Forsaken Mate, page 3
part #1 of Shifted Fates Series
“Avery...” My best friend breathed my name no louder than a whisper. “You’re his mate.”
“What? No,” I answered on a reflex, not even looking back at her. I tried to angle to see Jett.
“Look at yourself. The moon chose you.” She tugged at my wrist and I glanced down.
My skin was glowing too. A silver brightness, identical to Jett’s.
What?
How could this be?
A part of me remembered this was wrong. My mate wasn’t supposed to be in Moon-Ghost. Certainly not the alpha’s son. Not my tormentor.
Down to my soul, there was a newfound peace wrapped in an ache. If I could just get closer to him. Then everything would be right. There was bone-deep certainty in that. I couldn’t understand what it meant, not logically. But my body knew. It rejoiced in the sensation, it craved closeness.
But why wasn’t he coming to me? Why was he just standing there, half-hidden by his father? Didn’t he feel this? The rightness? The wanting?
My mate—because he was, for better or worse, and at the moment it felt wonderful. Everything would be okay.
But still, my mate didn’t move. And I was still frozen in place.
A heartbeat later, Jett stepped in front of his father. My gaze raked over him as if drinking in the sight like it was the first gulp of air I’d been allowed in my life. Desperately choking it, but grateful for the sight.
There was need in his eyes. I saw it. I knew it matched my own.
But there was another emotion in there, and it was nothing kind. Nothing gentle.
And then he spoke. He didn’t raise his voice, not like his father, but the packs were silent. Waiting to hear his next words. The Alpha and the Omega. Mismatched but moon-matched too.
“Avery Ward, the moon goddess has offered you to me. But you’re no mate of mine. You’re weak. Unworthy. Pathetic. I feel sick looking at you. This is the Choosing, so heed my choice.” There was a beat. Just a single pause before the next words left his mouth and destroyed the last glimmer of hope I’d felt.
“I forsake you as my mate.”
Chapter VI
Forsaken.
The air disappeared. I couldn’t breathe. There was a crushing feeling like my lungs were being squeezed. It was sudden and paralyzing, and then it was gone. And all I was left with was a bone-deep ache and a sense of wrongness that made me want to sob. It was like everything I was, down to my very soul, had been drenched in sludge.
This was the Choosing.
Not just the moon’s choice but ours too. But what choice had I been given?
Being forsaken was cruelty beyond belief. The elders rarely spoke of it. It wasn’t like a divorce. You didn’t yell at each other screaming, “If you’re so sick of how I wash the dishes, then forsake me and be done with it!”
Forsaking... didn’t happen.
But it had happened to me.
It didn’t matter that I detested Jett and everything the pack stood for. That he’d terrified me for years. That I’d never wanted to be tied to someone in this cursed pack. The moon had chosen us, and he’d... he’d forsaken me. There was nothing rational about how I felt. Nothing logical. Just raw instinct driving me.
I did the only thing I could. The only thing I’d ever been able to do.
I ran.
I ran and ran and ran as far as my legs would carry me. I wasn’t the fastest or strongest, but no one followed me right away. I reached the woods. Whose territory I was technically in, I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I collapsed behind a tree and sobbed.
I hadn’t even known I could make sounds like that, but once they started, they didn’t stop. Tears, even though I never cried, flowed painfully. Time meant nothing. All I felt was this visceral loss. Everything hurt. My chest, lungs, heart, throat. My head ached. I pressed a hand to my forehead. I was boiling. Feverish.
But I was so broken.
I wanted to escape the pack, and maybe I’d still get my wish. Surely they’d let me leave the pack now. Without a mate, though, I had nowhere to go. But wouldn’t I be free? A kind of free?
I tried to console myself, but that awful, gripping pain in my chest wouldn’t ease. Then, at the edge of my senses, I heard a sound. Not a normal rabbit moving around, but something bigger. A group? I strained my hearing and my blood ran ice-cold.
