My Convicted Wife is My Mate (Bella and Kane) novel Chapter 18

chapter 17-1
BELLA’S POV

I sat across from my best friend, Tara at our usual café. It’s a small place tucked between two bookstores.

She had barely let me finish talking about my experience with Kathy before she gasped so loudly the man at the next table looked over.

“What? Kathy tricked you? And that man - he forced you to drink?” Tara’s eyes widened. “She’s shameless. I swear, I’m going to find her and deal with her myself.”

I couldn’t help but smile a little. Tara was fire in a tiny body. She was one of the few friends I had left in this world. She was a wolf as well but she was from a pack on the opposite coast. We met in college, before everything fell apart.

I missed her so much. I missed everything about her.

I missed running beside her under the moonlight. Her wolf form was a beautiful white wolf. She was as fast as wind. Even in human form, she looked the same. She had pale hair and dark eyes. She was a small fragile looking girl but you wouldn’t want to mess with her. For someone with such a tiny body, she had a huge wolf.

“It’s weird seeing you with injuries,” she said softly, staring at the bruise on my cheek.

“I know,” I murmured. “I think about it every day.”

Tara clenched her jaw. “I’m still going to kick her ass.”

That made me laugh, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “She’s not worth it, Tara. It was my fault, really. I should have known better. I was careless.” I sighed and looked down at my coffee. “I thought if Kathy ever betrayed me again, it’d be for money, not this.”

Even though I was kind of suspicious about Kathy having the album, I expected that she would ask me for money at most. After all, she wanted me to lend her money for her film. I never imagined that she would try to traffick me and let a man assault me for it. Not in a million years.

Tara frowned. Her eyes were filled with sympathy and anger all at once. “You trusted her.”

“I did,” I admitted quietly. “And that was my mistake.”

Truth was, Tara would never understand the kind of vulnerability I’d been in that night. If it were her, she’d have shifted before anyone could touch her. Her wolf would’ve protected her. But me? I was stuck between what I used to be - a doctor, a healer and what prison had made of me. I was human, and broken in ways I didn’t want to admit.

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