Page 12 of Rejected Mate

"I was at home like any other teenage girl, and everything about my life was boring. I was a straight A student. I was brought up in a small town and Mom worked at the local bar at night and Dad at the hardware store during the day. I never knew they were in hiding, but then some part of me didn't care."

"So, your dad was the wolf?"

She shook her head. "No. My mom is a vampire. Dad was human. Everything changed when a new boy started in school and my parents told me to be careful of him. It was as if I had a new lease on life. He was everything that everyone in town wasn't."

Even though I was twenty-five, I wasn't so much older than her that I couldn't relate to her story. I used to live in SmallHeath, which was a small town. And then Keith showed up and everything about my life, which I was accustomed to and bored living with, started becoming a faded memory from the moment I left. I didn’t regret it, until I found out that the brothers tricked me into leaving. They'd paid him to get me out of our town and away from my dad.

"Go on. I can relate to it so easily. Your mate took you away from your life."

She sighed. "Not exactly. We had one night together. He told me he was a wolf and that he lived in a pack. I packed my things and told my parents I was leaving, though I left out the part about him being a wolf. I think Mom was suspicious, though. They told me that if I left, then I could never come back. So, I left with him.

Rock bit me; told me that we needed to mate. Until, well, you can figure out the rest. When I didn't turn, he accused me of all kinds of horrible things. So, I told him about Mom, and that was when he didn't want to mate with me anymore. I'd left everything I'd ever known, and he rejected me. I've been in hiding since."

"Hiding? I don't get it. If he rejected you, then why do you need to hide?"

Before she could even answer me, there was a nod in our direction. The bartender noted that we were sitting there with empty glasses. It was weird because I'd been here so many times and no one noticed me, yet for some reason we were getting attention today.

"Two more glasses." I signaled and motioned for her to pour them for us.

"I'll pay this time," Mayia said as she got up, but then she grabbed the table, as if she moved too fast. Mayia was eager to get some more glasses of wine.

I waited impatiently, shifting my gaze around the bar. That's when it dawned on me why the bartender had her eyes on us. The place was empty; there was no one to serve apart from us.

Mayia returned and put my glass in front of me and then didn't hesitate to continue her story.

"Rock found out that I couldn't shift because I was half you-know-what and then he rejected me. The thing in the Stone Pack is, that if you're rejected, then you need to be killed."

"That sounds a little drastic," I said as we giggled. We were clearly both light weights because we were getting tipsy on our second glass of wine.

"I'll say. But two wolves wanted to protect me and then all hell broke loose when your father's pack came to kidnap Rock."

I pointed at her, thinking that, of course, this was the part that we should be talking about, not her high school years, but it was so much more interesting and I was done with all the drama.

"My parents. Always fucking things up."

She giggled. "I know how you feel. My life had been about helping Dad with his hardware store or Mom if she needed to take things to the bar. So when I met Rock, he made me feel seen, special even."

I shrugged. "It couldn't have been that way all your time?"

"Mom was on the run for so long, I didn't know what or where we were from until I was around fourteen and they seemed to settle. Something changed, so it meant that we could live a regular life, or as normal as it could be for people like us."

"It sounds as if you have seen more of the country than I have. The only places I've been are SmallHeath and Las Vegas."

"You wanna swap? I traveled so much as a kid. I didn't want to form true friendships because I didn't know if we would be on the move again, so it didn't seem right trying to make friends. When I was part of the pack, it was everything. I was the mate of the alpha, and wolves wanted to know me. They wanted to be my friends because I was important, until I wasn't so important anymore."

Both glasses were empty, and I knew that it was my round, which meant I would get some chips so that we didn't get past tipsy. I didn't want to do that and not be alert, especially if Dad was on a mission to get me back home. A chill rolled through me and I pushed my half-drunk glass of wine to the side.

"How did it feel when Rock was your mate?"

She smiled. "It felt great at first. He bit me and all started off okay. But I didn't shift, then..."

She stopped as she looked around the bar to make sure that no one who had come in since we got here was watching us. No one cared, and no one was here that I recognized. As she realized, she sipped, munched on the chips, then continued telling her story.

"This is when I started having problems like being out during the day. I never had that issue before, but everything changed in my body the moment I didn't shift. It was almost as if him rejecting me punished me somehow."

Shit!

No, double shit! Just like me. I could never transform into my wolf either.

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