“She’s around here somewhere. I can tell.” That voice. My mate’s voice.
I shuddered another sob at the sound. How cold. Didn’t he feel this? It’s not like it was a choice, this moon-matched, moon-cursed thing. Shouldn’t he be in pain like I was? Shouldn’t it feel like the universe was collapsing on him?
“We’ll take care of it. You won’t even have to touch her. That bitch is going to regret the day she was born.” Sabine. Sounding more feral than I’d ever heard. Whether it was anger, protectiveness, or just raw delight at the thought of punishing me. Like any of this had been my choice.
Survive. No matter how shitty I felt, I had to survive. Those instincts overruled everything, just powerful enough to cut through the fog.
I stood on shaky legs, forcing myself off the forest floor.
“There,” someone said. Shit. Their hearing was better than mine, and on the night of the full moon, it was unparalleled.
There would be no subtlety. I ran.
And they chased. I could sense them. I was more prey than predator. Weak. But desperate to live. I ran, but they ran faster. I didn’t know where I was. There were no familiar landmarks, no places to hide.
They were gaining on me. I strained, pushing myself harder than I ever had before. Live. I had to live.
Then, pain. Sudden, hot pain erupted across my torso. I was knocked to the ground, my arms barely breaking my fall. I tried to crawl back, to regain my footing, but Sabine was faster. She pounced and slapped me. Her claws raked across my face. I tasted blood. My ears rang while my mind tried to process what was happening.
“Goddess, that felt good,” she hissed. “You’re going to die tonight.”
My torso burned as I tried to stand. Her fist slammed into me.
“Why?” I coughed out. Part of me was trying to stall, to distract her. But why? Why kill me? Wasn’t I already ruined?
Naively, I never thought, as cruel as Sabine had been, that she would be a murderer.
The gleeful, fiendish light in her eyes told me I’d been an idiot.
“You dumb slut.” There was a righteous lilt to her words that made me want to tremble. Or maybe that was the blood loss. “You think you can just walk away? Our Alpha can’t have a forsaken mate”—even hearing the words felt like a blow—“out in the world, shacking up with anyone who will tolerate you and siring bastards.”
I tried to gather my limbs under me while she talked. Behind her was one of the wolves from the Alpha clique.
And Jett.
He stood there. There was hate in his eyes. Nothing tender. No regret. He might not be beating me himself, but he wanted Sabine to kill me. It shouldn’t have hurt. He should’ve meant nothing.
But it all hurt. It hurt so freaking much.
“This is the end for you. I almost pity you, but you can’t pity what you hate,” she spat. And then she lunged.
I managed to jump back, dodging at the last second.
It wasn’t enough, though. Sabine didn’t give up like that. She lunged for me again, and this time she made contact.
I couldn’t just let her hit me. The pain awakened something inside me, something more desperate than I’d ever known. I wanted to live, dammit. I fought. I fought harder than I’d ever fought for anything. I clawed wildly. The scent of blood filled the air. The scent of death.
But it was my blood.
The pain turned to a dull ache, and I ignored it while I clawed. But there was no end to the assault. If I nicked her, she cracked one of my ribs. If I dodged her, she just came at me harder. I was a cornered animal, lashing out, but she was an apex predator.
Then, a lucky strike. I slashed her eye and she howled in pain. Her roar shook the woods.
I didn’t hesitate. I scrambled back, running. But a moment later, the others were on my tail.
Run faster, I willed myself. I was limping, trying to weave through trees. Run. Escape. Recover. If I could escape them, I could find help. Who would help me? I didn’t know. A pack healer. Someone. But I had to escape. Get back to the crowd.
And then I reached the edge of the woods.
But it wasn’t clear fields on the other side.
It was a cliff.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
The others caught up. Sabine’s face was covered in blood and a hasty bandage torn from the other shifter’s shirt. The only reason I’d made it this far, no doubt.
