Page 8 of The Alpha's Rejected Mate

She froze, the look of hurt rippling across her face, telling me she knew that I was rejecting her. The terror running through her body reminded me of an elk seized by fear when it was surrounded by the pack. How could such a girl as this bemymate?

Vana made a mistake.

I had to be crystal clear about this, and I let my voice fall with precision. “I don’t want you,” I said, infusing my words with as much disdain as I could.

I caught Colt’s hand going to Billie’s shoulder. Something that shouldn’t bother me.

It doesn’t.

I gritted my jaw, clenching my fists as I strode away, giving Colt and Billie a wide berth as if even being too close to them was noxious. Billie didn’t even try to stop me, which was something that I latched onto again as more fodder to prove that shewasn’t… my mate.

Instead, it was Catrina’s voice that called after me. “Gavin. Wait. We need to talk about this.”

Now,thatwas the last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t want to talk toanyoneabout this. Not Catrina, not a Hexen, and most especially, not Billie. Defiance swarmed through me. I needed toput as much distance between myself and this place as possible. As I strode away from Hexen Manor, I bypassed my truck. I’d send one of my pack to get it for me tomorrow. The desire to put as much space between me and the family behind me consumed me.

I shed my clothes and human form, giving myself over to the wildness of my beast. My taut muscles reveled as my four paws pounded the earth. I tore down the dirt path and into the meadow. As the wind ripped through my fur, I raced into the forest. My heart pounded with a mixture of rage and confusion, relishing every paw beat that carried me farther away from Billie.

Chapter 5

Billie

My cheeks burned. Mortification prickled over me as Gavin stormed away. Catrina shouted out, following him. Distantly, I felt Colt’s grip on my shoulder, but it was as though I were underwater. I couldn’t breathe. My skin crawled as if with a hundred thousand tiny insects. My eyes watered. The urge to get out of sight lashed through me. I darted away past David, running through the manor and upstairs.

My mind was a whirlwind of confusion and disbelief as Gavin’s hurtful words stung,“I don’t want you.”A visceral pain tore through me as I threw myself on the bed, smothering my face into the pillow. His haughty face flashed through my thoughts. I grimaced, replaying his look of disgust.

I could understand that theGrandbay Alphawouldn’t be thrilled by the prospect of me as his fated mate. I wasn’t like Catrina, confident and theactualdaughter of an Alpha, but … I had feelings.

My chin quivered, and then my face crumpled. Angry tears streamed down my cheeks, and I sobbed into the pillow. I stifled my cries into the fabric. My adoptive family had already been an audience to Gavin’s rejection of me, and I didn’t want them to witness the ugly aftermath. As silent cries racked me, I rolledonto my side, curling into a ball. My shoulders shook, and my insides twisted as if knotted.

Ordinarily, when Catrina or David’s cold indifference toward me made me ache, I prayed to Vana, asking her for strength. But the image of Gavin’s brown-hazel eyes filled with desire as he stared up at me felt like a knife in my gut. I felt as if Vana had lied to me. If hewasmy fated mate, why had he spurned me so cruelly?

With shock, I also remembered my wolf’s reflection in the pool. I remembered the look of her beautiful sandy coat and bright green eyes—the slant of her graceful muzzle and the tilt of her alert ears. I knew that Vana had granted me access to my wolf, but feeling as if all my organs had been eviscerated, I couldn’t even feel any joy about that. I didn’t have the energy or interest to look inwardly enough to explore that new facet of myself.

Vana had always been a source of consolation in moments like this, but she couldn’t help me now. I sobbed my heart out, feeling more alone than I’d ever felt in my life.

The only solace I found was that after I’d cried, exhaustion washed over me, and sleep took me. After having been up all night, my slumber was deep.

It wasn’t until midday that I awoke to the sound of knocking on my bedroom door. I blinked sleep from my eyes and then felt the hollow in my chest, and instantly, the events of last night pulverized me. My shoulders tensed as someone pushed the door open. I wondered if it was Colt. I knew he’d be the only one who’d come to find me and offer me any comfort. My lungs seemed to harden like concrete, as I didn’t think I could take Colt’s being nice to me. If he was nice to me, I knew I was going to fall apart again.

Catrina’s smooth face and black curtain of silky hair peered around my door. “Dad wants to know if you’re going to lie in bed all day or do your chores?”

I shuffled into an upright position, blinking my adoptive sister in.

Well, at least in the Hexen household I’m not in danger of being killed by kindness.

“I’ll be down soon,” I said, my voice sounding hollow and washed out from all the crying. I imagined that my face must look puffy and red, too, but I couldn’t find it in myself to care. I’d wash before I went downstairs.

I thought Catrina would leave with her message delivered. Her interactions with me were only ever transactional. Most of the time, I was beneath her notice. So, when she came over and sat down on the end of my bed, I held my breath and I met her bold blue stare with surprise. She was dressed in a tight T-shirt and leggings and I knew she must have been doing her Pilates workout as she smelled ever so faintly of perspiration.

“Now, Billie, I can’t believe I’m having to say this toyou, but I don’t want you getting any wild ideas.” She stared at me, seeming to wait as if she thought I was a simpleton and she needed to go slowly. “As last night showed, Gavin will never see you as anything but a silly little girl. So, stay away from him. He’s mine.”

I felt as if I’d had the breath knocked out of me. Her haughty look recalled Gavin’s own. Again, his words spun around my head like a torturous carousel ride,“I don’t want you.”

Catrina’s cool, composed demeanor and the confidence with which she spoke made me think of a queen. Nothing fazed her, and she believed she was entitled to everything the world had to offer, Gavin included, it would seem. As usual, my adoptive sister didn’t seem to require an answer, and once she’d delivered her warning, she left the room.

Soon, I washed and dressed. I cleaned up the small bit of dried blood on my temple, too. The memory of how I’d gotten it by falling and hitting my head in the forest whipped through me. I remembered the two monstrous glimmering eyes that had terrified me and caused me to run last night.

Realizing this wasn’t the time to think about it, I buried the worries for another time and soon lost myself in the washing up that had stacked up from the family and the pack. I vacuumed the manor, too, and then cleaned the bathrooms. But there was some semblance of comfort in this. Fading into the background, where Catrina and David wanted me, was what I’d always been used to.

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