Page 124 of The Enforcer's Rejected Mate
He’s beside me. Sitting in a chair like he’s a concerned boyfriend at my sick bed. How many times did I used to wish for this very thing when I was sick and had no one? Just a stupid fantasy that I used to comfort myself, that Keiran cared about me. He doesn’t care about anyone or anything. I know that now.
I try to shift but my wolf is barely there. When I reach for her she’s faint. It’s like she’s in another room and can’t hear me. I try to move my head but it feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton. I’m definitely still drugged.
“You’re awake,” Keiran smiles at me and reaches out to touch me. The sight of his hand coming for me is enough to clear my head.
I jerk back from him but the cuffs I’m in make sure I don’t go very far. “What the hells is this?” I yank on the cuffs, they’re leather infused silver from the sting of them. The chain runningfrom the cuffs to the bed I’m on are silver too. Shit. “Uncuff me. Now.”
“I can’t do that, baby.”
“Call me baby again and I’ll snap your neck.” I bare my teeth at him. Even if my wolf isn’t here, I’m angry enough to do it in my human form.
Keiran raises an eyebrow. “You’ve changed.” He sounds put out. Like he came back to collect his favorite toy and didn’t find it exactly how he left it. “I don’t like it.” He purses his lips and that’s when I really look at him. The warm sun-kissed tan I loved is gone. He’s pale, like he hasn’t seen the sun in a season. His hair doesn’t shine anymore, it’s dull and stiff. Holy hells. I lean closer to get a better look at him. Keiran looks gaunt and skinny. His cheekbones are hollow, the hollows beneath his eyes are dark like he hasn’t been sleeping either.
He’s wasting away.
“So have you. You look like shit,” I tell him.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “You think I don’t fucking know that? You did this to me, you bitch.”
“How’s that? I left. You got what you wanted. Your rich, pretty mate and me gone. So how did I do it?”
“That fucking witch cursed me. I know she did.”
I laugh and pull on my cuffs. “Maud wouldn’t do that.”
“Really? That cryptic shit she said at the moon run, what was it? ‘What you do tonight can never be undone.Never. Unforgivable.’”
Unforgivable.
From the looks of Keiran, Maud wasn’t kidding about cursing his bloodline either. “You better not have hurt her.”
Keiran rocks back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head. “She’s in the wind. No one’s seen her since you left.”
“What?” Maud wouldn’t leave Frostclaw. That’s her home. Her pack. “You’re lying.”
“The fuck I am. She never came back after she caused that scene at the bus stop. No one knows where she is.”
I bite my bottom lip. There were weeks when Maud didn’t see anyone but me out at her hut. “How do you know how long she’s been gone?”
“Cause I went to see her the second this shit started hitting me,” Keiran says, gesturing at himself with a wave of his hand.
“When was that?”
“The second that bus made it past the city limits. Thought I was fucking dying.” He looks at me and narrows his eyes. “I’ve been suffering, dying, wasting away with fucking bondrot and when I come looking for you what do I find? You cozied up with some fucking alpha. Happy and fed without a care in the world.” He jabs a finger in my face. “And that’s fucked, Cordelia. You do not get to be happy while I suffer.”
“How did you find me? You shouldn’t have been able to track me.”
I want to know how he got to my cottage. I don’t have a scent. There’s nothing for this fucker to follow, so how did he do it?
“That’s what you want to know?”
I nod. “It is. How did you do it?” Even if my pack thinks I set them up as a spy, I’m not going to let Frostclaw hurt them again. Red River was my mother’s home and I won’t let it fall. “You went right to my house.”
Keiran is quiet for a second and I think he isn’t going to tell me but then he sighs and shrugs. “What the hell? You’re not going back there ever again,” he says and a shiver runs up my spine because he sounds so sure of it. “That beta bitch sold you out.”
I give him a confused look. “What beta?”
“The blonde. She’s a fucking mean one. She gave you up easily. Gave us the entire map of the place too. That’ll come in handy later when we decide to wipe that pack out for good.”
