Page 19 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
Maybe it’s the mudslide, the fact that I physically can’t get to her as easily, or maybe it’s the fact that Soren is standing right here with me, but it doesn’t feel as strong. The tug isn’t quite as painful.
Like she’s losing her grip on me.
“Come on,” Soren says, and when the tug subsides, I realize he’s looking right at me. “Let’s head back inside. We have to get everything ready to be here for a few days.”
I follow him back into the cabin and go through the motions of redoing everything we’ve just undone—making the bed with a fresh set of sheets, turning the power back on, finding and switching on the main water line.
“Now, we’d better figure out something better than beef jerky for food,” Soren says, his eyes wandering over to mine. “How would you feel about going for a hunt?”
“But what about the mudslide?” I ask, eyes darting to the open window above the bed, through which I can see the mud, which looks like lava cascading down the side of the mountain.
“We can hunt up,” Soren says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the back of the building.
I swallow at that simple motion, trying to keep my head clear from the illicit thoughts. Everything he does gets under my skin. Watching him under the sink, one leg stretching out, his pants rising up at the ankle to reveal skin. The nape of hisneck, the soft copper hair stretching down and toward his back. The way he reached up to the top shelf effortlessly, pulling down several jars of preserves.
“Do you want to?” he asks now, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I suck in a breath and nod, thinking a good hunt might help me push away some of these feelings. Soren wants nothing to do with me. He didn’t back then, and he certainly doesn’t now. Besides, I should be far more concerned about what the pack is going to do to me when we get back to town. I should be more concerned about the fact that Tara is alive, and she’s calling to me.
That she wants something from me.
My magic. Apparently, just like she wanted back in high school.
“Yeah,” I say, pushing my hair back from my face and gearing up to shift, my wolf already howling to get out. “I really, really do.”
***
“Almost done,” Soren says from over his shoulder in the kitchen, glancing back at me.
His cheeks are still flushed from our hunt, his hair damp and falling into his face from his shower. I took one, too, and changed into one of his old shirts. It’s snug on me, which was embarrassing at first, but I don’t miss the way his eyes dip to my chest each time he turns to look at me.
My mouth is already watering. After skinning and cleaning the elk we caught together, he’s been busy in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure how he was going to make anythingwithout fresh food—other than the meat—but he assured me something great was coming.
“This is just like Foods Club,” I say from the little table.
“Ha,” Soren says as he stirs something in a pot. “I guess it kind of is.”
I joined Foods Club at my mother’s pressuring, to fill a hole in my schedule. She’d also slyly insisted it would be good for me to learn how to cook for my future alpha, despite the fact that shenevercooked. We had a chef for that.
Soren joined Foods Club because he wasgenuinelygood at it. The teacher and club leader loved him and ended up pairing the two of us up together all the time, likely thinking his excellent skills and my horrible performance in the kitchen could somehow even out.
They did not. But I got a lot of experience in sitting and watching Soren cook, and I got to accept a lot of compliments for food I had absolutely no hand in making.
Now, Soren pulls me out of my memories by bringing two bowls to the table and setting them down in front of us before he takes his seat across from me. I strain to see the food in the low light. More storm clouds have rolled in over the horizon, so even though it’s relatively early in the evening, it’s already pretty dark.
“Here,” Soren says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a lighter. He tries to light the little lamp above our table. He’s turned on the power again, but with the storm last night, the batteries are running low. When he flicks his thumb against the lighter, though, there’s a brief spark but no flame. “Shit,” he grunts.
“That’s alright,” I say. “We can eat in the dark. It’s…charming.”
“Well,” he sighs after trying the lighter a few more times. “You could…?”
I blink at him. “What?’
He clears his throat, nods toward the lamp. “You could light it with your magic.”
“What?” The word bursts out of me, the surprise impossible for me to cover. Soren is suggesting I use magic? I blink, wondering again if I’m dead. “Are you crazy?”
“It would just be a little,” he says, shrugging one shoulder like it doesn’t matter to him either way. “I don’t see the harm.”
