Page 41 of Rejected Wolf Mate

My head jerked up so fast, I was surprised I didn’t get whiplash. “You did?” I said as Jameson asked, “Where?”

“Northwest of town, a few hours out,” he said. “I’d nearly given up looking for her when I caught her scent.”

“Where is she?” I looked around as if expecting to see her dragged into the hall at any second.

Tannen eyed me, his features calm and collected. He was one of my best friends. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was about to say, but I knew I wasn’t going to like it.

“Probably nearly at the Gray Wolf’s hideout at this point,” he said.

“She got away?” Jameson demanded. “Why didn’t you go after her?”

“She didn’t get away,” Tannen said.

Realization and fury washed over me at the same time. I stared in disbelief as I tried to process his words and their implication. I shot to my feet.

“You let her go?” I seethed, fingers curling into fists. “How the hell could you do that?”

“Because I think she’s telling the truth,” he said evenly. “She told me Thea’s in trouble.”

I stalked toward him, doing everything in my power not to slam my fist into his face. “You let a criminal go! We need her information.”

“She told it to me.”

I opened my mouth, realizing his words didn’t make sense with the narrative I’d formed in my head.

“She what?” Jameson asked.

“She said to expect around twenty men around midnight tonight. Maybe earlier or later, if they figured out she was compromised.”

I shook my head, unwilling to believe it. Astrid had been lying, and Tannen, normally incredibly intelligent, had fallen for it. I couldn’t believe he’d been this stupid.

“We still need her,” I said. “We don’t even know where she’s going.”

“She’s heading to the Gray Wolf’s hideout,” he said. “Northwest of here, a few hours’ run.” He eyed me levelly. “I can give you more precise directions if you need them. She gave them to me.”

Again, I tried and failed to process the words.

“How do you know she’s not lying?” Mark asked.

“I like to think I’m a good judge of character,” Tannen fired back. “And I know for a fact that I would do anything for my brother.”

“You said yourself she was heading toward the Gray Wolf’s hideout,” Mark pointed out.

“Because that’s where Thea is, apparently.”

“How the hell did you swallow all that bullshit?” I snarled. “You normally have a lot more common sense than that.”

Tannen frowned, folding his arms as he stared me down. He didn’t break eye contact, remaining calm and collected.

“Rand, you’re not thinking straight,” he said. “If you thought about it for more than a handful of seconds, you’d realize some of your logic is backward.”

It all slammed into me at once. I’d let my anger get the better of me and built a narrative in my head that I had assumed was correct. I’d refused to listen to anything else. If I’d thought clearly in the moment, maybe I would have listened to what she was saying.

She’d come to me for help. There’s no other reason she would have told me any of that. I should have seen it immediately. And I’d ignored her.

And now she was alone and going after her sister. If I’d listened to her, none of this would have had to happen. And I realized that, no matter what had happened or what she’d done, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. I couldn’t.

I growled, rubbing my face with my hand. “Why the hell didn’t you go with her, then?” I asked. “She’s waltzing into danger without backup.”

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