Page 67 of Rejecting his Mate

“You had no idea at all that you’re not full wolf?” Jackson asks, apparently listening in after all.

I shake my head. “My whole life—or at least what I remember of it—I was told I was a Beauford. That my blood was as pure as driven snow. I didn’t feel different. I can hear my wolf, sense her, and communicate with her. My pack didn’t say I was wired wrong or smelled different. I went into that ceremony expecting the shift to happen as it did for all wolves. My aunt, she knew. Or suspected. She was acting weird before, asking strange questions about the past, about me. I thought she was nervous about me going through it. Didn’t realize she was terrified I might not shift.”

“And nothing happened?” Wyatt questions.

“Nope.” I pop the P, my eyes going to the window that looks out over the parking lot. “Just a whole lot of pain and nothing else. When I came around, they were calling me latent.”

The waitress appears at the side of the table, clutching her order pad in her hand, a bright smile on her face, completely clueless to the serious tone of the conversation we were having.

I stare at her name badge, wondering if ‘Emily’ knows she’s standing next to four apex predators looking like she doesn’t have a care in the world. All of them are lethal, and she’s giving Sawyer the eye, like he’s some kind of frat boy. He could eviscerate her before she even registered his presence. I had no idea humans were so oblivious to the danger that lives among them.

“You folks ready to order?” Her smile falters as she takes me in. I understand what she must be thinking when she gives Cade the side-eye. Did he do this to me? “You okay, hon?” she asks.

“She was in an accident,” Sawyer explains smoothly. “You don’t need to stare. She already feels sensitive about it.”

Heat rises in her cheeks, and she lowers her head to look at the pad. “Sorry.”

Taking pity on her, I fire Sawyer a glare before saying, “I’m okay. It looks worse than it is, believe it or not.”

“We need a little longer with the menu,” Cade says to Emily, and I get the feeling he wants to get her goneso she’ll stop looking at me like I’m an abandoned puppy.

“Coffee to start?”

“Sure.”

She walks away, and as soon as she does, all eyes come back to me. “Did your aunt tell you anything about your past?” Sawyer leans forward.

“I asked, but she always got upset when I did, so I guess I just…stopped pushing. Adeline lost everyone, including my father. I was all she had, and she was good to me. I… I didn’t really question it. I just wanted to make her life as stress-free as possible.”

“And all that time, she was harboring a ticking time bomb right under Klaus’ nose.” Sawyer snorts. “That’s got to have pissed that fucker off more than anything else.”

I shiver as I think about my old alpha and the way he’d severed my bond with the only family I’d ever known. “Klaus is a dick,” I mutter. “But he never hurt me, even after I failed to shift. He could have.”

“Yeah, maybe the old bastard had a change of heart over the years. Realized what he did to his sister was truly evil and couldn’t do it to you.”

I consider this, and while it sounds plausible, I’m not sure. “I don’t know what’s truth and what’s not. Adeline told me things over the years that I took at face value, but thinking about it now, knowing what I know… Yeah, I don’t trust a word of it. She told me I was in an accident, that my mom and I went into the water. I drowned, died, and had to be resuscitated, which caused mymemories to disappear, but what I’m seeing isn’t an accident.”

“What are you seeing?” Cade’s hand on my leg gives me the strength to keep going.

“We were running… from wolves. Mom was terrified. I could see it in her face.”

“What kind of wolves?”

“I don’t know. Scary ones. They didn’t seem friendly.”

“And you’re sure these are memories?”

I shrug. “I can’t know that for sure, but when I try to think about the past, there’s always this block in the way. These images, or memories—whatever you want to call them—are the first time I’ve remembered anything before I came to the pack.” I frown. “Other than the house.”

“The house?” Cade leans forward on the table, not letting go of me.

“My earliest memory is of being in a car with my aunt outside this house. It was huge, like a mini-mansion.”

“You remember anything else?”

I shake my head. Cade is looking at his brother, his mouth tight. “What’s wrong?”

“Your dad was a Beauford wolf, most likely purebred, considering he wasn’t latent,” Sawyer says, his words tight. “It’s most likely your mom was the witch.”

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