Page 10 of Rejected Sold Mate (Crystal Creek Wolves #4)

Scott had been glad to hand Rhie off, and that didn’t sit right with me.

While I had a good relationship with Joe of the Brokenclaws, my relationships with Samson and Scott careened from accepting to antagonistic depending on the day.

Scott didn’t like me most of the time, and I’d expected a significant amount of pushback when I laid claim to Rhie, but instead, all I saw was relief.

I knew she hadn’t been an easy addition to his pack, but Rhie was quiet and unassuming. It was strange to me that one little Omega would bother him so much that he’d feel relief when she was claimed by another pack and taken away.

I’d waited for him to explain why she was an outcast and why she’d ended up in his pack instead of the one she had been born into, but Scott never offered an explanation, and I decided I’d push my luck later.

It made little difference what had happened to Rhie in the past. None of it changed that she was my mate.

I’d been planning on denying it until I was able to fully ignore the bond or it drove me crazy, but after the situation with the rogues, I’d sat up all night worrying about her.

There was little way for me to protect her while she still belonged to another pack, so the bond that I’d intended to never acknowledge became a tool I could use to keep her closer to me.

There was no doubt my seething need to protect Rhie stemmed from the bond in the first place, but there was nothing to be done about it.

There were rumors of ways to break a mating bond, but all of them reeked of dark magic, and I hadn’t heard tell of any successful attempts.

Only failed ones, like what had happened to Scott and Nayeli.

They’d been able to work it out and were stronger for it, but not everyone was so lucky.

I wasn’t going to risk myself or Rhie just for the slim chance our bond could be broken, and I found it hard to be ashamed of the fact that fate had chosen Rhie to be mine.

A lot of Alphas would be disgusted at the idea of such a weak mate, but I’d learned a long time ago that it was pointless to rail against things I couldn’t change.

And a mating bond was something I definitely couldn’t change.

Scott’s easy release of Rhie still smacked of disrespect to me, and I didn’t like the way it felt like he considered my mate a burden, but it didn’t matter anymore.

Because as much as his reaction had irked me, it was like a thread of tension inside of me had been loosened the moment he said she could be mine without a fight.

She was mine now in all the ways that counted, and that settled my wolf more than anything else could. The mating bond I had refused to believe in or respond to had made me so on edge that the last few days had felt like a blur.

It would be all triumph if Rhie hadn’t looked at me like I’d stolen what little scraps of freedom that she had.

Which, if I looked at it too closely, I could see why she felt that way.

Omegas didn’t have a ton of freedom in the best cases, and Rhie had been through more than most. But there was nothing else to be done—she was mine, and the options were to be with me, or be in constant danger of the rogues returning, and that just wasn’t something I could live with.

When she’d gotten caught, she’d put all of our packs in danger.

Keeping her at my side was necessary not just for her safety, but also for ours.

I’d managed to get Scott to let me have her without mentioning the kidnapping, which was a relief.

I was confident in the way that I was handling it, but I didn’t need him questioning my decision-making or my place in the alliance if he really didn’t approve of my methods.

We were both seasoned Alphas, but I was at the mercy of the other three until my pack’s place in the alliance was made official.

And that couldn’t be soon enough.

Having Rhie as my mate came with a lot of pitfalls that I hadn’t thought about too hard, but it also came with the perks of solidifying my position with the other three packs.

If Rhie became too pushy about having to stay with me, that was one of the excuses I planned on falling back on.

Something told me that she was going to be flighty about the emotional aspects of our new bond, but I couldn’t exactly hold that against her, considering I’d been an enormous asshole.

It would be okay. It had to be. That was what I kept telling myself as I drove home, out of Scott’s territory and into mine.

My home was a decent distance away from any other houses, a side effect of the territory I claimed being more secluded than the other pack’s territories, and I figured that would work in my favor to keep Rhie calm.

Her own small home had been tucked into the forest away from everyone else, so at least our places had that in common.

That was the only thing they had in common, though.

Alphas had to have larger homes, someplace to house pack families during disasters, new members while they looked for homes, or visiting wolves from other packs, but it had still taken me some time to get used to how big my new place was.

It was two stories and looked like an oversized log cabin with huge windows and a porch on the second floor, where I spent a lot of my mornings.

It was still hard sometimes to remember that the territory was the permanent home for my pack, and it was only recently that I’d gotten the last wolf moved into their own place.

It had been shaky for some time, but joining the alliance had helped settle everyone’s nerves, even if some of the older wolves still grumbled about it.

There was plenty of work for me to do while I waited for Rhie to arrive, and I threw myself into it to keep my stomach from tying itself in knots. I wouldn’t believe she was going to show up until I could lay my eyes on her, so every other moment before that seemed to drag.

I checked in on pack patrols, went over any messages I’d received, and made the necessary calls that I’d been ignoring.

When I’d taken my pack away from our old territory, I’d done so with all the inheritance I’d received from my father, but it never seemed like enough.

Like most packs, we’d made our money from numerous properties rented out across the territory as well as investments that had been made generations before, but now that the pack had moved, I had to deal with the headache of getting the properties rented out to new tenants.

I missed the days when I was just the grandson of the Alpha and could spend my time working as a mechanic and ignoring all of the pack bullshit.

The work never felt like it ended, but it was impossible to give it my full attention when Rhie still hadn’t appeared after two hours.

What in the hell was taking her so long?

I could almost picture her, dragging her feet as she packed her things, probably cursing my name the entire time.

I rubbed the area on my chest, right below my sternum, where the thin, starving mate bond lived, and that at least reassured me that she hadn't fled the territories. If she got far enough away, I’d be able to feel it.

So she was close, but taking her sweet time getting to me. I deserved that, but I didn’t have to like it.

By the time she finally showed up, I’d halfway convinced myself to rip the door off the hinges and track her down.

I heard her poor car, likely on its last legs after navigating the small, terribly maintained roads that led to my house, crawling up the gravel driveway, and I was already halfway to her by the time she parked.

I could feel my hands balled into fists, my breath heaving in my chest, the bond singing between us.

The driver’s side door opened, and there she was. She was wearing the same casual jeans and shirt she’d had on when I’d seen her at the meeting, splotches of bright paint dotting it in places. She’d braided her pale blond hair back severely, and her eyes were red like she’d been crying.

There were a thousand things I could have said to her that would have been better, maybe made her feel welcome, but what I said instead was, “It’s been four fucking hours , Rhie.”

“And?”

I still should have thought about what I was about to say first, but I was too on edge to rein myself in.

Her scent was everywhere, sweet and sharp, and every instinct in me wanted to grab her and crush her to me.

To claim her. “You couldn’t have called?

Sent me a message? I was this close to tracking you down—”

“Save it,” she snapped, pulling open the back hatch and grabbing an old duffel bag that looked older than the two of us combined. “Sorry, I wasn’t able to uproot my entire life on the schedule you’d decided on in your head.”

The urge to shake some sense into her was strong, but instead, I walked around the car, meaning to help her.

Rhie held up a hand when I got too close, holding me back by pressing it into the center of my chest. The physical touch was like a balm to the angry tangle that had taken up residence inside me, but there wasn’t any affection in the touch.

There was something in that car that she was hesitant for me to see.

“What is it?”

Rhie took a deep breath before she spoke, “You’re about to be the only person on earth that knows this, so don’t repeat it.

I brought a lot of painting supplies. I…

well. I make my living by painting commissions for people.

All of the orders are placed online, and I sell them under a fake name.

No one else knows, and I don’t want anyone to know, because I’m obviously not the most well—liked wolf around, and I like my privacy. ”