Page 36 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
When Soren turns and looks at me, it’s with such adoration, such gratitude and possessiveness, that I have to hold the side of the bed frame tight to keep from doing something I shouldn’t, like crossing the room and jumping into his arms.
“No,” Lach starts to say, shaking his head, but Xeran appears, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Aurela is a grown woman,” Xeran says. “And Soren is a good man.”
Lachlan falls into a stormy quiet as we gather up our things. I’ll have to send word to my parents that the engagement with Caspian is off, that I’ve found another man willing to love me.
My mother will be furious. Especially when she sees the mating mark. But that idea doesn’t terrify me anymore. Instead, it almost fills me with a sense of levity, of hope. Like the world might be changing for the better.
“Can we talk later?” I ask, turning to Lachlan just before Soren and I leave the building together.
When he looks at me, it’s not with the rage he’s shown toward Soren. Instead, it’s with this deep, pitying look, like he still believes I’m being taken advantage of. Like this whole thing is a mistake, but it’s not my fault, because I don’t know any better.
It’s the same look my parents have given me my entire life.
And for the first time, it doesn’t feel right to me.
I’m not weak. I’m not a silly girl to be pitied. I’m strong and capable, and it’s time that Lachlan learned that.
“We will talk,” I state, pressing my lips into a flat line. “You can come to me when you’re ready.”
The surprise on his face is a balm to my anxiety, and I turn, nodding at Soren once before he and I walk out of the hospital and into the bright Silverville sunshine, together.
Chapter 19 - Soren
When I was a kid, and things went wrong, Gramps always went with the sage advice thateverything happens for a reason.
I’d come home after that run-in with Aurela’s parents in a foul mood, slamming around the house, and he’d forced me to give him some version of the truth that he could work with. I didn’t tell him who the girl was, or what the exact situation was, but he’d grasped the basics.
“If you love someone,” he said, “that means you want the best thing for them. Even when that thing isn’t you.”
He was right. I wouldn’t upend Aurela’s entire life. I wouldn’t get her sent to another country, force her away from her friends, or make her redo her senior year of high school when she was so close to getting out.
But I was fucked up over it. And through the subsequent months, as I grappled with the pain and depression that came along with having to end it—of having to tell her she waswrongabout us being mates—Gramps came back with that line again and again.
Everything happens for a reason.
Only now, nearly fifteen years later, do I finally believe that.
When Aurela said she wanted to come with me, my body flushed with a joy so bright and impossible that I thought I might pass out from the feeling of it. And when she told her brother they would talk later, and I got to witness her first step away from being that timid girl, locked away from the world, it was like I could taste the triumph.
I’d give anything to have had these past fifteen years with her. But maybe we both needed this time to come to grips with ourselves. So she could get to the point that she could talk to her brother like that, and I could finally break the rules to keep her.
Maybe if I’d been more of a rule breaker back then, I could have told her parents to fuck off. She and I could have fled town together, enrolling in a human college. Doing anything to stay together.
But I didn’t, and that’s okay.
I’m feeling so good as we walk out of the hospital together that I stroll right past the man standing at the entrance. I miss the way his expression rearranges itself, and I could have gone all the way home without noticing his rage, except he hollers at us, cheeks red and a vein popping in his neck.
“You fuckingwhore!”
My wolf doesnotlike that.
“Caspian!” Aurela gasps, staggering backward, and it’s like all the progress she made inside with her brother has evaporated.
When I turn and look at the man who’s supposed to be better than me, good enough for my mate—at least by her parents’ standards—I could laugh.
Except I’m furious. So I don’t.
