Page 64 of Broken Rejected Mate

Understanding rocks through me with a certainty.

“I know where she is.”

Emin drops my hands, and I wish I could say something to him, but my entire focus is on Sarina. Deep down, I know that he’ll understand. Kira’s eyes fly open. “You know where she is?”

I’m already turning, running into the hallway, hand moving to the stone around my neck. I haven’t shifted in a long time, but I need to now. It’s the only way I’m going to move fast enough to get to my daughter.

Bursting through the back door, I shift mid-air, leaving the ground on my feet and returning to it with my paws.

Instantly, Dorian and Emin are on either side of me, Dorian’s wolf blocking out the meager lights from the storm sirens, flashing around us, and Emin sending to me,Where are we going?

The border, I send, already gasping. It’s been too long since the last time I ran in this form. It feels freeing, lighting up a part of myself that I’ve kept tucked away, but it’s also like a skill I haven’t used in far too long.

The guys are faster than me, anyway.

Go, I send.Straight through the canyon and to the southern border. That’s where she is.

Without another word, they take off, running faster than I could even in my physical prime. I can only hope that they make it in time.

Chapter 36 - Emin

The canyon is an entirely different beast in the rain. My paws slide out from under me, slick with mud, and the water funnels down into the crevice. The rain pounds into my eyes, instantly soaking my fur.

I can’t remember the last time it rained like this. Likely, it was when there was still a river cutting through this rock, the influx of rain helping it to cut through rock and earth and creating the canyon we’re racing through.

Veva is somewhere behind us. My mind flashes with the look on her face in that hallway. Not closed off, but distracted. No matter what happens with Sarina, I needed her to know.

Normally, Dorian is faster than I, but the fear of losing Sarina courses through me, pushing me faster, my paws hitting the ground with a rhythm that sends an itch through my bones.

When we emerge from the canyon, I skid around the corner, blinking fast to keep the rain from my eyes. The entire area is drowning in the scent of the Grayhides, the smell of it as strong as if it were in the rain itself, washing down over the muddy ground.

There’s a brief break in the rain, and I see her.

A small, copper-colored wolf, her fur glinting through the rain. It’s Sarina. Even through the rain, and even with the fact that she’s shifted, I know it’s her.

Because, for the first time since seeing her in the market, I catch her scent.

It nearly knocks me over, the realization that Sarina’s scent truly is a mixture of mine and Veva’s. Before, when Sarinasaid she was turning ten, I’d known. I’d known that Veva was lying to me about the truth.

But knowing then is not like knowing now.Thisknowing, of smelling my scent on that girl, knowing I’m half of the fabric of her—it settles into me. My family. My daughter.

And she is in the hands of another man.

Someone crouches, holding her body over his knees, cradling her, and fury rises up in the back of my throat, propelling me forward.

My daughter.

I’m flying toward her, ready to rip the man to pieces, until I see another shifter coming in from the left. And another from the right. The shifter with Sarina in his lap grabs her and stands, readying himself to fight.

Aidan, Dorian sends, flying up beside me, heading for the Grayhide on the right.You take left!

There’s no time to think, so I do what he says. I fly to the left, knocking into the shifter with all my force. His head slams against the rock, and he shifts back to man.

I make quick work of him, the warm, coppery taste of his blood like bile in my mouth when I clamp my teeth around his jaw and rip, pulling his throat clear from his body. I drop the pile of loose flesh to the rock with asmackand turn to my daughter again.

On the other side of Aidan and Sarina, Dorian is pinning the other wolf to the ground. He also gets his maw on the wolf’s neck, but he whips, hard, until there’s a faintcrackand the wolf drops, spine splintered, lifeless on the ground.

Aidan is soaked, covered in blood, but I can smell that it’s his own, and not Sarina’s. I shift, fall to my knees besidehim, and he hands Sarina over to me. I clutch her to my chest, the tension in my body unfurling when I realizeshe’s okay. Her heart beats steadily, her body warm against mine.

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