Page 64 of The Enforcer's Rejected Mate

“What kind of magic?”

“It’s an ancient kind. The arcane stuff that no one knows how to do anymore. There’s a tale of your ancestors. It talks about the Old Ones that formed the land from a dream. They plucked themselves out of that dream and gave themselves the ability to walk as both a man and a beast. They made shifters real withthat magic and this pack are direct descendents of those first shifters. The magic they used might be lost to this world but this tree? Thorne’s Embrace is the source, where they first woke from their dream and entered this world.”

The only myths and legends I know about shifters come from Frostclaw, and that knowledge is only limited to the legend of how the Frostclaw Pack found its land. Of course Alpha Ashford’s thirst for pack history and lore wouldn’t include the fact that shifters first came from here. From my pack.

“Thank you. There’s so much that I don’t know…the pack that I was with weren’t keen on sharing anything that would have painted Bloodstone Pack in a positive light. I guess the start of all shifters falls under a positive for them,” I tell him.

Clyde sighs. “Wayne was always a dick.”

I laugh. “You sound like Maud.”

“Maud’s a smart cookie.”

“She is.”

“Now, come here and I’ll give you another lesson,” he says and motions for me to come to his side. When I do, he takes my hand and places it on the root.

“Do you feel that?” he asks.

I almost tell him no but then right on cue I feel the thrum of power, almost like a heartbeat vibrate through the root and into my palm. “Luna,” I whisper and put my other hand on the root. I wait and after a second another pulse vibrates against my hands.

I laugh at the second pulse. “I do. What-is that, the tree?”

Clyde opens his mouth to reply but it’s not him that answers me.

“It’s the heartbeat of our ancestors,” Thorne answers.

I whirl in surprise and end up crashing right into him as he steps forward out of the dark. He catches me easily enough and steadies me without even the slightest hint that him popping out of the dark is anything but normal.

I put a hand to my chest to stop my almost heart attack from taking me out and sag against the tree root. “Where did you come from? Were you just following us?”

“I was making my rounds. We just so happened to be on the same path.”

Clyde lets out a cough that sounds an awful lot like someone saying ‘liar’ but when Thorne looks at the Gamma, the man just tucks his hands into his pockets and whistles innocently.

“Nice night for rounds,” he says.

Thorne just grunts before he turns his attention back to me. I’ve mostly recovered from my near cardiac arrest so I’m ready when I almost go right into my next one when Thorne puts his hand next to mine, so close that our fingers brush. That single touch lights me up from inside. Holy hells. Why do I react this way when it’s him?

For his part Thorne is completely unphased while I try to slow my heartbeat down. “This is where their memory lives,” he tells me and that’s enough to cut through my Thorne induced panic.

“Its memory?”

I look at the root we’re touching but my eyes go to where our hands are side-by-side. I can’t look away from the way his larger hand takes up space, how it curves into mine. Wouldn’t it be so easy for me to move and take his hand in mine? And Luna, why do I want to do that? Every part of me wants that so badly. I want to scream from it.

“I mean, the tree has a memory?” I ask dumbly because my brain can’t form anything else.

“Not the tree. Thorne’s Embrace.” Thorne leans forward with a smile on his face. My frustration vanishes immediately. Gods. His smile is beautiful. Thorne’s smile is like watching the sun break through storm clouds. The full power of it is almost asstunning as the magic I’m being let in on standing here with him at the base of Thorne’s Embrace.

How can this shifter that can barely stand me take my breath away with a smile?

“This is where our home is.”

Our home.

I never realized what I was missing as an outsider in Frostclaw Pack. When you never have a home, it’s easy not to know what you don’t have. How can I miss what never existed? But standing here, meeting Alpha Ronan, Clover and Clyde, hearing about my mother, and now Thorne…I feel the stirrings of something I didn’t know was possible.

Home.