Page 6 of Rejecting his Mate

I think back, trawling my mind for any conversation we have ever had about him, but there’s just emptiness. “Nothing.”

She blows out a breath. “Figures. Your father’s gone, Halle. He died six months after you were born trying to protect—” She breaks off and shakes her head as if clearing the fog from her thoughts. “I’m sorry. It’s too hard to talk about.”

There’s an ugly, unpleasant feeling spreading through me, and I don’t like it. “Protect what?”

“Nothing. Why don’t you find something on the radio to listen to?”

The change of direction doesn’t distract me. “Protect what?” I repeat.

“Protecting you and your mother.” The words are snapped out, harsh and brutal. “My brother died because of you both.”

It’s as if she’s hit me across the face. The pain that goes through me knowing I killed my father is indescribable. I might only be eight years old, but I know what that means. I understand the accusation in her voice.

“I—I killed my dad?”

My voice catches as the sob bubbles up my throat. I’m not sure why I’m crying for someone I have never met, but the pain makes it hard to breathe.

Adeline’s breath shudders out of her as she tries to regain control. The haunted look in her eyes terrifiesme. “I shouldn’t have said it like that, but you deserve the truth, Halle. He’s dead because of what you and Kinsley are.”

What we are? What does that mean?

“Because of the wolf inside us?” I weep.

“No.” She scrubs a hand over her face. “He was a wolf, too. You are... something different.” Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, but she keeps her silence.

I don’t want to know what I am, not if it causes people around me to die. I don’t ask any more questions, and Adeline doesn’t offer answers either. I don’t know what any of it means, and I want my mama.

The sun is setting when she pulls off the highway. I sit up straighter, rubbing my eyes. Nothing looks familiar, but Adeline drives as if she has taken this route many times.

I peer out of the side window, unease sloshing in my belly. Mama wouldn’t have let me leave with Adeline if she didn’t trust her, right?

The town she drives us through is small and pretty, but everything is bathed in a bloody red from the sunset.

When she stops the car, I expect to see another motel or a diner, but it is a house. It has two stories with a porch on the front and flower beds that are filled with sleeping bushes and shrubs waiting for the spring. Blue siding covers the walls, and there’s a mailbox next to the sidewalk.

Adeline cuts the engine and takes a breath. “Come on,” she says, climbing out of the car.

I follow, stepping onto the sidewalk and peering upat the house. My wolf paws at the confines of my mind, wanting me to run, but Adeline comes around and takes my hand before I can react.

She leads me up the path and up the three steps that lead onto the porch before knocking on the door. The grip on my hand is tight, like a band of steel holding me in place. I peer up at the woman Mama says is kin, wondering what we’re doing here.

My thoughts scatter as the door opens, and I’m surrounded by a feeling of pressure pushing against my chest.

Power.

I can feel it swirling around her, and it nearly drives me to my knees. Her gaze slides from Adeline to me, and as soon as she locks eyes with me, she tilts her head to the side.

“You brought a tau to my doorstep?” the woman demands. Her accent is not one I’ve heard before, but she does not speak like me or Adeline, even though her words are English. She has amber-colored eyes, and her dark hair is braided. There is a hoop through her nose, and she has a pendant around her neck of a tree with thick branches. She’s beautiful, but I can sense the danger emanating from her, too.

“I need your help, Delphine.”

“No, I’m not standing in the way of wolf politics. Tau wolves are not witch business.”

Neither of them explains what a tau wolf is, but the weight of the word makes me feel dirty, polluted.

Wrong.

Am I those things?

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