Page 28 of Rejected and Regretted

As the man started lifting my shirt, his lips glued to my neck. I held my breath, sick of his smell. His saliva was like poison on my skin. At least, his proximity gave me an opportunity, and I seized it without thinking twice.

Even if I didn’t have my werewolf strength, I still had teeth. And I sunk them into Chad’s ear as hard as I could. The metallic taste of his blood filled my mouth at the same time his screams filled the night. I felt him punching me, desperately trying to make me release him, but I held on tight. In the end, he pulled away, and I heard the sound of his skin being torn.

“Ah! You crazy bitch!” he cried out in disbelief, touching his hand to his ear - or what was left of it.

Trembling, I spat out the piece I had ripped off his ear. Chad’s rage was evident in his expression, and palpable in the slap to my face. My cheek burned as my face was violently turned, numbed by the adrenaline surging through me.

“I was trying to be nice, but to hell with it,” he roared. “I’ll fuck you to death, you little shit!”

All I could see were his fingers moving to his waistband as he quickly unzipped his pants. My mind raced as I tried to think of my next move. What could I do? How could I escape him? The world swirled as I began to accept that there was no way out of this.

Until a mighty howl, powerful like a lion’s roar, made the earth shake, echoing through the air like thunder.

Chad’s attention shifted. He looked behind him, searching for the source of the menacing sound. At the same time, a flame of hope flickered inside me.

Without my wolf, I had poor night vision, making it harder for me to distinguish the following events, which happened too quickly. All I could see were blurs as the silhouette of a beast suddenly lunged at my kidnapper. An ear-piercing scream made my skin crawl, but it was soon silenced. Blood rained down, and what I think was Chad’s head dropped to the ground, separated from the rest of his body.

However, I couldn’t focus on the gruesome scene for long, because the next second, another man was standing before me. A man whom I’ve hated for too long, yet now his presence brought me nothing but comfort. With a single slash of his claws, he freed me from my restraints.

“Avril,” Koen murmured. There was a hint of something raw in his eyes, but also something soothing. “You’re safe.”

As if his words were some sort of command, I ran into his arms, driven by an instinctive mixture of fear and relief. I didn’t care that he was completely naked, nor that he was drenched in blood. I simply buried my face in his chest, and he instantly wrapped his strong arms around my frame, warming me.

“It’s okay. You’re safe,” he repeated, brushing my hair with his tough, yet surprisingly gentle hand. “I’m with you,” he added, igniting something within me - gratitude.

For the first time, I was grateful Koen was with me.

18

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A V R I L

Koen stayed with me,comforting me, holding me in his arms, until I was calm enough to feel awkward about how intimate we were. My brain tried to be rational, reminding me that Koen was not and would never be a friend, yet my heart begged to differ. How could he be the enemy when I felt so safe near him?

When I finally pulled away from him, confused about my own feelings, he grabbed a pair of shorts they kept scattered around the borders, covering up. I was still in shock as he led me back to the town square. Every slight movement caught in my peripheral vision or faintest sound captured by my ears startled me. I knew I was safe, yet the recent events were still fresh in my mind, preventing me from fully relaxing.

As soon as we reached the main part of the territory, I found my beta and gamma desperately searching for me. Relief washed over their faces the minute they spotted me, and a second later, they were in front of me. Koen didn’t seem thrilled about their presence, if his jaw clenching was anything to go by. He was even less fond of the idea of leaving me, yet after I insisted I was fine, he reluctantly let us go.

By the time I finished explaining to them how I had failed miserably on my mission to explore the packhouse for thesecond time, Kea was beginning to float back to the surface as the wolfsbane left my system. She felt terribly guilty about not having been able to help me. Even as I returned to my room to sleep while my friends stood guard outside, she continued to apologize.

“I’m so sorry I left you to fend for yourself against that jerk,”she whimpered.“You needed me and I did nothing.”

“It wasn’t your fault,”I told her for the thousandth time, hoping this time it’d soothe her.“Besides, I would have been able to beat him just fine without your help if he hadn’t been a complete coward.”

“I know. It makes me sick to think about what he tried to do to you,”she observed. Shivers ran down my spine as I recalled Chad’s threats, and how I couldn’t fight back. But my wolf didn’t seem to notice my reaction as she went on,“Goddess, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad Koen was there for you. For us.”

At last, she grew quiet, and I knew exactly why. Like me, she was trying to comprehend the strange way she felt toward the mate who had forsaken us five years ago. The mate without whom we both learned to live. The mate who taught us that, if the one who was fated to defend us was capable of throwing us out without blinking, then we’d have to defend ourselves.

Yet, here he was now, protecting me when I couldn’t protect myself, over and over again, always on time.

Once I managed to push away my incoherent thoughts, blaming them on the intense wave of emotions I had just experienced, a series of questions sprouted in my mind. It was weird how, on three separate occasions, Koen had appeared just in time to assist me. How did he know where I was? How did he always seem to know when I was in danger? Was his desperate need to protect me his attempt to make up for failing me whenI was eighteen? Or could he know where and when to find me because he was behind everything?

It all seemed to revolve around the same dilemmas. Friend or foe. Truthful or liar. Innocent or guilty. I always instinctively picked the latter, yet I was beginning to think that the world may not be as black and white as I had always believed.

Falling asleep proved a challenge when every time I closed my eyes, I saw Chad’s sinister grin. After jolting up in bed more than a couple times, unable to escape the nightmare that had almost come true, I eventually gave up trying. As embarrassing as it was to admit that I was allowing a dead man to haunt me, it was true.

Still, when the sun came up, I put on a brave face and acted as if I hadn’t been affected at all by the events of the past night - even if the two males outside my door made it hard for me to keep it up.

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