Page 3 of His Rejected Alpha Mate
It was much easier to be on the run with a baby than a small child. Every day, I feared Rincoln would trace me through his daughter just by finding her through school. I’d spent sleepless nights wondering what she would say to strangers. Then I wondered if he even remembered that she existed. His focus always seemed to be on our son and me.
When I went to say goodbye to Silas after a night of tossing and turning, there was no reply from my knock on the door. It had pushed open at my touch, displaying an empty room. I didn’t know what that meant for us. My heat was a month away and with school breaking up within weeks, there was no reason for me to rush back here. I could spend the next few months getting to know my son again. Would Silas make me choose between him and Kade?
We traveled all day, stayed in a random city halfway there after our car died on us. There was no saving it. After finding alternative travel, we then spent another day traveling by train before we finally arrived in Sweetwater in the evening.
Our fox alters hated flying. Though it would have been the quickest and safest way for us to travel, I just couldn’t cope with dealing with my panicking alter as well as having my child freaking out and likely shifting mid flight. Shifters, aside from avian ones, weren’t meant to fly. We’d tried it before when Angelica had been about two. She’d spent the entire short flight in fox form. Luckily, I had Grady and Trey to help me then. This time, I was alone.
Thoroughly exhausted and emotional, I gave Sweetwater a cursory glance as our rideshare took us from the train station in Northarbor to the town my son was living in. Sweetwater seemed like a beautiful place to live from the glimpse I got of the place. There were plenty of tree-lined streets and green spaces. Small stores littered the main street as well as the expected chains. We’d booked into a small hotel in the town not too far from the pack’s main compound so we could go back and forth easily.
The hotel was clean and comfortable, but Angel wouldn’t settle. She took an instant dislike to the guy on the desk and I tried to show patience for her, knowing that her own premonition power came in the form of dreams, mine in flashes of visions. I knew my son had a gift, too. Intuition, that gut feeling in a situation. He hadn’t nurtured the gift, or at least hadn’t at nearly twenty-one, when I’d last seen him. So it wasn’t too far-fetched that Angel had dreamt something while napping on the train.
She wanted to leave and begged me even as I unpacked our belongings and pulled out pajamas for her.
“It’s only for a little while, baby girl. We can decide what we are going to do when we meet your brother.” I was beyond exhausted. My nerves were fraught with what the next day would bring. There was no way I could bring myself to search for somewhere else to stay.
“Can we go now?” she asked.
“No, it’s past your bedtime. Let’s both just get some sleep and go see him in the morning.” Both of us were looking rumpled and tired. A good night’s sleep would help us both.
“But Papa, I don’t think I can sleep. I’m too excited.”
“I’m excited too, Angel. I can’t wait for you to meet your brother, but it’s best we try to get some sleep.” My smile was weak, with too much on my mind, making it an effort to maintain.
There was a knock at the door, and I pulled the chain over before unlocking. The man from reception was on the other side. “I just wanted to check if you two needed anything.”
A flash of a scene flitted through my mind of Angelica crying after the man got angry had me being very careful with my next words. “Oh, that’s too kind, thank you. We are just settling down to sleep. Tomorrow we have a meeting with Alpha Sweetwater, so I want to be at our best.”
The man gulped and stood straighter. Now no longer in my space, I took a tiny, relieved breath. “Alpha Sweetwater? Is that right?”
“Well, we are shifters, so we have to ask permission to be so close to his pack and to move through his territory, but I’ve been told that my son is his mate. I can’t wait to meet my new son-in-law.”
Those were the words that had him backing away from the door. “Well, just pick up the phone and press zero for reception if you need anything. I’ll be here all night.”
Thanking him, I closed and locked the door again, leaving the chain on and moving the dresser in front of the door. It surprised me they hadn’t bolted it to the floor, and it was easy for me to move with my shifter strength. The human wouldn’t be getting in tonight.
“He’s a bad man, Papa.” Angel repeated.
“I know, baby girl. We’ll find somewhere else tomorrow, okay? Let’s just sleep for now. We’re safe.”
“Okay.”
Angel settled down and soon her eyes closed. Mine stayed open, replaying events from the last few days, fanciful ideas of what would happen tomorrow, and memories of the last moments with my son.
As I finally closed my eyes to sleep, there was another brief flash of a fox and a bear together in the woods in my mind.
Rather than wait a day or two, make some calls or whatever, I decided just to go ahead and visit the compound and ask for pass through rights, then demand to see Kade. My brain still tripped over the name, accustomed to thinking of my son as Ryder as my former mate had named him.
I packed up all of our belongings but didn’t check out of the hotel just in case we couldn’t find somewhere else to stay. Awareness that I was all alone here if Kade didn’t want to see me had me making a back-up plan. We’d come back here. Rest for the night and then journey home. Feeling better about being organized, I set about making the visit happen while Angelica questioned me about her brother.
It took hours to find a car rental place and get a ride over to collect our vehicle. They’d provided an adequate seat for my daughter, but if we were going to stay here for any length of time, I was going to buy a better one. I started mentally compiling a list of things I needed to do and buy to calm my nerves. Lists calmed me when the stress got to be too much.
The pack compound was easy enough to find. It was so large it was almost its own town. “Are we there now, Daddy?” I flinched at Angel calling me daddy. It was such a human thing. A way of dismissing the omega male’s role in the process of making a child. Shifters didn’t call their birthing parent daddy. That honorific was reserved for their alpha parent. It showed me how little of our culture that I exposed her to. Another thing for me to fix.
“Papa, sweetheart. And yes. The gate is just up ahead.” I slowed the rental as we approached the gate. All words to plead my case fled in the face of the boy I’d watched grow. The man that had been my son’s partner. Who I thought had sided with my ex, Rincoln.
Roan.
What had Silas said? Roan had been the one to carry out the kill order. He’d done it to save Kade and his mate, the alpha of this pack. What did it mean?
