Page 14 of Rejecting his Mate

“I know.”

She blows out a breath. “I love you, Halle. I want you to know that. Everything I’ve done has been because of that.”

I frown at her. “You’re scaring me talking like this.”

She smiles through the anguish that she’s wearing on her face. Anguish I don’t understand. “I just… I hope tomorrow goes smoothly for you.”

I hope this too, but Aunt Adeline’s words stay with me for the rest of the day.

Chapter 3

Halle

Isit on the edge of the porch, watching my pack interact. The sun is setting, and a light orange glow stretches across the grass that surrounds the house.

As always, it is noisy and hard to hear myself think, but there’s also a certain amount of comfort from being around them.

I don’t remember if I had a pack before I came here. Did my mom and I belong somewhere, or were we just wandering around alone? I don’t like that idea.

Though I’ve asked many times, Adeline says she knows nothing about my life before she came to get me from the hospital. I get the impression she and my mom weren’t close. I don’t know why, but that makes me sad. Did my mom have no one after we lost my father? Was she mateless and alone, trying to raise a pup with no help?

I wonder what made my aunt and her distant. Adeline seemed fond of my father, at least on the fewoccasions she’s mentioned him. Why wouldn’t she be close to my mom too? Especially after my dad died. Did she not want to be around his daughter?

We don’t talk about the past, but the few times we have, I was left with the feeling that Adeline knows more than she’s willing to tell me, and I don’t know why she won’t open up.It makes our previous conversation strange.

Over the years, I have been desperate to know who I am. The lack of information about my parents is a hard pill to swallow. There is a certain amount of apprehension in the loss of that knowledge. How can I fit into the world when I don’t know who I truly am?

My skin prickles, making my head lift. Dalton is sprawled on the grass with a few other pack members, talking. His eyes, though, are locked on me as if telling me he’s watching my every move.It’s just another way of controlling me. He doesn’t want me to feel as if I have any space to do anything but what he commands.

I give him a sarcastic smile back, and he scrunches his nose up, his mouth snarling as if he wants to throttle me for my show of defiance. He won’t do it with this many pack members around, and not because he thinks they’d step in, but because he wants them to think he has complete authority over me.

“Why are you sitting here alone?”

I glance up as my aunt steps out of the back door. In the glow of the porch light, her blonde hair looks yellow like straw.

What is she hiding?

I plaster on a smile, concealing my suspicions.

“Do I need a reason?” I ask.

Adeline shifts her shoulders. “I guess not.” She sinks onto the bench next to me, watching the interactions of our pack family. “Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake bringing you here.”

My eyes snap to hers. Is that why she’s been weird with me this last week? Does she regret taking me in? Giving up her life to be my guardian?

My aunt never took another mate, but she could have had a pairing similar to mine. Any wolf would have snapped her up because of her name.

Was that because of me?

“You wish I hadn’t come?” I ask, my voice weakening as I say the words.

She reaches out instantly and takes my hand in hers.

“No, my darling, no. That’s not what I mean at all. I just—I wonder if the choices I made were right for you.”

“I have a pack, and I’ve had a good life,” until Dalton anyway. “If you hadn’t done all this for me, I don’t know where I would have ended up. I’m grateful every day for what you have given me, Adeline.”

She nibbles her bottom lip, her gaze roaming over the back of the house as if she can’t bring herself to look at me.

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