Mate Rejected: A Rejected Mate Shifter Romance, page 1
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
REJECTED WOLF
Chapter One
The tears in my eyes momentarily blotted out the inscription on my parents’ headstones, but I knew the words in the artfully chipped stone by heart: “The chains unbidden, the veil now lifted, we transcend together, and our love will carry onward.”
I blinked back the tears. The angry heat of the moisture in my eyes was such a remarkable contrast to the wind’s chill kissing my cheeks.
I tried to push the errant red strands of my hair back behind my eyes before it clung to the wetness there.
I was the symbol of their love. A love that the chains of the curse they had never deserved couldn’t touch.
Even though my mother had been pregnant when they were cast out of the Imel packlands, banished and betrayed, there was no reason to think that the same veil and punishment would touch me.
Hopefully, the curse had died with them.
My fist tightened around the map of the Imel packlands. It crinkled a little and I worried for a moment that the ink would smudge. I didn’t want my mom’s practiced hand and ailing memory to evaporate. Nor did I want to have all the work I had prepped vanish with that chill wind.
A chill wind that dared me to face their curse.
There is only one way to find out for sure…
I smoothed a finger over my mother’s bracelet. I didn’t have many prized possessions in this world, but this piece of jewelry was something I clung to.
The gemstone was smooth, and perhaps even calming. It was a simple silver band, with a single onyx jewel less than the size of my pinkie nail entwined in silver coils – a dark contrast to my pale skin. It was bewitched so that it twisted with the size of my wrist when I shifted.
My mother had given it to me when I started going on shift trips by myself. I must have been twelve years old at the time.
Now I found myself rubbing it more and more often. She had told me once it came from her mom, too. Passed down through her side of the family, not my dad’s Quinn side. She had left her family behind when she came to be a part of the Imel pack. And they had met with a serious illness not long after she left. None of them remained that I could ever reach out to.
And then the Imels, her new family, had cast them out.
Burned them. Betrayed them. Let them take the fall.
My parents had never been able to find a home in another pack. We had been alone.
There was a peace in that solitude, though. It had given me purpose. Now, I was prepared to realize that purpose.
I thumbed aside the well-drawn map and looked at a picture of the Imel family that had been published in a newspaper a few years ago. The photograph was of the leaders, Claudette and Baldwin, though she was really the Alpha, and their three sons: Slade, Atlas, and Rhys.
They looked cocky, self-assured. Hosting some event or another for their town. Benefactors that contributed just enough so that any authority looked the other way as they expanded their empire.
Their empire that I was destined to destroy…
My eyes were clear now, as I wiped the last tear away.
I rolled the map, tucking the photos and supplementary materials into the notebook that slipped into my shoulder bag. Of course, it wasn’t just a map of the lands that I carried with me. I had details about the families, the “good” guys and “bad guys" and as much information as my parents could recall about the rival packs, important wives, husbands and offspring. I picked their brains, and squeezed every last drop of information out of them before the illnesses took them away. Not only because it was what I wanted, but because it was what they wanted, too. Anything they could think of as far as what skills the members had with which weapons, who to watch out for, who gave trust easily and who was the least trusting.
I had been going over the last few details with my parents before I took off toward the West to realize our plan. Silly, I know. They were dead. A few months in the ground, at this point. But I knew that their souls would rest easier if I accomplished this one thing for them.
I couldn’t delay any more. My mourning period had to be over. I couldn’t wait, drowning in whiskey bottles, fight nights, and ripped apart motorcycles that I knew I would never actually put back together.
I had spent so many days playing through videos of my mother and father teaching me to ride and pull apart machines, taking me out into the woods, letting me whip the little dirt bike’s tail around until I almost crashed it into the berms.
So many days where I sat with the jersey from my first few track days and pulled it up to my nose, inhaling that sweet track and sweat smell, remembering my many wins. I had stumbled through recipes, wondering how terrible I had been as my mom tried to teach me to bake a cake and wondering why I didn’t listen to her lessons better while I had her. I looked and laughed at pictures of my sullen face as she tried to make me pick out dresses with fluffy sleeves when all I wanted was the sexy slink.
Remembering the good times also left me remembering the bad times… The times when my mom was lost in the horror of facing her world without her family and the sacrifice she had made to give up her world for my dad’s, only to be abandoned by the Imels. Worse than that: cursed by them. Blocked out of other packs.
The rumors of who my parents were – complete falsehoods fabricated by the Imels – spread like wildfire before us. It made it hard for my parents to find jobs, people to barter and trade with. We were completely cut off from the shifter culture and their world.
