Page 39 of The Enforcer's Rejected Mate

He grins and looks my way. “Be a lot easier if you stayed around, you know that right? I might have enough respect to not look but the others will. She’ll have a half dozen suitors by dinner time. More, if the Jensen brothers see her.”

A growl rumbles in my chest. My wolf fucking hates the Jensen brothers. They’re cocky and loud-mouthed, and worst of all, they’re great fighters. Not better than me but good enough that they know they can be cocky and loud-mouthed and get away with it. He doesn’t want to leave the newcomer. He likes her wolf and he likes the woman.

Mine.

I clear my throat and tamp down the growl. “Fine. I’ll do it to keep the peace.”

“Right.”

“No sense in letting those idiots overwhelm her.”

“I think she’s already overwhelmed by you and those hunters. They shot her too, didn’t they?”

I nod slowly. “Yeah, shot us but the lightning was the worst of it.”

“What the hells are you going on about?” He steps to the side and looks at the woman before he looks back at me. “You both….” his voice trails off and he looks up at the stormy sky. Rain still falls in sheets with the sky lighting up every so often but the worst of the storm has moved on from the sound of it.

“Were hit by lightning,” I say and then hold up a hand. “Yes, I know what you’re about to say so don’t even bother.”

“But, Thorne. This is big. You don’t just-”

“Not now. We’ll talk about it later after we get her back to Red River. She’s exhausted.” It’s true. She’s getting dressed in already wet clothing. A baggy hoodie and jeans. I can see the tiredness in her movements as she hops to tug on her boots. The Omega needs rest. Somewhere warm and soft where she can relax. Be still and calm with a full belly and a fire burning in thehearth. Pictures of domesticity and home rush in on me. I fall back a step from the force of domestic bliss. That’s not for me.

Not since the Blood Moon Days.

“I’m going to shift. Run up ahead with the others and make sure those hunters don’t get up to anything,” I tell Lucian. “You’ll see her to the Alpha for me?” No one can enter Bloodstone without our Alpha’s say. Humans and shifters can be tourists but a shifter with a backpack and on the move like her? It’s easy to see she means to stay. “I’ll be along as soon as the jack off hunters are settled.”

Lucian chuckles. “Jack off is the perfect way to describe those idiots.” He waves me off. “Go on then, I’ll get your woman to the Alpha.”

Your woman.

I grunt out a response and turn my back on Lucian. I know why he’s calling the newcomer ‘my woman’ when I don’t even know her name and it has every bit to do with the lightning strike that hit us. That lightning bolt wasn’t just a once in a million or once in a lifetime strange occurrence, not to my pack. To the Bloodstone Pack it was fated.

Predestined and ordained by the moon goddess herself. To my pack it was the legendary binding of souls.

It was the finding of fated mates.

The new she-wolf was my fated mate.

In another life she would be the one sacred thing I kept for myself. Thunder rolls overhead like an omen. A reminder. She’s not mine to keep, she never will be.

Chapter

Seventeen

CORDELIA

I’ve been running for an hour, uphill, in a rainstorm. I think I’ve fallen a dozen times and my palms are scraped raw and the knees of my jeans are muddied. In short, the run was a nightmare. Not even the hot, brooding shifter running about twenty yards ahead of me was enough to make it bearable. I wince and pause to lean over and brace my hands on my knees when I make it to the top of another switchback. The run wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t gassed out from what happened in the meadow.

The meadow.

Like magic those two words summon the ghosts of the alpha’s touch that turned me into a needy, begging omega. I’ve never lost control of myself like that. Never. Being an omega is new to me, just like my wolf, which makes me wonder if it will always be like that.

No. No, it’s never like that.

The answer comes to me quickly. I don’t know if it's me or my wolf, but I know I’m right. Omega or not, what happened with that alpha wasn’t normal. What would have happened if we hadn’t been shot?

A shiver rolls through my body and I almost go down for the hundredth time when my toe catches on a root. “Hells,” I whisper as I stagger forward. I’m grateful I keep my feet under me. It’s one thing to fall in front of shifters. I’m used to that from my time in Frostclaw but humans?