Page 32 of Rejecting his Mate

The vehemence in his tone makes me wonder why the hell he cares.

“Our match was a good one, for us and the pack.” The lie falls easily from my tongue. I have repeated those words so many times I’m starting to believe them.

I mated with him because Adeline wanted it. My aunt did so much for me and asked so little. How could I refuse the only thing she desired for me?

I never wanted to take a chosen mate. Call me sentimental, but I wanted to wait and see if my fated mate would come into my life.Even if the odds are one in a million, I wanted to be that one. I believed I could, too. Adeline was determined to get me to settle down, and thinking back, I’m wondering if that’sbecause she thought there was a chance I wouldn’t shift.

She told me I was different, but she never elaborated on what that meant.

Different how?

For the millionth time in my life, I feel frustrated I can’t remember anything before I was eight. If I could, it would unlock my truth.

“He tried to kill you.” Cade snarls, bringing my attention back to him.

“I didn’t say he was perfect.” I step back from him, needing space to think. He seems to cloud my thoughts when he touches me.

He growls a curse and walks away.This wolf…Maybe I should have taken my chances with Dalton.

This time, I don’t follow him, and when he realizes that, he turns back to me. “You waitin’ to get caught?” he demands.

“I would actually like to live,” I assure him. “But I don’t know you. I want to trust you, but as you can imagine, that's not easy for me right now. What are you, Cade? And don’t feed me some bullshit line again. I want the truth.”

“I’m the wolf who saved your life,” he snaps. “And if you want to stay alive, we need to keep moving. Your mate is on his way back.”

Cold clamps around my heart as Cade’s head snaps over my shoulder. I follow his line of sight, unsure what’s caught his attention, until I hear the high-pitched excited yips of wolves somewhere behind us, deeper in the forest.

I freeze in place, fear clutching me in its icy grip. My throat burns, and I rub my fingers over the bruises I know Dalton left on my skin. He’s coming to finish what he started, and from the sounds of it, he brought reinforcements.

Chapter 8

Cade

Her wide-eyed fear hits me in the gut like a wrecking ball, and that pisses me off. This wolf is nothing to me. She’s not even a wolf—not fully.

Most wolves would not notice, but I’m not like most wolves. I can scent something else, just a trace of it lingering beneath the surface. I’m intrigued by her and what she is, just as she is by me.

Halle is smart. She figured out I am not like any other wolf she has encountered. Even if my size hadn’t been a clue I’m different, my scent is.

I’m a rare beast, one that has been hunted because of it. My pack keeps to itself because of this. None of us take mates or mingle with other wolves.

At least, until her.

Now she consumes my every thought, and that is infuriating.

Why am I so obsessed with one little wolf?

A wolf that isn’t entirely wolf.

She can’t be if she’s latent. She has to have something else in her—human, maybe? I can’t scent anything, but that doesn’t mean shit.

It’s a mystery that is begging to be solved, but it is not my duty to do it.

She is nothing to me.

My wolf lifts his muzzle and howls into the air in response to that thought. I silence him and push him ruthlessly back into the vaults of my mind.

Since we defended her against her mate, he has been on edge, ready to destroy anything that tries to touch her. I’ve tried to explain to the presence inside my mind that Halle is not ours, that she is mated to another, but my wolf doesn’t care.

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