Page 6 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
“You could keep morale high,” Gramps grumbles. “Andyou’d keep things tidy. Has Xeran seen your room? If he saw your room, he’d have made you the leader.”
“I don’t know,” I say, raising my eyebrows at him. “Want me to call him over? So you can tell him he made the right choice?”
“Nah,” he grouses, and I know from his tone that this is the part where he lets it go. He may want me to fight for leadership opportunities, but anytime I bring up trusting Xeran, he folds.
He was here to see what the pack was like before Xeran’s grandfather took over, a time when the supremes fought to the death to get their spot and did everything in their power to keep it once they had it.
According to Gramps, back then, our pack was constantly at war with the others in the area, sometimes even going up against the huge ones, like Denver or Colorado Springs. The bloodied shifter bodies littered the mountains, leaving human wildlife experts puzzling over what was happening when packs retrieved their dead, leaving only some blood and fur behind.
He may not like that Xeran didn’t choose me, but he knows the alternative to trusting your leader.
“Anyway,” Gramps goes on, lifting his fingers to rub them over his bushy eyebrows, like he would ever be able to smooth them down. “If you’re not going to focus on advancing at the firehouse, then you could at least tell me how your other project is going.”
“My other project?”
“Finding a woman to take as your mate before I die.”
“Gods, Gramps,” I laugh, pinching the bridge of my nose and watching through my fingers as he laughs a little, apparently pleased with the shock factor of the statement. “First of all, that nurse told you that positive thinking is important, remember? And second, it’s not like I’m just prowling through town, looking for the first single woman—”
“You’re handsome!” he interjects, scowling at me, pointing a bony finger in my direction. “You have your grandmother’s eyes, and my jawline. You should have no problem finding a mate.”
Once again, I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying what I really want to say, which is that I don’twantjust a mate. I don’t want to pick a random shifter woman and have kids with her. I don’t want to build a family like that.
Because, no matter his views on whether or not they exist, I have a fated mate.
And I’ll never be able to touch her again.
Which makes the wholejust find another womanthing feel incredibly pointless. I know what it’s like to be withher, so how could I ever settle for something else? And even more than that, how fair would it be to another shifter to enter into a relationship with me, knowing I’d never be able to love her fully? That part of myself would always be reserved for someone else?
“I can tell from that look on your face that you’re thinking about something,” Gramps grumbles, shaking his head. “But you’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“I—”
“It’s fine,” he says, shifting in his seat, pulling a blanket up over his lap dramatically. “I’m just going to take that to mean you’ve got a girl in mind, and you don’t want to tell me about her until things are a little more serious. All your friends have paired off. I know kids are doing it later and later these days, but if you don’t find a mate now, you’ll have to go out of the pack to do it, and gods help me if you end up with a girl from the city. She’s not going to understand Silverville, and she’s going to think her pack is the obvious choice for you to assimilate into. And if you drag me out to Denver and make me live in that shithole of a city, I’m telling you, I’ll die on the spot.”
“Stop to take a breath, Gramps,” I mutter, and he wheezes out a laugh. It’s always been like this with him. Since the day my parents died, and I arrived at his doorstep with nothing but a stuffed animal and a single suitcase of clothes, we’ve been the only ones the other has.
So even when he gets into his ramblings, going on and on about how much he hates Denver or what it was like to beinvolved in the pack wars, I just listen. Because he’s always been there for me. The least I can do for him is make it through a long-winded story, or a lecture on how I should live my life.
He opens his mouth to say something else, and I brace myself for another lecture—or a continuation on the current one—but a coughing fit overtakes him instead. I get to my feet and rub his back, watching and feeling as his body convulses with the coughs.
When he’s finished, and he pulls his handkerchief back, neither of us misses the bright red blood there. I take it from him quietly, give him a new one, and head to the laundry room to treat it before it can stain.
By the time I get back to his room, he’s blinking slowly, looking tired, his head lolling back against the recliner.
“Go on, get out of here,” he says, waving his hand at me. “I know you have plans tonight.”
“There’s stew in the fridge,” I say, trying hard to ignore the worry coursing through me. “Yours is already portioned out.”
“Got it,” he says, his head tipped back against the recliner, his eyes already closing. “Don’t spill the soup like I did last time.”
“I have my phone,” I remind him. “You can call me.”
“Just go. I won’t let you tell the supreme I’m the reason you’re late.”
“Okay, Gramps. Love you.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
