Page 10 of Broken Rejected Mate

“Well, I have some things to say toyou,” he says, setting his jaw. “And I’m saying them, whether you want to hear them or not.”

The look on Kira’s face tells me that her brother hasn’t told her a thing about what happened between us. The entitlement of it—the way he’s looking at Sarina as if she’s something he can lay claim to.

He can’t. He made that choice ten years ago, and he doesn’t get to take it back now.

Sarina pulls back from me, rubbing her eyes and pushing her hair over her shoulders. She’s a tough girl, but this has been a lot, even for her—and the last thing I want is for Emin to be putting ideas in her head.

If he remembers that night, he’ll be thinking Sarina belongs to him. It lines up perfectly with the day I told him I was pregnant, the day he sent me away without so much as a backwards glance in my direction.

“Fine.” I suck in a breath, run my shaking fingers through Sarina’s hair, pushing it back from her forehead. To her, I say, “Go out in the hallway with Kira. We’ll be leaving soon, but I’ll have to talk to him for a second.”

Sarina holds my gaze. She’s smart, knows better than to ask me questions now. Now and then, in my spare moments of downtime, I’ve thought about what to tell her about a father. That time might be coming sooner, rather than later.

“Okay,” she says, and before she goes, I take her wrist in mine, raising my hand and casting a protective spell on her with every ounce of energy I have left in my body. It’s not as strong as I’d like, but it will keep her from going anywhere she doesn’t want to go. It will keep her from getting too far from me, a meta-magical tether between our two bodies that will wreak havoc if broken.

Kira tries to hide her surprise at my casting, then takes Sarina out into the hallway, gently closing the door behind her.

The moment it shuts, Emin crosses the room, comes to the side of the bed, and says, his voice deathly quiet, “That girl belongs to me, doesn’t she?”

I bristle immediately.Nobodybelongs to him—and certainly not my daughter. In the time between her leaving and Emin asking his question, I’ve already figured out what to say. It won’t do me any good to point out the truth—that he made his choice. Turned me away when I told him I was pregnant.

He’s an alpha. And we’re in his pack’s territory.

Even when I was an Ambersky, I didn’t belong. Emin Argent has always been able to pull rank on me, and I’m not going to let him do it to get my daughter out from under me.

Instead, I’m just going to lie to him. With my casting and the scent-blocking on Sarina, we should be able to keep him from knowing until we go.

“No,” I say, simply. “She doesn’t.”

He frowns. “How old is she?”

“She’ll turn eight in a few months.”

At that, he blinks, and I watch his mind turning. The key to this is how small Sarina is—line her up with the other eight-year-olds, and she’ll fit right in. I need him to think of her thin little arms, her height—or rather, lack of it—and believe me.

“But…she’s so smart,” he says, slowly, brow wrinkling. I wonder if he’s also thinking about the implications for that fake first baby—that I must have been wrong about being pregnant, or I must have lost it.

The thought of that—of having lost Sarina before getting to meet her—is so painful that I push it away, crossing my arms and ignoring the sting of the movement. I choose instead to focus on what he’s just said. “She’s my daughter. Of course she’s smart.”

“So, you were with someone else. After me,” Emin clarifies, and when I see a flash of jealousy in his eyes, I want to murder him.

“Oh, Emin,” I whisper, leaning closer to him. “I was with amillionpeople after you. Each of them better than the last. And I’ll be with a million more, seeing as how it’s none of yourfuckingbusiness.”

His eyes flash exactly how I knew they would—despite his denial, despite the way he threw me out years ago, I know the truth. Emin Argent is my mate, and I’m his, and no matter how much he wishes it weren’t true, the idea of me with another man makes him want to claw his eyes out in frustration.

“Now,” I say, defiantly turning my gaze from his. “I want my daughter, I want my things, and I want to get thefuckout of this territory.”

Chapter 6 - Emin

“You can’t leave until you’re healed,” I insist, crossing my own arms, mirroring her without realizing it. When Veva turns and looks at me, I wonder if it’s possible for casters to weave their spells without speaking, because it feels like she could melt me down with just the murderous glint in her gaze.

Even as I say it, even as the conversation moves away from the subject of Sarina, my body is still reeling with that information. She’s eight years old, which means Veva was already gone two years before she was born. No overlap.

Sarina looksjustlike me—or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe that was just my wishful thinking, my intuition leading me wrong. It could have just been the desperation, the hope that there was something tying the two of us together, that the little girl might be a tiny piece of leverage to bring Veva back into my life.

That I might have, even with the loss of the beginning, a family like what Dorian and Kira share.

Veva has been with other men. And not only that, but she’s had another man’s child. Because of me, because I was stupid enough to get caught up in my family’s status game, because I was stupid enough to push those feelings aside and deny to myself that Veva was my mate, even though I knew deep down that it was true.

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