Page 1 of Found (Mate Rejected #8)

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AERIN

“ A erin, you need to wake up.” Mack brushes the hair from my forehead. “We have to leave now.”

My jaw cracks when I yawn. “Not this morning. You can fall off the lounger yourself. I’m tired and my head hurts.”

He laughs. “I fall off the lounger because I’m too busy kissing you. That would be hard to do if you’re not with me.”

I crack open one eyelid. “What’s my reward if I get up?”

A grin transforms his handsome face and his brown eyes sparkle with amusement. “What’s your reward?” he echoes as his amused gaze drifts to my mouth. “Maybe a kiss.”

I grip the front of his shirt. “It had better be a good one, Mack Winters, to have woken me up to freeze in the garden this morning.”

He laughs as he bends his head.

His lips touch mine, and I kiss him back when a sudden awareness shocks me.

This isn’t Mack.

It isn’t Mack.

I wrench my eyelids open, and my gaze clashes with a pair of bright blue eyes.

Not Mack.

Shane .

My former mate.

I shove him away from me as I scramble up the bed. I fall to the floor and cry out, thrusting my hand to ward Shane away when he steps closer. “Stay away from me.”

His gaze dips to the hand I press on my belly when my baby, probably in response to the panic flooding my body, kicks. “Is something wrong with the baby?”

“You care less about this baby than you ever cared about me. Stay away !”

He inches back a step, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me.

It feels like it was a lifetime ago when I first saw him and knew I’d discovered my fated mate. I had never met anyone I needed, wanted, and ached to be with the way I felt about Shane Dacre. Such is the way with fated mates.

But Shane loved someone else.

Bree, the woman he loved, belonged to his pack, the Dacres. They were my pack’s closest neighbors, and I’d heard stories about him and caught glimpses of him from a distance, but had never met him until the day we met at an event my dad threw.

He was Perfect Shane, the handsome blond-haired, blue-eyed Alpha who had just taken over leading the pack from his dad, Iain.

When I met him, I thought it would be the start of my happy ever after. My dream life.

It was the start of a nightmare.

He spent months treating me like I was worthless until I ran, not realizing until I had left him that I was pregnant with his child. He never looked at me like he loved me because I was the obstacle to his perfect life with Bree. That’s how he looked at Bree.

Not now.

Now , he is looking at me like I’m his mate.

Like he wants me.

I have my spine flush to the wall as I struggle to comprehend that look of longing in his eyes. It doesn’t make sense that he would feel this way, and it doesn’t even matter what he wants. I no longer want him. I only want Mack.

And I scrub the back of my hand over my mouth, removing the memory of his kiss from my lips. “Why did you kiss me?”

“You wanted me to.”

“I was dreaming,” I burst out. “Of Mack. Not you. Never you.”

He doesn’t speak for a beat, then he clears his throat. “We’re getting back on the road now. If you need the bathroom, use it now. I’ll wait here.”

My eyes scan an unfamiliar room that I have no memory of entering.

We were in Winter Lake. I was rushing out of the den because a woman was screaming and the scent of blood was so overpowering. And I saw…

“You killed Chris,” I whisper.

I remember the blood soaking the grass in the backyard. He hadn’t been moving. Zoe had been on her side, also unconscious. I don’t know how badly she was hurt, but I know Chris had lost a dangerous amount of blood from what I had scented in the air.

But that isn’t all I remember.

“And the house…” I breathe. There was another man. I look around, but we’re the only people in this unfamiliar cabin. But there had been someone else. A dark-haired man who had a cloth that he’d set on fire with a lighter he’d pulled from his pocket. As Shane had dragged me away from the house, the man had punched the den window and thrown the lit cloth into the house.

Chris could be dead and the house burned down with my packmates inside.

My eyes flick to the closed door. It’s on the other side of the room and I would have to get past Shane to do it. I don’t think I could move that fast. Not while six months pregnant.

Shane sits on the edge of the bed, staring straight ahead. “I did what needed to be done. The bathroom, Aerin. We have some place we need to be today.”

I plant my back to the wall. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He laces his fingers together, muscles straining his forearms.

The Shane from before was always well dressed and well-groomed. This Shane is rougher around the edges, with stubble on his usually clean-shaven jaw, a couple of rips in his blue jeans, and a stain I can’t identify on his long-sleeve white T-shirt.

He doesn’t look at me as he speaks. “Then I will pick you up and put you in the car myself. One way or another, you’re coming with me.”

He doesn’t say it like a threat. But like a promise, and when he flicks a look my way, there’s a heat in his gaze that reminds me of his kiss.

I think he wants an excuse to touch me.

Panicked, I reach for a power that I once used to fling him to the ground. I have enough anger and pain inside me to fling him into next week, but I can’t do that incredible thing because my powers are not there.

Mack thinks it’s because I’m pregnant. That I can create life or wield an incredible power. Not both. I’m starting to think he’s right, because I’m still struggling to embrace a reality where my omega powers have gone forever.

“I’m not going anywhere.” I lift my chin.

He looks at me. “Yours isn’t the only head that will roll if you don’t fall into line, Aerin. Use the bathroom or don’t. We leave in five minutes.”

Every muscle in my body is tense as he pushes himself to his feet and walks over to the closed door I was eyeing up moments ago.

Before he kidnapped me from Winter Lake, we’d discovered that omegas were being hunted. Across the country, omegas were going missing, and no one knew who was behind it.

I’m an omega, a broken one, but still an omega.

And Shane just kidnapped me.

“What did you get yourself messed up in?” I call after Shane.

He halts at the door, one hand around the handle, his back to me. “There are no windows in the bathroom and only one way out of this cabin. I’ve parked right outside. Five minutes to get in the passenger seat or you're going in the trunk.”

He walks out, pulling the door closed behind him.

The second it’s closed, I’m on my feet, searching for a phone I can use to call Mack. There is no phone. Nothing useful at all in this basic cabin. Just a bed with simple bedding, a dresser, and a bathroom, which, like Shane warned me, doesn’t even have a window.

I look at the toilet and I have a sudden hatred for my bladder.

“Not the time to be stamping on my bladder, Thumper,” I whisper, wincing as I rest my hand on my belly.

I don’t have any options.

I use the bathroom because I need it, wash my hands, and walk out of the cabin to find Shane wasn’t lying.

He is literally parked right outside. We’re in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. There’s a short side road and leads to a main, busier road, where I can occasionally hear cars speeding past. And all around me is the forest.

I don’t think we’re in Winter Lake anymore. Last night, Mack woke me at 2 a.m. and left with the others to deal with a problem at the hotel. I stayed up with the rest of the pack, and it was still dark when Shane dragged me out of the house.

Now it’s a bright, sunny day. Mid-morning, I think, rather than early. If we’ve been on the road, we must have been on it for hours for the sky to be so bright.

I eye the main road in the distance, but I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t make it a mile down it if I ran for it before Shane was out of the car and grabbing me, so I walk over to his car.

It’s his sports car. I’d hoped to get in the back seat, but there isn’t one. So I climb into the passenger seat and slam the door shut.

It’s this or the trunk, I remind myself.

For now.

My options won’t always be this limited. I just have to buy myself time until I get to that point. That’s all.

“Good choice.” Shane starts the engine. “I knew you’d see things my way.”

They say there’s a fine line between love and hate.

I look at my fated mate, the biological father of my child, and a man I once convinced myself I loved, and I don’t think I could hate anyone more than I hate him.