Page 27 of Rejected By the Alpha King

His growl told me that it was the wrong thing to say. “As I’m sure you’ve already seen for yourself, my wolf is broken. It doesn’t function.”

“Since when? Did something happen in my pack?”

I snorted. “Worried that your edict to torment me has backfired? You can rest easy. I haven’t shifted since the night you killed my father.”

Jax actually stumbled, and I turned my head and frowned, suddenly worried I’d missed a magic trap. We weren’t actually in Wisteria Wood yet, but for all I knew, they’d added a few spell traps outside the boundary, just for shits and giggles.

It wasn’t that. He was looking at me in horror. “You haven’t shifted in three years? What the fuck was Parker doing?”

“Shouting at me until he was hoarse. It didn’t do any good.”

“Anna…”

“We’re in the middle of rogue territory. It’s not really the place to have this conversation.” And it was none of his fucking business.

“Any wolf worth their salt is going to smell us long before they hear us.”

He wasn’t wrong. I just didn’t want to talk about it. “Look, you saw my wolf. She’s submissive. Timid, but she’s alive, so there’s really nothing else to discuss. I won’t try to block her when the need arises, but she’s not going to come out and frolic in the woods.”

My statement was met with silence, and I adjusted the pack on my back. The flare gun was tucked in my waistband, and I was a little worried I was accidentally going to set myself on fire.

A real gun would come in handy, but they were banned from most pack territories, for obvious reasons. I’d come across one, years ago, at an old human camp settlement, and my father tossed it in the river and grinned at me, as if he knew what I had in mind.

“How can you detect a magical trap?”

“You know the way your skin feels right now, how your wolf feels, surrounded by all this magic?”

“Yes.”

“If you look close enough, you can see shimmers in the air. Something that looks almost real but is just a little off. For some, it takes some studying to see it, but I can catch on quicker.

It’s almost a different color.”

Jax grunted. “And how do you disable it?”

“It’s a little early in our courtship for me to be giving away all my secrets.”

He grunted again, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Don’t worry, if I thought you could do this yourself, I’d be more than happy to divulge my secret. I have no desire to spend any more time with you than necessary. Now that I’m here, trapped with you and facing what is probably my imminent death, why don’t you tell me who told you I was here to begin with.”

“Emerson Triggs.”

Now it was my turn to stumble. Emerson Triggs was a name I knew a little too well.

Alpha of the Blood Moon Pass pack. Irked that my father had kidnapped his niece, Triggs had hunted my father down and nearly ended him six or seven years before Jax did.

Unfortunately, my father offered something a little more desirable to Triggs.

Me.

“Strike a nerve?” Jax asked. “He knew all about your trip, but he didn’t know why.

He did insinuate that the two of you were close.”

“Jealous?” As soon as the word was out of my mouth, I desperately wished I could take it back. But since I’d come this far, I went ahead and threw my whole weight behind it. Glancing over my shoulder, I shot him a teasing smile. “Don’t worry, mate. I’m all yours.”

His eyes-tinged gold, and I quickly snapped my head forward. Even teasing him was playing with fire. “If you’re going to say something like that, you should wait until you can meet my eyes without shaking in fear,” he said sardonically.

“Yeah, well, the person and the wolf aren’t always simpatico, and as you’ve already discovered, my mouth tends to get away from me. When did you speak to Triggs?” More importantly, did he know where I was?

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