Page 11 of The Alpha's Rejected Mate

I supposed, if I was honest, I’d imagined my fated mate would be someone like my best friend, Aislin.

Notactuallymy best friend, Aislin … ewww.

We’d grown up together. We were as close as siblings in lots of ways, but I could always count on Aislin to call me on my bullshit and to give her opinion, even when it differed from mine.

Especiallywhen it differed from mine.

Tired of my stagnant thoughts, I took one more deep drink from the river, and then I climbed the rock shelves back up onto the canyon, taking the path that took me toward Pine Creek Point and into my lands. My heart lurched as I thought about passing so closely to Pine Creek Point, but the only trail back toward my cabin carried me past the point.

My pace slackened again as my thoughts wound back to the past. It was where our pack’s rituals had once been performed, but I’d long since moved the rituals to Castle Rock. My chest constricted as I thought of other memories Pine Creek held. I’d moved the pack’s rituals from there and didn’t go there much because … it was where my mum and dad had died.

My throat tightened as I remembered the fire blooming through the night. It had been four years ago, but on days like today, when I was tired and emotionally drained, it still felt too fresh. I’d seen the fire igniting the woods at the point from our cabin. I remembered how the emergency services had been called, and the helicopters had come to put out the wildfire sweeping along the canyon.

That wildfire had claimed my parents’, Martin and Bria’s, lives. My heart squeezed at their absence. That night, I’d become the Grandbay Alpha at only seventeen years old. Even though I loved my pack and our lands, the weight of that responsibility rested heavily on me.

Sometimes, I just wished I could go back tobeforethat night, to just being a boy on the cusp of manhood who had his parents to make all the hard decisions for him. The deep ache I rarely allowed to show bruised my chest as I wished my mum and dad were still here.

The daylight began to diminish, and I realized the sun was already setting. My meandering pace had finally brought me to the boundary of the Dalesbloom pack lands.

But then, a pungent scent hit my nose: ozone and the acrid scent of fire.

For a moment, I thought the past was intruding on the present, and I’d conjured the scent from the memory of that awful night. But this scent wasstrong,and I knew it well. It had been branded into me the night my parents died.

A dragon’s scent.

I quickened my pace, tracking the odor higher into the woods edging the valley of the canyon and crossing into Grandbay territory. Here, the Gunnison River opened up below, and ordinarily the fresh-water air cleansed my lungs. Instead, the whiff of ozone and sulfur mixed with smoke tainted the air.

Dragon shifters frequently picked up the ozone scent as they rode the currents so high up in Earth’s stratosphere. As for the sulfur and smoke, their fire-breathing ways, unfortunately, were all too true, as the “wildfire” my parents died in attested to.

Fury seared through my veins. Because it hadn’t been a wildfire. It had been caused by dragons. I’d long known that dragon shifters had been responsible for my parents’ deaths. I’d spent months trying to track the culprits through the Gunnison Park lands, trying to find them and get answers about my parents’ deaths. Had they been victims of senseless violence? Or was there more to their tragic deaths? My questions had gone unanswered as the offenders had evaded me.

Ever since that period, though, dragons have become my sworn enemy. Rage charged through me as I careered along the canyon ridge, continuing to track this trespasser. What was a dragon doing in Grandbay territory? My pack didn’t have any alliances with them. I refused to entertain any alliances with their kind after the horror they’d unleashed on my life. The burning desire for vengeance that I’d avowed for my parents’ deaths roared through me.

Dragon shifters were said to work well with us werewolves. They were our natural allies in Gunnison National Park. While the Black Canyon played home to a few of their lairs, we wolves made our homes in the woods and along the river banks of thecanyon. But I refused to have anything to do with them. Not after the reckless fire they’d callously and recklessly unleashed.

As I came into Grandbay lands and into the woods of Pine Creek, the signs of that fire, even four years later, lay in the thinned trees and in the charcoal-scented soil. I ran onward, past the blighted trunks, continuing to track the dragon.

As the scent intensified, the logical part of me called to my wolf.

Return to the cabin. We need backup for this.

If we returned to Steele Cabin, we could muster more of the pack and hunt these dragons.

But as my wolf ripped along the canyon trail, following the ozone and sulfur scent, he refused to give up the chase. Rage was riding him hard as he contemplated that the scent we were on could belong to the very same creature that had stolen my parents from me. My wolf pummeled the dirt, and my claws churned it up as I imagined ripping into my enemy. My wolf’s ferocity was as potent as the fire that had ripped along the creek, and it tore through me, overriding all reason as we raced instinctively toward our enemy.

I can’t give up this hunt. I won’t.

The air crackled with tension as I followed the trail deeper into Grandbay lands, my senses heightened and adrenaline coursing through my veins. The haunting memories of that night swirled around me like thick fog.

Then, as the sound of wingbeats grabbed my attention, only this moment mattered. A shiver zipped down my spine. I quickened my pace, my wolf urging me to the source of the scent. Thewoods around me seemed to close in, the shadows casting eerie shapes on the forest floor, dancing in the dying sunlight.

I see you.

My predator’s eyes zeroed in on the trespasser. A massive dragon, its scales shimmering in the sunlight, perched on a rocky outcrop overlooking the canyon. Its wings unfurled as if it were preparing to take flight, but rage uncoiled within me. Fueled by vengeance and adrenaline, I leaped at the beast.

The dragon, caught off guard, swerved away from me. Then, he flicked his huge tail, toothed with lethal-looking barbs. His long, sinuous neck arced like a swan’s as he turned to take me in. His bright orange eyes held the slit-like pupils of a reptile. His furious stare locked with mine.

My fur bristled with alertness as I crouched low, muscles tensed and ready to strike. The dragon let out a rumbling growl, the sound vibrating through the air like thunder. We circled each other warily, each waiting for the other to make the first move. The tension was palpable, and the forest held its breath in anticipation of the impending clash.

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