Page 21 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
Shae Cambias, head of several organizations in the community. The woman who approached me about a month before prom.
It was a bright March day, the sun shining, unseasonably warm. I was walking out of the library when I ran into her.
Only later did I realize that she—and her husband—must have been waiting for me. I always went to the library on Saturday mornings.
“Soren Riggs, is that right?” she said, catching me as I walked to my bike.
I blinked in surprise, turning to her and Frederic, Aurela’s father. I’d been over to her house, not to see her, but to hang out with the guys. Lach, Xeran, Felix, and I, sitting in Lachlan’s room and playing video games together. His room was something from a teenage boy’s wet dreams—posters on the walls, every new console money could buy, unlimited games, a foosball table, and a little cooler with sodas and snacks.
My room at home had a single twin bed, a dresser, my desk, and whatever books I had from the library. Not even a comparison. Lachlan’s room made mine look like a prison cell.
And his parents were a stark reminder that at home, it was just me and my grandfather.
“That’s me,” I said, turning to face them, heart pounding in my throat. My wolf already knew something was wrong. That I was going to leave this interaction much worse than when I entered it.
Now, I swallow down the memories, not letting myself get to the worst part. Aurela has gone quiet, moving her spoon around in her stew. I open my mouth to say something, anything to get us past this awkward moment, this lingering on the worst parts of our shared past.
“I found a bottle of wine,” I say, which gets her to look up at me. “I figured we could share it. Since we’re trapped up here, anyway.”
The way she looks at me makes me think she’ll say no. Then, she surprises me by nodding.
“Yeah. Some wine sounds nice.”
***
“Do you remember?” I ask, my voice and head light with laughter, the slight buzz of the wine running through my veins. “When we did this before?”
Aurela shakes her head, looking tired and drunk, and for a second, I think she might not have heard me. But then she says, “But I’ve never been to the cabin before.”
I tip my head at her, wondering if it’s really possible that she forgot that night.
“Oh,” she says, hiccupping and laughing, then reaching for the wine bottle again. “Thatnight.”
That night. When I snuck out, took Gramps’s car, and drove her up to the ridge. When we stayed up the entire night, laughing and drinking a bottle of wine from her parents’ cellar.
“They won’t miss it,” she’d said, struggling with the cork as I laid a blanket down over a grassy spot on the ridge. It was cold enough that I had to bring several of them.
Her parents wouldn’t miss that bottle, but it was the best wine I’d ever had in my entire life. Their worst bottle was something my family would only splurge on for something like a wedding or a retirement party.
Aurela and I had finished that entire bottle, getting tipsy and loose, our thighs and hips pressed together as we sat quietly under the light of the moon. At that point, I still hadn’t gathered the courage to kiss her. Everything was little touches, brief glances. My hand on the small of her back, her knuckles brushing over my arm, our thighs pressed together when we sat side by side.
And that night, I swallowed down my fear and trepidation, sliding my hand over and settling it on her knee. We sat very still together, breathing shallowly, like we were convinced we could only keep the moment if it didn’t know we were taking note of it.
When I glance at her now, her cheeks are flushed, though I don’t know if that’s from talking about that night or from the wine we’ve already gone through.
“That was one of the best nights of my life,” I breathe, the words popping out of me before I have the chance to think about them, to determine whether or not it’s the right thing to say.
The look Aurela gives me is so raw and open, so vulnerable, that I have to look away from her.
I know what she’s thinking—or maybe I’m only guessing. Maybe she’s wondering why I would have broken up with her if that was one of the best nights of my life.
“It was after you…After we were done,” Aurela says, her voice barely audible.
When I glance at her again, her chin is dipped down, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Even drunk, I wanted to push to ask herwhatwas after. But I force myself to contain the questions, to swallow down my natural predilection for impatience.
“I wasn’t doing well,” she whispers, clearing her throat and sitting up a little. “And I…I found out you were going to prom with Macie Evans.”
The name is like a show you used to watch when you were a kid—it takes me a moment to place that shifter girl. I haven’t thought about her since the day she came up and asked me to go with her. I’d said yes because I thought it might make the sting of losing Aurela go away.
