Page 1 of Rejected Sold Mate (Crystal Creek Wolves #4)

Everything had settled. My friends and their Alpha mates were safe, the horrible, twisted wolves that had wished them ill were long gone, and there was peace among the allied packs.

But I’d always had a hard time accepting peace, maybe because I’d experienced so little of it throughout my life.

So, while everyone else had returned to their daily lives—working, raising pups, and maneuvering pack politics—my brain couldn’t seem to turn off the fight or flight instincts inside of me.

Mia and her twisted wolves were gone. None of us was in danger anymore. Maybe I just needed a distraction if I was finally going to be able to force myself to believe it.

And I knew just the place. I’d had to frequent it quite a bit since I’d joined the Shadowbay pack.

That’s not to say that Alpha Scott’s pack hasn’t been kind to me, all things considered.

An unmated Omega with no magical skill and very little skill otherwise wasn’t exactly someone most Alphas would welcome with open arms. But I was an innocent party among the sins of my family, and a long time ago, generations past, before my old pack was shattered, it had rendered aid to the Shadowbay pack.

A debt was owed, and then cleared, when Scott agreed to take me under the umbrella of his pack.

I’d been given a small singlewide on the edge of Shadowbay territory, already furnished, but nothing more.

Still, it was enough, and I was grateful.

I’d been given the chance to sell off a lot of my parents' things before leaving, and used that money to buy an old Subaru that worked maybe sixty percent of the time, have the electricity and water hooked up to my home, and have a sizable shed installed in the backyard.

It had large windows and was just big enough to function as a painting studio.

A trailer, a broken-down car, and a shed.

It was a far cry from being the daughter of a prominent Alpha, but it was enough.

Now I have friends in not just my pack’s Luna, but the Lunas of the two neighboring packs as well.

My art sells fairly well as long as I don’t put my name on it.

No one wants something created by the weird outcast Omega.

It’s not at all the life I expected to live, but it’s a life nonetheless.

Even so, I found myself needing an escape sometimes, a place where no one knew who I was.

The Broken Barrel was a bar outside of the territories, far enough that I was able to be anonymous but not so far as to be inconvenient.

I wasn’t an outcast, or an Omega, or a victim there.

I was simply Rhie, and that’s what I needed more than anything that evening.

I usually dressed somewhat reserved, but when I went to the Broken Barrel, I was playing the part of someone else.

I styled my hair, finished my makeup with a flick of black eyeliner, slipped on an equally dark lace camisole, paired it with jeans, and topped it off with heels.

I barely recognized myself in the mirror, but that was the point.

It was one of the lucky nights that my car started without issue, and I waited until the sun was down to drive to the bar.

It was a Friday, and the parking lot was decently full.

I only came when it was busy. I desperately wanted to blend into the crowd, to let my true identity fade and enjoy the night as someone ordinary.

The Barrel was a hole-in-the-wall, but it was popular among biker gangs in the area. Inside, it was all wood paneling, neon signs for various beer companies, a few scuffed pool tables tucked into the back corner, and the smell of years of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke permeating every surface.

I received a few curious glances as I walked in, but anonymity was the name of the game in places like the Barrel.

A few nodded in my direction, but it was friendly.

I smiled to myself, wrapped in the warm feeling of finally being able to let my guard down.

No worrying about being the perfect, quiet, unassuming Omega.

No worrying about pack members having some smart-ass remark about me being a weak outcast. No worrying about some low-ranking wolf insisting that I be with them because, as an Omega, I should be more than happy to accept any and all male attention.

At the out-of-territory bar, I could just be Rhie. And Rhie wanted a drink.

I shouldered my way between a few people and cleared out a space at the old wooden bar, giving the bartender a small wave.

The older woman headed over, and I ordered a Basil Hayden Rye on the rocks.

She gives me a thumbs up, bringing me back a glass with two fingers of light brown whiskey and ice in it, but before I could hand her the cash I’d dug out of my purse, a much larger hand reached over my shoulder and handed the bartender a credit card.

“Put it on my tab, and give me one of the same.”

I felt his energy before I saw his face, and it made a full-body shudder roll over me.

