Page 15 of Rejected Forced Mate
I found my father in his study, sitting in his wheelchair and looking out the window into the darkness. He didn't move when I came in, even though I was positive he could hear me.
"Dad."
"Son. Come in."
I shut the study door behind me, and he turned to face me, his expression closed off. I wasted no time, "I'm here to tell you I've taken a Luna. It's Sage Williamson."
There was silence for a few long moments, and I thought he might let me leave without saying a word. I didn't give a damn about his silent disapproval, and it would have been a welcome change from him lecturing me on what a failure I was.
But of course, he wouldn't let me get away that easily.
His face twisted with anger, the same expression he'd use on me when I was a kid and I'd done something to piss him off. "I told you years ago to never go near her again, and now you've taken her as a mate," he spat. "She will ruin this pack."
He raged at me, rambling and listing all the ways I was a disappointment, but I didn't react. I let him throw everything he had at me until he was breathing heavily, red in the face.
"Are you finished?" I asked.
His voice was rough when he responded. "I should never have given the pack up to you."
It was cruel, but I couldn't help it. I laughed. "And what, continued to be an Alpha when you can barely walk on your own? Be serious, Dad. You can hate my choice in mate all you want, but this is my pack now, and things are going to change. You have no power anymore."
I left him to seethe, and hadn't gone back since. I'd had no idea how good it would feel to finally confront him, even if it had only been a minor victory. My father had been a tyrant for years, and now, his days were numbered.
Summer had pulled me into a hug and congratulated me, and she'd tried her best to keep up a cheery attitude. But she couldn't hide the tension, and it didn't take a genius to figure out why. She was scared of change, of the future.
"This is a good thing," I promised my cousin. "Change will make things better for all of us. And I think you'll like Sage."
"I'm sure I will," Summer had said, and squeezed my hand.
I'd returned home, too amped up from the confrontation and everything else that had occurred that day to sleep. It was a pattern that would continue for nearly fourteen days, me lying awake, knowing my mate was down the hallway. Within reach, but still so distant in her mind that we were basically millions of miles apart.
Sage showed little interest in leaving the house and interacting with the pack, which didn't surprise me, considering how unpleasant a greeting they had given her on her first day back. For the moment, it was fine, but soon I'd have to force her to make a few appearances. The sooner the pack got used to her and her new position of authority, the better.
It was Sage's tendency to be a homebody that sent me spiraling when I returned one afternoon to find her gone. I'd gotten so used to her sitting on the couch and reading, baking, watching television, and doing yoga that it was like the house had been hollowed out without her there. Panic hit me hard—was she trying to escape?
Sage running back to the Brokenclaw pack had been a concern since the moment I married her, but I had assumed that I would be able to tell through our bond if she managed to get too far away. Even though we barely touched or spoke to each other, our proximity had strengthened the bond considerably, and I'd been able to pick up on some of her more intense emotions.
The bond had given me a sense of security, and now Sage was gone.
I'd forced my paranoia down and focused on her scent. She'd done little to hide it, and it was easy for me to followwhere she'd gone. The first sign that I'd been wrong about her intentions came when her trail led not to the borders of my territory, but to the center of it instead. When I
reached the town center and saw her exiting a shop with a paper bag in her arms, the sun glinting off her hair, I'd been shocked.
She wasn't running. She was...shopping?
Still not ready to believe that things were as simple as they seemed, I followed her at a distance, watching as she entered one shop, and then another, and another. Her body language was relaxed, not stiff and poised to bolt like I expected, and she wasn't in a hurry, either.
Surely she had to be doing more than just shopping. The thought occurred to me that she was buying supplies for when she tried to escape, and that idea was believable enough that I found myself stomping over to her when she exited the next store. Sage didn't see me at first, but she sensed me before I could take her off guard, whipping around to glare at me.
"Can I help you?" she huffed. "Going somewhere?" I countered.
She looked down at the bags in her arms. "Yeah, back to the house now that I'm done shopping. Is that okay with you, or did you want to skulk around in the shadows some more?"
"I would have to 'skulk in the shadows' if you weren't out here gathering supplies to make your great escape."
Sage looked at me, stunned, and then she took me off guard by laughing. She set her bags on the sidewalk and pulled something out of one of them, tossing it to me. I caught it easily and looked at the item; it was a bottle of shampoo in a brand I'd never heard of before. "What...?"
"I'm not buying supplies to escape, Noah. I'm buying all the things I need that you've failed to provide."