“Please,” I begged. I hated begging, but it was better than death. “You’ll never see me again. Just let me go.”
“Never.”
The word came from Jett. The single time he spoke during this.
“I hate you all!” I screamed. “You’re going to kill me, and for what? It’s not enough to forsake me?” My words were slurred slightly. The blood loss. I could feel it soaking through my tattered jeans. My shirt was nothing more than an ambitious scrap of cloth, my organs threatening to fall out.
Even if I got to a healer, it might be too late.
“I’ll be kind,” Jett said.
I barked a hysterical laugh at that. I couldn’t help it.
“Kind?” My voice was shrill.
“Jump.” He said it like he hadn’t heard me speak. “Just step off the cliff and it can all be over.”
I stared at him like he was insane. He wanted me to kill myself? Too good to get his own hands dirty? I growled. “Never.” I wasn’t sure where the resolve came from. I didn’t care.
“To hell with this,” Sabine announced.
She rushed me, throwing me back with all her strength.
This was the end.
I wasn’t even sure when I hit the ground.
Chapter VII
There was nothing. For a second or forever, I couldn’t tell. There was no time, and I had no body. Only nothingness.
But somehow, I was cold.
Chapter VIII
I’d never been sure if I bought more into the whole traditional Heaven and Hell thing or the pack’s belief of our spirits turning into stars. I was definitely leaning toward the former because I wasn’t a star.
At least, not unless stars had massive headaches.
I shook myself awake and noticed something was different. Really different.
I was in my wolf form.
For a moment, I just stared at myself in shock. Well, down at my paws, since there wasn’t a mirror or anything.
Just like my human hair, my fur was bright red. I normally felt wobbly, off balance in my weaker form.
I took a tentative step forward, and... that wobbliness was gone. Instead, I felt steady on my legs, comfortable, like my fur was a proper second skin. For a moment, there was delight.
But there was still a lingering ache, a sadness. The broken mate bond.
Everything crashed back into me. The ceremony. The attack. The cliff.
Sabine had pushed me. Even if she hadn’t, I’d been near dead.
But I wasn’t at the base of a cliff. Instead, I was in the middle of a field.
I raised my nose and inhaled the scents. They weren’t anything I’d ever scented on Moon-Ghost territory, nor did I recognize where I was. But there was something almost familiar about the scent.
Something tugged at my senses, an awareness that was both my own and yet foreign at the same time. I followed it, taking off in a direction without a care.
I must’ve been dreaming because I’d always been weak. Unsteady. Slow. Yet here, in my wolf form, I felt anything but. Every step was self-assured, and my body showed no sign of tiring as I ran mile after mile through fields.
It was nighttime. My surroundings were painted in darkness, the moon nowhere to be seen. Only stars lit the way, allowing me to see. My rational, human mind tried to make sense of that. The moon had been full the last time I was awake. Or alive.
But my wolf didn’t care.
In our wolf forms, shifters became more animal than human on a deeper level. It was a delicate balance, and not every shifter experienced the same change. Some were more animal in human form than others were in wolf form. The more powerful the shifter, the more balanced they were supposed to be in both forms. But I’d never really experienced the raw, instinctual pull on the rare occasions I’d shifted before.
But now? My wolf was out and she was in control.
She was ruled by instinct, and her instincts commanded her to chase this awareness. It tugged me, drawing me farther and farther. The fields were grass, then covered in flowers. There were orchards, then proper forests. I reached a lake and started to circle the bank, tilting my head as I went, as if it would let me better follow the invisible guiding force.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, it faded.
Once gone, I could think more clearly. Where was I? I still had no clue. I’d been running for hours if I had to guess, but nothing was familiar. I’d never been here before.
And I hadn’t seen anyone either.
Could I really be dead?
I mean, there was no way I could’ve survived the fall. But I didn’t feel dead, right? Not that I was an expert in the subject.