There were so many people in the bar that I’d been consciously filtering out the energy of everyone around me, wolf and human alike, but the man behind me was close enough to make it impossible.

It was an Omega thing, the ability to sense dangerous energy to keep us safe during vulnerable moments, but I sure as hell didn’t think I’d have felt it there at the Barrel.

The man behind me was radiating Alpha energy. It was rolling off him like heat off a stove, and it poured over me. I wanted to bolt, to duck under his arm and flee, but he had me effectively caged in between his body and the other strangers pressing close around us.

Swallowing down my fear, I turned around, the ice clinking against the glass as my hands shook. I hadn’t been able to pinpoint who it was, but when I was facing him, I had to tilt my head back to look up. He was tall, and he also wasn’t any of the Alphas I expected to see.

I sucked in a breath as I met Jayce Patrick’s eyes. The Alpha of the Blacktide pack, the newest pack in the area, might as well have been a stranger, too. I’d seen him in passing, during meetings with the other three pack leaders, but I’d definitely never spoken a word to him.

I opened my mouth to speak, to try and explain why I was out of pack territory drinking all alone, a considerable risk for any Omega, but the look on Jayce’s face was all interest…and zero recognition.

Holy crap, did he really not know who I was?

Really, it made sense. I was just as new to the area as Jayce, and a hundred times less important. Heck, most of my own pack didn’t know who I was, let alone a pack leader from a totally different territory.

So, he wasn’t there to drag me back home or ridicule me into leaving. Instead, it looked like his feelings towards me were way more positive than I’d ever expect.

Way more…hungry.

I couldn’t tell if he’d clocked that I was an Omega yet. He had to know I was a wolf, but if Jayce was at the bar seeking something anonymous just like I was, then maybe he didn’t care to find out who I was. Maybe he was hoping to fly under the radar, too.

Only one way to find out.

“Thanks for the drink,” I told him, letting my mouth curl up at one corner, hiding my fear behind fake bravado, nodding at the glass the bartender handed him. “You like rye whiskey?”

“You’re welcome. And I like whiskey in any form. I just figured someone as pretty as you had to have good taste.”

Oh. Oh.

Up until that moment, I’d been viewing Jayce through a lens of red-tinged fear, barely taking in what he really looked like, but as soon as he made his interest known, everything changed for me.

Tall, at least six-foot-three, Jayce towered over me, but that was nothing new, considering I was five-foot-four on a good day and male wolves tended to be big.

It was the rest of him that had heat flooding my body.

He was gorgeous, deceptively so, since I was positive he could tear a man limb from limb without breaking a sweat if he wanted.

Jayce had long, sandy brown hair pulled back from his face, eyes the color of an oncoming storm, and an Alpha’s aura that felt ice cold.

In any other circumstance, he would have scared me to death, but we were in a unique position.

Jayce didn’t know me, and I wasn’t supposed to know Jayce.

And the way he was looking at me was the opposite of cold. His gray eyes were heated, molten as he gazed down at me. Jayce thought I was pretty. It was a heady feeling.

I swallowed again and grinned. “Then try it and tell me what you think.”

He obliged, tilting the glass back and pulling some of the whiskey into his mouth. He considered it for a moment and then nodded sagely, as if he’d made an important decision. “I was right. You do have good taste. Let me buy you another drink to celebrate.”

I hadn’t even taken a sip of my first one, but who was I to deny an Alpha? “Find us a table and I’ll consider it. I should have put a little more thought into my footwear, and I’m dying to sit down.”

Jayce looked down at the heeled shoes I had on, and when his gaze ascended, it went very, very slowly, crawling up my legs, to my hips, my chest, and finally my face. “I like them. Come on.”

People moved out of Jayce’s path like he was a natural disaster, and that made it all too easy for him to secure us a semi-quiet place to sit in the corner of the bar.

Once we were alone, he turned up the charm, leaning close as he spoke to me.

I cut him off at two drinks, but I had the feeling that if I wanted him to, he’d supply me with liquor all night.

When he asked me my name, I hesitated for a moment, but figured if he didn’t know my face, he wasn’t going to know my name, either, so I gave it to him. When he returned the favor, I made sure to school my expression so there was no sign of recognition on my face.