Page 62 of The Enforcer's Rejected Mate
“Yes and no, you’ll earn it being the pack healer. We aren’t exactly easy on our bodies around here and the ferals have beenkeeping us busy. You’ll have plenty of work and the cottage will be well deserved after having to put up with the lot of us.”
Cordelia takes in a deep breath and then another. I don’t have to see her tears to know she’s crying. I can feel it. My palm itches with the urge to touch her. I want to put a hand on her shoulder and let her know she’s not alone but I stay right where I am. Ronan wouldn’t let that slide. He’d want answers to why I’m touching her.
I’m not exactly the touchy feely type. Ronan and Clyde would know something was up and wonder. There’d be no getting around me having to explain about the lightning strike that knocked me on my ass and tied me to Cordelia. Ronan would move on that quick, especially with who she is to him. He’d see it as a way to take care of her, make sure she’s protected by the strongest in the pack, but most of all that she stays here. The seconds Ronan gets wind of the Soul Tie I’ll be married off with a mate so fast my head would spin right off my damn shoulders.
Would that really be such a bad thing?
I shift under the weight of that. Would it be a bad thing to settle down with a mate? Make a real home of my own? A soul tie means a fated mate. There’s only been a few pairs in the pack in our entire history. Right now there’s none. Only true mates and chosen. In a shifter’s life, a true mate is likely, but not guaranteed. It’s a match made by the fates, but a fated mate? Those are rare. Legendary. Only made by the moon goddess herself and she does not match fated mates lightly. The magic for it is ancient. None of us knows how it works. Most of what we do know has survived in stories…fairytales the old grans tell pups about fated mates.
“The closer to the olde ways a pack is the more fated mates they’re blessed with. Each one of them is a blessing by the moon goddess herself. Luna’s favor is marked by the fated mates a pack homes.”
Our pack homes none.
But it could. It could have one. Cordelia and me. Wouldn’t that be the affirmation the pack needs to know it’s going the right way? The kind of compass Ronan could use to steer the pack? But where does that leave me and the vow I made to keep this pack safe?
I get a home and a mate and all I do is open myself up to another weak point. One more thing to lose when shit goes sideways,and things will always go sideways. I can’t do that. Not while the Frostclaw Pack runs unchecked. Not while there’s ferals pushing our boundaries and causing chaos. Now is not the time, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a time. I have to earn my peace, have to earn Cordelia and that starts with making the world safer for her.
My damned palm keeps itching but I ignore it. I pick up my fork and stab it through a potato instead. I’m not touching Cordelia.
Not yet.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
CORDELIA
The Bloodstone Alpha just gave me a freaking cottage. A whole cottage just for me.
“Thank you,” I get out between barely held in check sobs. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t think this was how the dinner would go. I thought…I don’t know what I thought would happen but it wasn’t this. In my head, I imagined I’d have to prove myself, maybe demonstrate my knowledge of herbs and healing. Hells, if they had asked me to river dance to their favorite song I would have done it for a chance to stay in the pack.
That’s so not what happened.
All I had to do was say that I wanted to stay here and work as their healer and Ronan made it happen just like that. So casually that all the worry and fear I carried with me since I left Frostclaw seemed silly. Trivial. Why was I holding on so tightly to it when it could be this easy for me? I really don’t know. Maybe because it was familiar or what I thought I deserved but now I can see the glimmer of something different. Something real that doesn’t look anything like what I’ve known.
I look up at Ronan and swipe at my tears. “Thank you. You won’t regret this, I promise.”
He smiles at me. It’s kind and open, warm, an expression so like what I always dreamed of seeing when it came to the thought of my mother that my tears come back in a fresh wave.
“I know I won’t,” he says, “I only hope that I can say the same for you after you’ve spent a full season with the pack but for as long as you want it to be, this pack and this place will be your home. You don’t have to earn it.”
I don’t have to earn it.
That sends me into a full on crying fit. I burst into tears and give up all pretense of looking calm. “T-thank you. I-thank you.” I’m ugly crying now and the men have no idea what to do with me. Clyde looks like he wants to run from the room while Ronan and Thorne are looking at each other like they’re willing the other one to handle it first. I try to stop crying but it’s no use. I just end up with a fresh wave of tears. In the end its Thorne that ends up reacting first.
He puts a hand on my shoulder. That’s all the Enforcer does. I calm down the second he puts a hand on me. He squeezes my shoulder gently and somehow it's enough.
Thorne holds out a blue handkerchief to me. “I’m sorry.”
I sniffle and take the handkerchief. It’s well used from the softness of the material. I dab at my eyes with it and nod. “Thanks. I-I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I think I’m tired.”
“You had a long journey,” Ronan says. “Why don’t we finish dinner and Clyde will see you to the cottage?”
“That sounds nice. Thank you.”
The rest of dinner is good. It’s not awkward the way I think it might be from me bursting into tears and having a mini-meltdown at the table. The three men move on from it like it didn’t happen. There’s no shame from them for showing weakness. Crying in Frostclaw was deemed a weakness. Anyone that showed emotion was marked as a target by the pack. I didmy best to never give them a rise but there were times I failed. It made me a favorite target for them, but the three males at the table don’t show that will happen to me here. Instead of ridicule there’s laughter and stories. I learn that Clyde grew up in Oak Fast and moved to Red River when he was twenty to help with the rebuilding efforts, that Ronan grew up with my mother and that she never failed to beat him in a foot race.
“She was like the wind. Knew every trail and path our territory has.”
