Page 26 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
I’m as aware as I can be, trying to keep my ears pricked for Tara. This could be a fluke—another one of Aurela’s attempts to get away from me—but I don’t think so. This is all too much like when I found her before, and I’m nothing if not great at recognizing patterns.
I race into the clearing, grab the back of her shirt with my teeth, and pull her up, running as fast as I can to get her out of the blaze. When I’m far enough away from the clearing that I feel relatively confident Tara won’t appear, I set Aurela down and shift back to my human form—it’s not good for me to hold herlike this for long. My old shirt is already starting to rip, leaving red marks around my neck where it pulls.
Dipping down, I scoop her into my arms and start the long walk into the woods. As I walk, I consider what’s going to happen next—the fires are far up enough into the mountains that Xeran and the others might come to investigate them. They might also be preoccupied with fires going on closer to town. There’s no way for me to know what their priorities are.
When I get back to the cabin, I bring Aurela inside and set her down on the bed, running a washcloth under the cool water from the sink and laying it over her forehead. She whimpers slightly, her back arching, and I run my hands over her, barely touching her skin, worrying over injuries I might not be able to see.
How did she get out there? Did something happen to her while she was in that clearing? I’m just returning from the sink with a fresh cloth when Aurela opens her eyes, her whimper turning to something stronger, her eyes finding mine.
And that’s when I smell it—a sharper, thicker version of her scent. Heavier than I’ve ever experienced before, to the point where it actually makes me stumble, my hand flying out to the wall to steady myself, my heart beating double time.
“Aurela,” I rasp, taking a moment to gather myself, but it does little to curb the wolf’s intentions. He claws at the barriers between me and him, demanding to be let out, to get to the woman on the bed, staring at me with those wide eyes.
“Soren,” she pants, sitting up, the t-shirt on her torso so tattered that I catch several slices of her stomach, her chest, which doesn’t do anything to calm my pounding heart. “Soren, I—”
“Just…” I take another step toward her with the cloth, thinking I can work through this. If this is what I think it is, I should be strong enough to overcome it.
That is, until she lets out a breath, her dark eyes raking over me, her desire written over her face so clearly that suddenly I’m a starving man, an empty vessel. And she’s the only thing on this earth that could possibly pour into me.
Aurela lets out another whimper, letting her head fall back against the pillow, and I don’t miss the way her legs shift, squeezing together.
I drop the cloth.
“I have to go outside,” I grit out, realizing I’mnotstrong enough to overcome this. We learned about it in school, the danger of an omega going into heat near an alpha—andespeciallyher mate. But we were always taught that non-mated shifters should be able to resist one another, that a non-mated alpha could get some distance and resist the pull.
Aurela and I are not mated in the official sense. I’ve not given her a mating mark. She’s not marked me, either.
But I know, deep down, that we’re mated in a different way. That this thing between us has always alerted me to her heats, even when we were miles away. And now I can barely stand to look at her, my cock already hard, my blood pumping thick, the wolf demanding to go free, to drop the shackles of my discretion.
“Soren,” she pants. I hear the bed shift, but I refuse to look in her direction. “Don’t leave. Please.”
“Fuck,” I hiss, turning away from her, pressing my hot palm against the cool wood of the wall. “I have to, Aurela. I don’t think I can—”
She can read what I’m going to say before the words cross my lips, and she interjects, “Then don’t.”
When I turn to look at her, she’s on her knees at the edge of the bed, her pupils swallowing her irises, her lips pink and parted, her skin flushed.
Then, like the final nail in the coffin, she reaches down and pulls the tattered shirt up and off over her head.
I suck in a breath, my feet carrying me across the room before I can think about what I’m doing.
This is why they call it a rut. Because you feel like you’re guided in a certain direction, like you have little to no control over going somewhere other than the omega calling to you.
“Aurela,” I wheeze, control quickly evading me when I’m standing in front of her, her bare chest just inches from my reach. “We shouldn’t do this. You’re engaged. And in heat. You can’t know that this is what you want—”
“I know myself,” she says, her voice firmer than I’ve ever heard it before. When I meet her eyes, there’s a sense of determination there, and she raises a hand, setting it on my chest. It sends a shock through my body so potent, my mouth tastes charged, like I’ve just been shot clean through with a lightning bolt. “And I want this. I’ve wanted you forever, Soren. Me wanting you was never the problem.”
I open my mouth to say something, to apologize again for what happened all those years ago, to clarify that I wanted her, too. To tell her what torture it’s been to force myself to stay away.
But I don’t have time or the mental presence to speak them, because we both move, and our lips collide.
I waste no time sliding my tongue into her mouth, my hands moving to her chest, a strangled, desperate noise escapingthe back of my throat when I have the weight of her breasts in my palms, the gentle scrape of her erect nipples between my fingers.
“Soren,” she breathes, and I understand why. The only thing I can choke out is her name.
After so long being apart from her, I don’t want to talk. I only want to touch, and touch, and touch.
Lowering her to the bed, I shake with the effort of restraint, the wolf demanding more, and faster—but this is the first time I’m having her like this, something more than a passionate kiss and roaming hands. This is the first time—and potentially the only time—that I will get Aurela.
