Page 8 of Broken Rejected Mate

I see her at the same moment her scent hits me on the wind. So contradictory to her personality, the scent is light and fresh, like the smell that hits you when you’ve just broken open an aloe leaf. Natural, clean.

Veva.

Without meaning to, my lips form her name, trace the shape of the vowel, my teeth coming to touch my lip twice. Veva.

Obviously, she’s older, but still she looks just the same. More meat on her bones, a startling new roundness to her hips that makes my mouth water. Veva is slight, barely over five feet tall, a round face with dimples that pop on either side of her mouth when she smiles, but the dimples are not around now.

Her deep brown hair is shorter, curling around her shoulders rather than running down her back, and she has bangs now, sweeping just over her brow. When I look at her, I can still feel how that hair slips through my fingers. How it feels when I wind it up in my fist.

When I knew her, she was always wearing simple dresses. But now, she wears a pair of black jeans that hug her form, a black leather jacket zipped up to her neck. An outfit made for the dark market, the shine of the material catching the flickers of the torch beside her.

She lowers her gaze, reaches into her pocket, pulls something out and hands it to the man. Veva is alone at this market, and the thought of that makes me want to march right in there, pick her up, and take her home with me.

Except, for obvious reasons, she’d probably spit in my face.

Hot shame is just starting to creep up my neck when I watch the man grab her hand, holding it there for a second too long, and I step forward, ready to break his fucking jaw for daring to even look at her wrong.

Then, suddenly, he releases her, stepping back, and Veva has an almost…smugexpression. As though that’s exactly what she expected.

But everything changes in an instant.

It’s so unexpected, it takes my mind a second to process.

Beside her, a little girl flashes into existence. Nothing there in one moment, and a small body there the next, like the world had glitched and forgotten to load her in.

I blink, trying to focus, but there’s a hazy quality to the air around her, almost like it shimmers with magic. She’s talking, saying something, but I can’t make it out.

Through the haze, I made out several details that make my heart tighten.

Red-gold hair, straight nose, freckles over her cheeks. Everything about the little girl is familiar to me, almost as though I’m looking at myself. Looking at Kira, when she was that age.

Two words rock through me, strong enough to knock me right off my feet:my daughter.

Veva moves faster than I’ve ever seen in my life, grabbing the torch to her left and swinging it, knocking the meaty man across the face. One of them shouts, pointing at the little girl. Another tries to move, but Veva has already dropped down, drawing her blade across his ankle.

Time seems to slow as I watch the blood spurt, the milky white tendons popping free of the skin, bouncing out like loose springs from an old mattress.

I’m moving before I realize I’ve made the decision to.

Veva might hate me. And, at this moment, she’s fighting them in a display of skills I never knew she had. But there’s no way she can take all four of them, and there’s no way she can protect that little girl, on top of it.

I can’t shift—it will break the scent blocker—so instead, I hurl myself at the meaty man, grabbing him just as he starts to swing at Veva. It glances off of her, and she drops to the ground. My chest tightens, every nerve in my body screaming for me togo to her, but my training kicks in. If I want to save her, I need to focus on him.

With a mightybop, I slam my forehead into his face, exploding his nose into a crush of red. That, coupled with the nasty burn on his left cheek, must be enough to finally make him pass out, because he crumples to the ground, knees buckling into the mud.

When I turn, I find the man with the sliced-through tendons still down, crying and trying to slide away, one hand wrapped around his ankle, like he might be able to hold everything in place if he moves slowly enough.

Ten paces away is the man still clutching Aidan’s fake severed head, and five paces from me is the final man, still looking like he might have some fight in his eyes. Moving quickly, I sweep his legs out from under him, grab his head, and twist, listening for the bone-shudderingcrackthat tells me he’s dead.

Just as I’d hoped, the final guy—the head-holder—turns and runs as fast as he can, considering the cargo he’s hauling. Good. That’s at least one of my objectives that I haven’t failed.

A small crowd has formed, but one look from me makes them shy away, inching back into the market, returning to their own tasks. Here, there’s no ambulance to call, no help from the alpha, no forces to help keep the peace. Onlookers are only interested for the sake of their own entertainment, or to see what they can gain.

When I turn back around, the little girl is bent over Veva, her tears already spattering down onto Veva’s black leather jacket.

I step forward, thinking the little girl might run away when she sees me. Instead, she tips her head up to mine, meeting my gaze. Though she’s crying, there’s a set of determination in her eyes. It reminds me so much of Veva thatit’s like I’ve been sent back in time, seeing her as both a little girl, and the woman unconscious on the ground.

Something snaps into place. A knowing. A line from me to this girl, clear as day. It feels so seismic that I think the entire world should adjust to accommodate this new knowledge, that she should understand it, too.

---