Page 5 of Rejected Bullied Mate

"Liar," I told her, more amused than accusatory now that I'd gotten the upper hand. "Now that I know I can't trust you, I'm not giving you any choice, Kiera. Get in the fucking car, or I'll take that pup from your arms and leave you behind while I take him back to Saltfang territory, where he belongs."

For the first time since I'd seen her again, Kiera's expression shifted from anger to true, bone-chilling fear. Her mouth dropped open, and she tightened her hold on our son, her eyes flicking between me and the bundle in her arms. I didn't think she was going to listen, and for a second, I thought about going through with it. But when I moved to pull him into my own arms, Kiera started backing away, a low growl emanating from her chest.

It wasn't the warning sound of a shifter, but the universal sound of a mother protecting her young. It was almost mind-boggling how much she'd changed.

"Get in the passenger seat," I told her once more, "Don't make this more difficult than it has to be."

"I can't," she whispered. Her eyes were huge in her face, and her voice trembled, "You have no right to him, and I will not allow you to take him."

Her words enraged me. No right to my son? Did she seriously think that a child belonged to a single parent? It had never occurred to her that Kit's fate was interwoven with mine? She was my Omega, and this was our son. I didn't care how angry she was at me. It didn't matter that we had parted under the worst terms possible. We were bonded by the pack, and we'd made a child together.

I'd tried to give her a choice, and she'd chosen badly. Now she had to live with the consequences.

"Get. In. The. Fucking. Car."

She took another step back. Kit let out a quiet snort and rolled over in her arms. She looked down at him, her mouth pressed into a thin line of resolve. "Fine."

She moved past me, holding Kit so tight I worried he couldn't breathe, and went to the other side of the car, opening the back passenger side door. As carefully as possible, she got Kit into the back seat, still wrapped up and snoozing. When she shut the door again, she wouldn't meet my eyes, her face flushed in the pale moonlight.

I walked past her without a word and got into the car, waiting to start the engine until she got into her seat as well. I waited in tense silence as she pulled on her seatbelt, the car so quiet I could hear the way she was chewing on her lower lip.

Well, if she was pissed now, I was about to make it ten times worse.

I found the silver cuffs in my pocket, holding them tightly so they didn't rattle as I took Kiera's hand with my free one. She tried to pull away, but I didn't let her, bringing her hand to my face as if I wanted to scent her, and to my surprise, she gave up the fight. Her eyes were confused as she watched me, and it was her confusion that gave me enough time to strike.

I had the cuff around her wrist so swiftly that she didn't even have time to register what was happening, lunging forward to secure the other cuff to the passenger door handle. She was lucky I'd managed to grab her left hand, or it would have been an uncomfortable four-hour drive back to Saltfang territory.

Her mouth fell open, and she pulled on her wrist, but I knew she wouldn't be able to escape. My Omega was speechless, her expression shifting from panic to rage over and over again.

"You're lucky I don't put one around your neck," I said with a growl. I looked back at the boy in the back seat. He hadn't stirred the whole time, and it made me wonder just how heavy of a sleeper he was. Better for him to be out of it while I make Kiera realize just what she was in for, anyway.

I couldn't help myself, reaching back and pulling the blanket to finally see my son's face. He was indeed still sleeping, but the sight of him was like a punch to the gut. I'd seen that face before, reflected back in me in the mirror when I was so much younger, and in the photographs of me as a child. He looked so damn much like me, with shades of Kiera in the shape of his eyes and the set of his mouth.

My son. I was taking him home at last.

I could almost feel the fear rolling off Kiera as I looked at Kit, and she didn't relax until I let the blanket drop and settled back into the driver's seat. "Get comfortable," I tell her, shifting the unfamiliar car into gear. "We've got a long drive, Omega."

Chapter 3 - Kiera

All I could do as we drove away from the cottage that I had worked so hard to acquire, that I had spent years making into a home, was look back and watch it fade into the distance. It was dark, and I was only able to get a few precious seconds before my home was gone.

I wanted to rage. If my hands were free, I thought I might try to strangle Samson, Alpha bullshit be damned. He might be able to break me like a twig, but at the moment, I didn't give a damn. In one fell swoop, he had taken nearly everything from me, except for the little boy sleeping in the back seat.

The grief of losing it all threatened to choke me, but knowing I still had Kit and was still in a position to keep him safe was enough for the moment. It had to be.

"Don't do anything stupid," Samson warned, almost as if he could read my mind as we finally left the town limits and drove out into the darkness. The streetlamps faded out of the car as we sped along the narrow highway. There was only a sliver of the moon in the sky, but we both knew that we'd have no problem seeing as we drove back to his home.

My home, too, if I didn't manage to escape.

The idea of going back to Crystal Creek, right in the epicenter of so many shifter packs, made me feel sick. I'd wanted more than anything to raise Kit away from pack toxicity and politics, and I'd achieved that for seven wonderful years. Now Samson had found us, and it was time to face the reality of it all—my little Kit was the son of an Alpha, and that Alpha had come to take what he believed was his.

My witch magic churned inside me like a hurricane, so intense that I rubbed my chest to try to alleviate the feeling. I reached for it tentatively, but no matter how powerfully it reacted to me, there was something in the way of me truly reaching it like I could any other day.

From the moment I'd laid eyes on Samson again, it was like the utter shock of seeing him had knocked something off balance inside of me. My best weapon against the Alpha was gone, at least for the time being, and it made me feel like the same sad, weak Kiera who had run away from Samson before.

Yet...she was still inside me. My life in Crystal Creek was impossible to forget, the trauma of it having shaped so much of who I had managed to become.

My childhood had been average enough, but as I grew into a teenager, none of my shifting capabilities manifested, and my peers took notice. My parents' constant disappointment in me made things even harder, as they never missed an opportunity to point out my shortcomings to me. But what made it worse was the way my packmates responded. I'd always been an outsider among them, an awkward girl who didn't belong anywhere.

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