Laila stared down at the bleeding wound with guilt sitting quietly in her chest, biting her nail nervously. She had known he was about to reject the mate bond over the phone, she had heard it coming in his voice, and that would have hurt her far more than this wound she had made on herself.

Well, Sebastian, who wasn’t her fated mate, had rejected her, and that had hurt, and a fated mate’s rejection would be double that. To be honest, she didn’t want a rejection from the doctor and wanted this to work out.

She didn’t want to think about what rejection would feel like. She would not only suffer the physical pain of it but would be left completely alone and broken. Maybe not being a bitch and trying to find someone to put down occasionally had made her realize she had no real life and no good relationships.

Okay, she admitted to having bullied a lot of people, but then if she didn’t become the bully, she would be bullied. But now she wanted to let that go because a lot of people in Silver were not worth trying to impress or influence. Maybe she wanted someone to love her genuinely, for once in her life, and who else could do that better than someone fated to her?

A fated mate could change everything, could give her back the happiness she had lost, and at the same time, having Gilbert would be its own quiet victory against her family, who didn’t like his family. She wanted this to work so badly she could taste the fear of it not working out the way she had planned.

When Gilbert arrived at her door, he called her to give him the entry code, having already told her not to move from where she was. She gave it to him without hesitation. He let himself in and found her on the couch, tears running down her face, her thigh bleeding steadily onto the floor.

"How did this happen?" He asked, dropping to his knees and lifting the hem of her nightdress to assess the extent of the wound properly.

"I... I was, I mean... it just hurt." Laila hadn’t thought to prepare an excuse for how it had happened, she had done it to herself purely to get him through her door, and now that he was actually here, crouched before her with his bag open, she had nothing to say.

So she cried instead about the pain, and as she had counted on, as someone in the early pull of a mate bond would naturally do, he was already working on her with a gentleness she genuinely hadn’t expected from any man.

Men typically saw her as a seductress. They went rough and impatient. Having this one handle her so carefully, his touch measured and precise against her exposed thigh, made her curl her nails into the couch cushion and bite down on her lower lip.

"It’s a small cut but it’s bleeding heavily because it was made with a silver blade." Gilbert said, blowing softly onto the wound as he cleaned it and feeling her flinch beneath his hands.

He was doing everything the way he would for any patient, professionally, with clinical detachment, but that was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, because her exposed, tanned thigh was not presenting itself to his mind as simple human anatomy the way it should have. It was stirring something uncomfortably warm in him, something he had no framework for, because he had never in his life been this acutely aware of a woman’s body before, especially a patient.

"I didn’t think you would come," Laila said, looking down at his bowed head, the brown hair with its silky waves, cut and faded at the sides, and the pink tips of his ears. He was so handsome. A sharp jawline, a strong, magnificent face with a dent in his chin that added to his charm, and entirely unbothered by any of it, which somehow made it worse.

He didn’t answer her and kept working until he was finished, then began packing his tools away methodically.

"Next time, refrain from hurting yourself to get my attention, Miss Serrano. I am a busy man with a great deal to do, and I hope you will go on living your life the way you were before we crossed paths yesterday. If you’ll excuse me." He picked up his bag, rose from his knees, and turned to leave, but she caught his hand.

"Why?" Laila asked, her brows drawing together. "I know you feel it, Gilbert. Is it because of the history between our families? Is that why you won’t accept the bond and what fate has given us?"

"I don’t know what you are referring to, Miss Serrano. But I already have someone I like and want a future with." He half-lied, it wasn’t entirely untrue, given that he had already made up his mind to ask Miss Zoe out on a date and make a relationship work between them.

Laila’s eyes went wide. But before the hurt could properly settle in, she caught herself, because she had done her research on him this morning and there had been no mention of him seeing anyone. He was lying to get her off his back.

She tugged on his hand until he was standing close enough, then reached up and pressed his palm flat against her breast, holding it there when he tried to pull it back. "You cannot deny the spark between us. Even if there is someone else, a fated mate should always come first."

When he didn’t fight her for the return of his hand, standing frozen in place instead, she parted her nightdress and guided his hand inside to her bare skin, and she felt his hand twitch involuntarily against her breast, his eyes going wide as saucers.

"Can you feel my heartbeat?" she asked breathlessly, looking up at him with open longing. "It’s beating for you. I need you in my life right now."

Gilbert’s mind caught up with his body a beat later, the realization that his hand was inside a woman’s clothing, pressed against the warm, full weight of his mate’s bare breast, snapping him back into himself, and he yanked his hand away and stepped back from her sharply.

She needed him. But he wasn’t a fool; she had needed dozens of other men and had probably seduced them this way. He’d heard words from his sisters and the men she had taken and left, about how the Serranos’ daughter acted like a literal bitch and took and dumped men like rubbish, and how they felt sorry for whoever turned out to be her fated mate, for she would give him a heart attack and watch him die from it. That was how nonchalant and uncaring she was about the men she took.

Gilbert didn’t want a woman like that, not because he was being judgmental about her choice of lifestyle, but because she would be the biggest distraction, one capable of ruining his perfect, peaceful life, pulling him away from the work he enjoyed and making him worry about which man she might have in her bed next.

"I, Gilbert, reject you as my mate." He said without thinking.

Laila looked at him with hurt plain in her eyes and a bitter smile sitting underneath it. "It doesn’t work that way, remember? You cannot reject what you haven’t fully accepted yet." She paused, then held his gaze steadily. "But I want you to know, I don’t give up easily. And I will make you fall so deeply in love with me that you won’t be able to go a single day without me."

Oh no, please don’t. I don’t want you, damn it! Gilbert thought, regretting that he had gone to the Alpha’s office at that particular moment yesterday. She would ruin his life.

She rose from the couch and pressed a kiss to his cheek, but he put his hand on her arm and moved her back gently.

"You are aware that the two of us cannot work in any capacity. I don’t have the time or the temperament to navigate mate jealousy with someone who can’t keep her distance from others, and I will certainly not go against my family for your sake. Let’s not delude ourselves, Miss Serrano. I don’t want you in my life."

"And I don’t give up." She said simply, the smile not leaving her face. "I want you in my life, not just in my life. I want you in my bed every night. I hope the next time we see each other, we will be discussing whether you will be moving into my place or I into yours." She watched the surprise flicker across his face at her boldness and felt a quiet satisfaction in it.

She walked him to the door and watched him disappear quickly into the elevator at the end of her hallway, doing his very best not to look back at her as the doors slid shut between them.

Laila stood in her doorway for a moment after he was gone, arms folded loosely, a thoughtful look on her face.

She had a long road ahead of her in getting this mate of hers to accept what was already written between them. Gilbert was certainly not the kind of man she would have given attention to in the past, but the Moon Goddess had picked him for her. Only, she didn’t know if she would ever win him over, and that made her sad...