Suddenly thirsty, I stepped down to the lake to drink some water. I sniffed the surface, but it smelled... odd. Not wrong, exactly, but not like plain water. My wolf turned her snout up to it and decided to look for another source of water.
Then, a flash of movement. My inner predator woke up, and without another thought, I was chasing it.
How bizarre. How right. For years, I’d been the one on the run. A wolf-shifter, hunted by my own kind. Yet here, I was like any of the others. I was a huntress.
And, well, I was hungry.
I chased down the rabbit and ruthlessly bit in. The human part of me felt bad, but the wolf was simply pleased to have caught something and dealt with the hunger.
What now?
I now knew food could be found in the area, and there was water, even if it turned out my wolf was a water snob. I could always shift and drink that way, even if I’d never heard of the human side needing to outmaneuver the wolf. Normally our wolves had better survival instincts than we did. That left shelter.
I looked around. The area was mostly exposed. There was a wooded area a half-mile back, maybe, but I didn’t relish the idea of sleeping in a tree. Especially since I’d need to shift into my human form and I’d be exposed to the elements.
I surveyed the area. There were some mountains in the distance to one side, the lake to the other. Seemed like the woods were my best bet.
I turned back the way I’d come and when I returned to the woods, I took them in properly. I’d have to shift back to human at some point and better examine the area. For now, though, my wolf form was a safer bet. I was faster, stronger. Whether those changes would hold when I shifted back, I couldn’t guess. Especially since shifting had never felt like this before.
From my limited view as a wolf, the trees didn’t look like anything that was native to my pack’s territory. Without that strange urge to distract me, I could better take in the area. It wasn’t entirely deserted like I’d previously thought. There were some rabbits and field mice. That much was normal, at least.
Just when I thought I’d have to settle for a tree after all, I found a cave. There were strange scents clinging to it, but it would have to do. The cave wasn’t huge, but it was large enough for me to tuck myself in a decent distance out of sight and stand if I shifted back.
I tucked myself into a corner, setting myself up to keep an eye on the entrance while hidden from sight.
This night had been impossibly long. I’d thought I would find my freedom in my mate, and instead... I’d gotten whatever this was. The broken bond was still like shards of glass in my chest. I hoped it would fade eventually, or I really would wish I was dead.
With that cheerful thought, I let sleep overtake me.
There was no field or pond, not like when I normally dreamed. I was human again, but I couldn’t see anything. There was only darkness, and strangely, it was more a feeling than something I saw. There was sorrow and pain and a gut-wrenching hurt.
“Where have you been?”
The voice. At least, wherever I was, whatever was happening with my wolf, my subconscious was still keeping up with these dream conversations.
Still, this was different. Normally the voice of my imaginary conversation partner was warm, comforting, if a bit teasing. Now, it was almost angry.
“Is your mate not letting you get any sleep?” the voice demanded.
What? Was my subconscious going to rub in that I’d had the worst mating in the history of matings?
All I could manage was a snort. “Depends on your definition of sleep.” He’d certainly tried to put me in a permanent one.
“Jump,” he’d said. Like I was an inconvenience, and couldn’t I do him this one favor of killing myself?
Bastard.
Yet involuntarily, it hurt. Like a betrayal. Even though I never should’ve expected anything from Jett.
“What do you mean?” There was still an anger to the words, but it didn’t feel directed at me. Tension was tightly corded through his words. “Did he do something to you?”
“You could say that.” I felt defeated, just remembering the evening. The darkness wrapped me in a cocoon, the sadness so potent I felt like I was drowning.
“Tell me,” the voice ordered.
I didn’t know how to. “You sound different,” I said, not wanting to address the events with my subconscious. Wasn’t it enough that I lived them?
And the voice did. It was clearer, in a way. But it was probably just my imagination. What else could it be?
“Tell me what happened, Avery. You feel different.”
“Well, I think I’m dead.” It was supposed to be a joke, but it fell flat as I said it because I just wasn’t sure.
