Page 13 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
Chapter 7 - Soren
When I stalk out into the night, breathing hard, it takes everything in me not to immediately turn around and go right back in there.
The woods are calm and dark, practically fucking enchanted this far up in the mountains, away from town. I forgot what it’s like to be up here, surrounded by nature and fully alone. It would take a several-mile hike through the trees to even get aglimpseof the town from here.
Gramps used to bring me here when I was a kid so we could hunt together, stock up on meat for the year. Back then, he made his money by coming up here and hunting, processing the meat himself, going door-to-door to sell elk sticks and ground meat to his regulars.
Maybe that life—sourcing something, selling it yourself—was part of the reason the Cambiases said I wasn’t good enough for Aurela. They never said it in so many words, but they didn’t want her with a man who worked with his hands.
They’d want her set up with a real estate investor. A mutual fund manager. Some asshole on the phone too much, acting like he has to work all the time, though he spends most of his days on a golf course, or going on work trips that look more like vacations.
But I would never be that man. For one, I wouldn’t leave Silverville long enough to get an MBA, or whatever the hell you need to work at a place like that. And I like working with my hands. Fighting fires. Protecting people.
And I think Gramps could sense that about me when I was a kid, even when I couldn’t. When we came up to this cabin together, waking up at the crack of dawn to go hunting, he’d sayit was a chance to get in touch with myinner wolf. Back then, I thought all that was a load of horseshit, but now I see the appeal.
I understand the pain of not having shifted in too long. And I understand the strange sort of peace that comes with being in this place, knowing the pressures and expectations of pack life are so very, very far down into the valley.
It took the very last bits of my strength to get both of us up here, the smoke and flame burning in my lungs, making it hard to run and carry her at the same time. I knew we didn’t have much time. Tara, Xeran, the others—if we stuck around, someone was going to find us, and I wasn’t about to leave her there with Tara, surrounded by the flames. I also couldn’t risk Xeran finding her, either. Or finding me, for that matter.
If Xeran asks me, I won’t be able to lie to him. Whether that’s through the influence of the pack bond, his place as the supreme, our friendship, or just my morals, I’m not sure. But I know that if he asked me, I would tell him the truth.
I found Aurela holding hands with Tara like they were best friends at a sleepover. They were talking to each other, and Aurela looked totally at peace there. Like she was more than used to being in the woods with the woman starting all the daemon fires around this town.
So I took her and brought her here, and now she’s refusing to answer any of my questions. LikeI’mthe one in the wrong, saving her from being executed on the spot.
Sucking a breath into my lungs, I tip my head up to the stars and stare at them, thinking about her harsh words. The way she’d tried to leverage her family against me.
Aurela, who, in high school, told me her family was her worst curse. That living under her mother’s thumb was suffocating for her. That she was hungry all the time, exhausted.That she didn’t even have the chance to figure out who she was, because she was so busy trying to be who her mother wanted her to be.
And now she’s pulled thedo you know who my family iscard on me.
What the hell is going on? Who is that woman in there?
I may have turned her down all those years ago, but we never hated each other. In fact, Aurela is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a best friend. Someone who knows me better than I even know myself.
Xeran was that to me once, but his responsibilities and the difference in our stations have made it more and more difficult to reconcile the space between us. Plus, now he’s a father and the supreme, so the gap between us continues to widen.
So, Aurela saying she wanted nothing to do with me cut me right to my center. Shook me to the core. Since when? For all this time, I thought at worst, she was hurt in the way a girl might be after an amicable breakup. It’s not like I cheated on her or broke her heart.
Doesshe hate me? After all this time, has she soured toward me for having to do what was right? Even though she didn’t know about the choice I had to make, I thought she knew me well enough to know my intentions were good.
Or maybe she just realized, after all this time, that I was never good enough for her in the first place. Maybe what her parents told me turned out to be true in her mind, too.
I pace back and forth outside the cabin, reckoning with the past and the impossible decisions I had to make. Insidethe walls, I hear nothing, which means Aurela is sitting there quietly.
Hopefully, she’s considering telling me about what the hell is going on. Hopefully, she’s not going to hold the impossible decision I had to make more than a decade ago against me.
And there’s another impossible decision to make now. Distantly, I can feel the tug of Xeran trying to reach out to me. We can’t communicate fully through the pack bond, but I can tell that he’s summoning me. That he’s looking for me, calling me back to them.
More than that, I can tell that he’sfuriouswith me for leaving the group. For breaking off. It’s not something I would have done during any other fire or other emergency.
But it was Aurela.
And when it comes to choosing between her and the pack, I’m honestly not sure which one I’ll go for.
That’s a lie. Deep down, I know that I’ll choose her every time. I just don’t like to stare that fact in the face.
The pull from her was—and is—stronger than the pull from Xeran. I just have to get to the bottom of this thing, figure out what’s going on with her so I can convince Xeran to spare her life when we finally go back to town, back to the pack. I need to figure this out so I can make sure she gets a chance at a fair trial at all.
