Page 23 of The Alpha King’s Rejected Mate

When I got to the ranch, I once again felt power and peace wash over me. I felt at ease, like I was supposed to be here. How crazy would that be, considering that I was trying to get out of here yet again?

I went to the bunkhouse, but I didn’t see Snow anywhere. So I headed out to the barn. All I found inside was a guy staring me down. Why did it feel like I had seen him before?

He walked away after a few seconds, and a gravelly voice behind me startled me from the odd situation. “Need help with something?”

I turned around to see the guy Snow had talked to me about. She was close with him in some way, though looking at him now, the way he was looking at me, he certainly didn’t appear all that sweet. He looked like he wanted to take my head off, and he was big enough that he very well could. The guys on this ranch were built for hard work, fear, and intimidation.

“You must be Tyler,” he said. “Where are you from?”

It was such a random question that I couldn’t help but answer honestly. “I don’t know.”

He scoffed. “No wonder you and Snow hit it off so well. You have the same damn story, don’t you?”

I tried not to be too offended. It must have meant that Snow had talked about me. That was a good thing, right?

“Snow is a little different. She lost everything, years of her life. I just lost the first four or five. I remember my parents vaguely, but from when I was young, and I guess there wasn’t enough information to pass on to me when I got old enough. Not the same story, just similar.”

“So, you really don’t know where you’re from?”

“No, I really don’t. I know that a lot of people died when my parents died. That I was about four and surrounded in death. And then I ran for a long time and someone finally found me and helped me. It took me a long time to realize what I was, but I never got in a pack, so I’m sure there’s a lot that I don’t know and haven’t learned yet.”

Dutch sighed loudly and shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

“Damn it. I want to hate you, Tyler.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that, but I kind of knew what he meant.

“You look a lot like you belong to one of the bloodlines is in our pack. Do you at least know where about you came from? We tend to be pretty territorial, so there are likely only a couple of options. You might be able to figure it out that way.”

I couldn’t believe it, but I thought he was genuinely trying to help me. One minute I thought he was going to rip my face off, and now he was trying to help me find my people? Maybe Snow was right, maybe he was a little bit mushy. He was a solid guy who was trying to do the right thing. She said the same thing about Sterling.

“I was raised in an orphanage. Got adopted a couple of times, but it never stuck. I was weird, I ate too much, I was irritable during full moons, you know how it can be sometimes, don’t you? I would imagine it’s not just the loners like me who have all the side effects.”

“No, we have those too. They’re just part of being who we are. This town is half human and half of us. There is a balance here and we can be ourselves. That’s why we don’t live in a big city. That’s how we do it and how we have done it for many years to stay safe. If everyone knew of our existence, there would be problems. Some do and others know nothing. Either way, we have to work together. If you’re from around here, I wonder what happened to you. I’ve never heard of one of our own going into the system. Is there a way that they didn’t know?”

Dutch gave me a little bit of hope, but he was asking the same questions I had asked. Why had I been put into the foster care system? Why hadn’t someone claimed me? Did my other family not want me? Did I not have any other family? There really was so much that I didn’t know.

A shadow passed over us and I looked up to see an eagle. I’d seen it several times since I’d been back to town and made a comment about it to Dutch.

He gave me a weird look. “What do you mean you’ve been seeing it all the time?”

“Ever since I stepped foot on the ranch, I felt strange and saw that eagle, that exact eagle, many times.”

Dutch only looked at me weirder.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Call to the eagle and see if it’ll come to you.”

I snorted. “Are you serious? That would never work”

“Just do it. Put your hand up and whistle for the eagle. Let’s see if it comes to you.”

I felt silly, but I did as I was told anyway. There was no way in hell that a bird was just going to come down out of the sky and land on me. After about a minute, I put my hand down because I really did feel like an idiot, but then, something really strange happened. The damn bird actually came to me, and I didn’t know who was more surprised, me or Dutch. He just had a look of amazement on his face, and I told him that the feeling was mutual.

“So, you’re telling me that you didn’t know you could do that?” Dutch asked incredulously.

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