Page 9 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
“We had an agreement,” Tara said, and her heels were close enough to the edge of the ridge that it made my heart beat inside out, flipping again and again. “Weagreedthat we were going to do this!”
After Soren cut off contact with me, saying he wasn’t interested anymore and warning me not to get in touch with him, I’d fallen apart. Tara and I had agreed that we’d had enough of the stupid school, enough of the people pushing us down. Enough of people acting like we were freaks just because we werebetterthan them, with our ability to use and manipulate magic.
But I never wanted what was happening right now. I didn’t want Maeve crying, the other girls on their hands and knees, unable to get close to Tara and me. I didn’t want to fight with my best friend. I didn’t want to start a fire that engulfed the entire town.
Tara had always been bolder than I, and in some ways, I felt like I should have known better than to expect her to go for something mild, like lacing the punch at prom with laxatives.
“You’re taking something from me,” I say to her now, closing my eyes and letting my head sink back into my pillow. I can feel it, almost like Tara is some sort of long-distance vampire, slowly drawing a life force right from the center of my body. It feels like the fire around us is burning even hotter.
“Yeah,” Tara whispers, and when I turn and look at her, my eyes stinging from the smoke, I see her eyes are closed, and she’s wearing the most serene expression of contentment and pleasure. “Don’t you remember?” she asks. “Like from school?”
I don’t. But it doesn’t matter, because the tugging, slow, unraveling sensation actually feels kind of good.
If my future is just Caspian, just a wedding and passionless sex with a man I don’t care about—if my future is just wishing I had someone else for the rest of my life—maybe it would be better to let Tara take what she wants. Maybe it would be better to let her bleed me dry.
“You can have it,” I murmur, turning on my side.
When Tara takes my hand, hers is white-hot, burning to the touch, but I hold onto it, thinking about all the times she comforted me through high school.
“I’m done fighting, Tar,” I say. “You can take whatever you want from me.”
She says something like, “I know,” but I barely hear it, because there’s another sound drifting through the trees.
Almost like Soren’s voice, calling my name.
I know it’s not real, and so I close my eyes, letting that one last thought carry me through this thing. Letting his voice be the last thing I hear before I slip into the dark, empty void Tara is preparing for me.
Chapter 5 - Soren
“Soren!”
Xeran calls me back, but I broke away from the group so long ago that I don’t know if I’m really hearing his voice or if it’s just my inner wolf, his ears perked for the potential anger of my supreme, his disbelief at the fact that I ran from the others.
Kalen’s mouth had actually dropped open in shock the first time Xeran ordered me to turn around and come back and I’d blown past them, running in the opposite direction. I know how the other guys think of me. Xeran’s right-hand man, because I’m a rule-follower.
And to a certain extent, it’s true. I don’t see a reason to cause a problem when I don’t have to. If there are guidelines in place, it’s for a reason. And my Gramps raised me to think of the pack first, which means living your life in accordance with the pack ordinances.
There are a few things that would make me ignore those teachings.
And Aurela Cambias is one of them.
My wolf isn’t fighting too hard against me, even though I’m directly disobeying my supreme. There’s a reason why I started running away from the unit. Why I’m not slowing down, even as the daemon fire grows thicker, the smoke like a physical barrier, the heat singing at my eyebrows and hair.
Because she’s in the forest somewhere near here.
And she’s in danger.
I feel it in every beat of my feet on the ground, in the panic clawing up my throat. The closer I get to her, it’s like my body starts to sync with hers, adapting to her nervous system,becoming sympathetic to the anxiety sloshing around in her head. Everything bleeds over to me, making it hard to think as I weave my way through the trees, jumping over fallen logs and dodging roots, my eyes straining through the smoke.
“Aurela!” I call, voice hoarse. If she heard me, would she call back? Is she even conscious right now? Did someone kidnap her?
I think back to a few years ago when a local gang kidnapped Valerie, tying her to a chair, bound and gagged, in the old candy factory on the outskirts of town. Lachlan was inconsolable that night, and now, I think I understand why.
The link between Aurela’s body and mine grows stronger and stronger, and I’m able to catch hints of her scent on the wind. Just when I think I’m going to turn the corner and find her, I instead find two writhing, laughing daemons. Amalgamations of blue flame, rising up with fat, swinging arms and singing laughter.
I scowl at them, setting my feet in the melting earth and reaching into my pack for the retardant nozzle.
“Fuck off,” I growl, my wolf still pulling me in Aurela’s direction, the pull getting stronger and more insistent as each second trapped by the daemons ticks by. “Or I’m going to snuff you out.”