I saw it cut apart my parents. Then I saw how building me up as their tool for revenge gave them hope.
I hated that they would never get to see how I would realize that hope for them…
It wouldn’t stop me from doing it, though.
I’d just had a few months of detour, that was all…
A few months after their deaths, where, sometimes I drank too much whiskey. Where I ripped savage and naked through the wilderness looking for something to chase under the moon, shifting through my phases, feeling the glory of my family pulsing through me as I let myself shift in the rage and sorrow and sadness.
I had plodded, retreating along my tracks, trying to find my way home, until I was too tired to keep myself upright, shaking from the sobs that sounded more like mournful howls. I had rested, huddled in an abandoned warren and awakened to deer that should have been terrified of me pushing close, only to realize I had shifted fully back to human form overnight.
There had been far too many nights of sorrow. While the sorrow wouldn’t end, I could give it more direction. I needed to enact the plan.
I brushed my unruly red hair back from my cheeks as the wind whipped it. I reached to my lips with two fingers, kissed them, then planted the kiss on their tombstone.
“Good-bye, mom. Good-bye, dad. I’ll do you proud.”
I picked up my helmet from the moist earth that was just showing new sprigs of grass over their plots. I looked at their names one last time. Then I spun toward my motorcycle, parked not far down the hill, thread my way through many other tombstones, in various levels of tender love and forget.
That was just the thing. I was never going to forget. More than that, I was on my way to show the entire packlands that they were never allowed to forget Maggie and Donovan Quinn.
They may have had twenty-three years of the mighty Imel pack trying to erase them, trying to blacklist them everywhere in the realm, but I was going to stride back into that world and take it down from the inside. It was what I had trained for my entire life.
Now, without my parents urging me forward, reminding me of the nuances and reasons why it was important, it seemed even more profound.
They had taught me spy craft and fighting skills and all they thought I might need. But there was something new to my purpose. Now that their illnesses had taken them, I felt like an even fuller force compelled me. A new power coursed through me. I was a hellish inferno that didn’t care if I destroyed myself entirely, as long as I took the Imels down.
Harper Quinn, daughter of those two precious, strong people I was leaving behind me in their final resting place, was truly alone in this world.
I literally had nothing else to live for.
And so if it was a fight to the death that awaited me, I was willing die protecting my parents’ honor.
Chapter Two
Even the night wind smelled more luscious, as if spores full of life were carried through the air, driven toward new, unknown plots of soil where they could take root, spreading the supreme beauty of the Imel packlands.
It was infuriating.
I was not the only one who had grown up lacking. Neither were my parents and I the only ones to have been banished from the Imel lands. Despite that, there weren’t examples we could point to of other who had been betrayed, others who had taken the fall for things they weren’t responsible for. It was just the type of people the Imels were. Maybe there were even others plotting for their downfall. If only I knew their names, maybe I could find partners in my plan…
Not that I would. Letting anyone into my little plot might make holes in the vessel of revenge I carried in my heart. I couldn’t let any of that water spill until it was boiling hot, ready to sear away the skin of those who deserved it.
I throttled over the border of the packlands but wasn’t able to help the little shiver of fear that washed over my body. I knew it was ridiculous, but for a moment I worried that that old curse would spring up, like a clothesline ready to rip me from my vinyl seat and fling me to the ground, sending my motorcycle sprawling in sparks and bent metal up the empty road as blood and pain and ancient magic tore me apart.
But, nothing happened.
So far so good…
The deeper I got into the packlands, the more luscious the terrain. My eyes were sharp as I saw the canopies of trees and rows of farmland passing by under the bright moonlight. Steady signs of well-kept lawns, nice cars, and towering houses, the occasional beatific main street came into view as I made my way toward the center of the Imel empire: Clawspine.
It was buried back not far from the foothills of the cascading Timberline mountains. The winding roads were fun to throttle around, shifting down and crouching low. The quick peek of animal eyes scurried from the side of the road and I wondered if they smelled me before they heard me. They’d know I was more of a threat once I parked the bike at whatever campsite I chose.
My mom had detailed a rushing river, fondly called the Spoken, falling toward the Timberline peaks that Clawspine was tucked next to. I wanted to find a camp not far from one of the lagoons of its tributaries. It would provide some good fishing and a nice place to bathe. It would also likely be more water than I had ever seen in one place, besides that one dangerous trip we had taken to the ocean when I was a small girl, hoping to stumble upon a long lost cousin of my mom’s – unsuccessfully.
The Imel packlands were such a stark contrast to the surrounding apocalyptic world. It wasn’t a surprise that they might be fending off rivals occasionally. I didn’t have the freshest news about what they might be up against, but I figured it wouldn’t be hard to find out.
