kept one person away while another chased after

you.”

Silence filled the room.

“I’m sorry, please. There’s more to what you saw.”

“I never thought I’d be stupid enough to fall for someone who faked needing help. Instead, I was playing the part of a fucking clown.”

He stood and walked to the door.

“I don’t care who you’re swapping bodily fluids with. That’s your choice. What I care about is your blatant deception. I don’t like people who use me to solve problems they won’t explain.”

He opened the door.

“I need some space. Please leave.”

There wasn’t a version of “I’m sorry” that could undo what he’d lived through. And telling him about the mate bond wouldn’t make any of this better. If anything, it would only make him believe I’d found another

excuse.

I walked out of his room feeling smaller than when I’d walked in.

That night, I barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Harrison standing at my door with that

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covered plate in his hands and that look on his face, over and over, and I knew it wasn’t leaving me anytime soon.

Wesley texted that I was overthinking it. I stared at the message without knowing what to say, because if our bond had been mutual, I wouldn’t have had to worry about who saw us, who would twist it into something else, or how everything would eventually fall apart when he had no choice but to break the bond because of everything surrounding it.

Wesley: Two consenting adults were alone in a room. We hadn’t committed a crime. If anything, I should have been the one annoyed about the interruption. I went home with a raging boner.

I groaned at the message.

To Wesley, it was an awkward interruption. To me, it was Harrison walking in on something I had desperately tried to keep hidden.

The following days made his distance painfully clear.

He stopped coming by my desk at work, and our conversations stopped with him. Nobody seemed to notice anything had changed. He never stopped by to ask if I needed anything or to send me on errands for him. He even made sure we stopped crossing paths.

Thankfully, he never let what happened between us spill over to Maverick. Whenever he spotted him around the lodge, he ruffled his hair and smiled at him.

Iris started noticing things and probably wondered why Harrison stopped knocking on my door before hers. She didn’t ask me but simply walked over whenever she saw Harrison. Soon they were leaving together more often while I watched them from farther away than before.

Iris had always liked Harrison, and with me out of the way, this was the chance she’d been waiting for.

I changed my routine instead, getting Maverick ready earlier every morning and leaving before Harrison usually stepped out. On the bus, I picked seats farther away, slipped my earbuds in, turned the music up, and watched the buildings pass outside instead of listening to the conversations behind me.

Wesley’s texts still came, wanting me to come to his office when I was free.

So what now? Is Harrison that important, or do you just like him back?

It’s not about liking him. It’s about basic decency.

As if the madness wasn’t enough, my body had begun working against me. Every day the bond pulled harder, and my wolf cried for her mate, wanting to stay with him instead of stealing kisses and pretending that was enough. Sleeping became harder because the bond refused to quiet down. Every memory of him holding me close came back the moment I lay down. I’d bury my face in my pillow and groan at the ridiculousness of it all.

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