Some lights showed behind me as I started to slow down. I knew I was approaching the turnoff I wanted to take, and I didn’t want to miss it. I also didn’t want anyone to see me turning off. I had to balance slowing down and being sighted.
My heart thumped in my ears, matching the thrum of my bike.
Glancing in my mirror, I saw that there were two motorcycles rather than one, on my tail. They smelled like wolf shifters and two-stroke oil.
I slowed down just enough that they could pass me, without it looking suspicious. However, as they drew nearer, my hand flexed, tempted to gun it, tempted to see if they could meet the challenge, wanting to throw it all to the wind and just get this shit over with… I held back the urge and they blew by me, both of them turning their heads to catch a good whiff of me.
I tensed. Waiting for their senses to alert them to how much of a danger I was. But they didn’t stop. Didn’t slow.
The curse must not have been ingrained on them, at least.
If it was still in place.
My heartbeat started to shift back to normal as they vanished around the bend. I decided to pass by the place I wanted to turn off on and travel a bit further, making sure they hadn’t stopped up ahead to watch for me. By the time I came around the bend, their lights were vanishing far in the distance.
I flipped the bike around and headed back to the turn-off, my hands a little unsteady.
That was the first real trial.
If they were part of the Imel pack, if they had been around when the curse had been imposed, they would have been alerted to the scent of my mom and my dad. They would know to alert the Imels and their high guards about my parents’ scent. I was banking on the curse ending at their death and never holding to me at my birth. That was what the priestess had said.
Everything hinged on that.
It was a lot to bank on…
I shook my head slightly and careened along the off-road path, choosing my line carefully as my streetfighter bike bopped along, handling both street and off-road easily. It was my cherished, cherried out bike and I would die for it.
I paused at a split Y, trying to remember what my mother had said about this turn off she and my dad used to frequent when they were young. The trail was fairly well-kept, so for all I knew, it had been refashioned over the years. I chose the right side, and was not let down.
It only took about ten minutes of my headlight flipping over the foliage for the beauty of a tranquil lagoon to be illuminated. A waterfall crashed down on it from twenty-feet up in the air, sloshing over precipices of night-darkened rock, as sturdy trees peeked from the edges.
My heart caught in my throat as I sat for a moment, in awe at the space of pure magic before me. The mud bogs I would thrash with my dirt bike after the rare monsoons were the closest things I had to compare it to. But it was simply no match. Here, the Imels had this gorgeous paradise with wildflowers and lush grass blanketing the banks.
I flicked off the bike and its light, pulling off my helmet, and stripping out of my clothes just as fast. The water was calling to my sweat-slicked skin and I was excited to have my body answer that call.
As I stood on the edge of the bank, my toes sinking into the silt, a growl surfaced in my throat. I looked down at the moonlight bathing my skin and felt so many emotions all at once. I was thrilled to be here, excited to experience this. But I was also angry to have missed out on it all my life. Angry that it had been dragged from my parents; that they’d been able to fall in love with this beauty just as easily as they had lost it.
I pulled my hair out of the bun it had been knotted back in and shook loose the messy mane of red tendrils.
Pointing my toes, I ran one foot over the water’s surface. It was cool, but not too chilly. Still, it beckoned the protection of my fur.
Not only that, the emotional trigger of my shifting was pulled as the moon peeked from behind clouds and the emotional magnitude of slipping into something so beautiful as the liquid sheath of this lagoon.
As I sank into the waters, I shifted. My muscles hardened, pulled at my skin, grew in size and power. It was a slightly painful and empowering experience. Every time, it shivered that same delightful combination through me and made me want to roar.
The growl tickled at my throat again. My eyes flashed the lasers of green, and dilated to take in every movement through the night air. The water rippled around my strong paws as my claws raked at the droplets.
I twirled in the water, its sweet embrace curling over me like a tender glove, cleaning me, caressing me, desiring me to dive into it fully. I didn’t deny myself the urge.
As I dove in, I took a deep breath, my tail flipping out over the water. I flurried down to the bottom, amazed by the opalescent nature of the river rock shining back at me, matching the glow of the moon high above my head. It was easy to get lost in the breathtaking beauty, to be mesmerized by the way it refreshed my soul.
I had to keep reminding myself that I had missed out on this my entire life, because of the Imels. Their selfishness, their arrogance, their betrayal… They had banished me to a world of desert and solitude.
Every moment that I felt the pressure of holding my breath in my lungs against the liquid glory surrounding me, I could feel the pressure of my duty to my parents glowing even more firm in my mind.
