Page 14 of The Enforcer’s Rejected Mate (Red River Rejected Mates #1)

Chapter

Nine

CORDELIA

“ Y ou’ll go south and find my sister. Jazzy is her name.

She lives in Red River, that’s a shifter town.

It’s Bloodstone territory. I’d feel better about sending you back to your pack, knowing there’s someone you can go to.

If you run into any trouble out that way you just ask for Jazzy and she’ll find you. ”

Bloodstone territory.

I bite my lip so hard it nearly bleeds when she mentions the home I’ve only heard of. When things were really bad I used to daydream about escaping from here and running away to Bloodstone territory, but reality always had a way of digging its claws into me and dragging me back to Frostclaw.

There was never any escaping Frostclaw Pack. At least, not until tonight when I was banished.

“There’s shifter towns? Like…with humans?”

In all my dreaming I don’t know why I didn’t think there would be full on shifter towns.

Yes, we have the village but that’s Pack territory.

We never have humans here. Humans are an entirely new experience I’ve only interacted with on supply runs and then it’s just been in passing when I’ve bought something with Maud.

“Oh yes. Growing up here you’ve been…” she pauses and gives my hand a pat, “ sheltered ,” she says after a second.

We’re sitting at the table with cups of tea.

I try not to think about the fact that I won’t do this with Maud ever again but no matter how hard I try there’s a bittersweet flavor to our night.

I grab her hand tightly while she goes on speaking.

“There’s a whole world of shifters out there, Cordelia.

You’ll find more than a few shifter towns out that way.

You could settle in any of them if you wanted.

If Red River isn’t to your liking there’s also Oak Fast out that way, nice little place but it’s more bear territory than wolves, and you know how they can be. ”

I crack a smile. “Big and dumb.” I’ve never met a bear. I’m just saying what I’ve heard in the village. I can’t wait to meet a bear to see how they really are.

“Exactly. Wolves would be best, and if you wanted to return home you could finally do it.”

My heart beats so hard that I think Maud might be able to hear it. I didn’t want to ask after my pack. Couldn’t bring myself to do it for fear of what Maud might say. I find the courage to ask now that I have the chance to well and truly go home.

“I-Is there anything left?”

In all of Alpha Ashford’s history lessons on Bloodstone and the Crimson Winter the only mention of Bloodstone Pack was the Frostclaw Pack’s victory over them.

All the others taken with me were too young to know anything about the pack just like I was.

As hard as I try, I can’t remember anything about my life before I came to Frostclaw.

I grip her hand tighter while I remember the speech Alpha Ashford gave the very first night he threw us all in front of the pack in the village square.

“Those that would stand before us have been destroyed utterly and completely. Their territory no longer exists. None will ever challenge us again. Let that be a lesson to those who challenge us! The Bloodstone filth has been wiped from this world save for these disgusting wretches.”

We’d huddled together in the square while the pack had crowded in around us.

Everywhere I looked I saw angry and mean faces.

I’d been so terrified that night. I was convinced I was going to die.

Why else would they have brought us in front of everyone like that when it was clear they didn’t want us there?

That night of terror was one of many. I don’t know how long it went on for, but it followed the same routine.

All of us terrified orphans were together with a few she-wolves watching over us during the day as we were shuffled along through meals, and then finally out to the village square to face the pack.

Until one night things changed. Instead of forcing us back into the dorms to sleep they’d seperated us.

I’d been sobbing along with the other children before the Alpha had grabbed me by my arm so hard that I saw stars from the pain.

When I’d looked back I’d seen the others dragged off by different adults.

They were dividing us up how they pleased, but where was I going?

He’d dragged me along behind him through the village and out to the woods and finally to Maud’s hut.

I’d run to her without thinking the second her door opened.

Maud had taken me in that night like she’d been expecting me, with a set of new clothes, a hot dinner and just like tonight, a steaming hot bath and a cup of tea before bed.

I looked down at the cup in front of me.

It was the same tea she’d given me that night.

Fitting that I was drinking it now on my last night in Frostclaw territory.

My last night before I try to go home. What is my home like now?

No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember a single thing about it.

Except for one memory. My shoulders get tight and I hunch in on myself just like I always do when I probe at the edges of that memory.

I’m holding my mother’s hand while she runs with me through the fire that had swept through our home.

I can’t see her face. She’s always turned away from me, pointing ahead as we run.

All around us the entire village burns. I’m holding so tight to my mother’s hand until I lose her.

I don’t know where it happens or how but I’m alone and running down a long hallway.

A man comes into view, I know he’s bad. He’s one of the Frostclaw Enforcers.

I see red and I go for right fo the man. I try to hurt him.

I want to hurt him. The only thing I remember more than that are the screams.

The fire in the hearth pops and I jump.

“Are you all right?” Maud asks, giving me a curious look.

I pull my hand away from hers and push away the memories of Bloodstone.

“I-fine. Yeah, I-I’m fine.” I give her a tight smile.

“Ah, so Bloodstone territory. You said there’s still a pack there?

” I get up from the table and go to the clothes Maud has laid out for me.

Thick wool socks and a flannel nightdress worn so soft from use. I dress while Maud talks.

Maud hums. “And a thriving one at that.”

Surprise shoots through me at her words. What Maud is saying is beyond my wildest dreams. Not only is my home not destroyed but it’s thriving. What if my home is waiting for me? What if it’s not the wasteland the Alpha said it was?

I rush back to take my seat at the table. “But Alpha Ashford always said-”

“That what? It was decimated? Laid to waste and nothing ever shall grow there again?” Maud snorts and refreshes my tea for me.

“He lied. It’s in his nature to be deceitful but that’s his role to play in all of this, Cordelia.

His wolf is wrong, do you hear me? He’s greedy and mean.

Nothing at all like what a leader should be. He’s not fit to be Alpha.”

What Maud is saying is treason. I’d be scared to hear it normally as it’s punishable by exile but I’m already banished so what more can they really do?

I lean forward, elbows on the table, I’m eager to hear more.

“His role to play? Not fit to be Alpha? What are you talking about? Have you told anyone else this” My head is spinning from the last few hours.

I cup my hands around the warm tea mug in front of me and breathe in the familiar scent while I wait on Maud.

She has a way of pausing and drawing things out when she’s thinking on her answer.

I squeeze my mug so tight that the ceramic starts to burn my palms. I let go when Maud opens her mouth to speak.

“We all have our roles, or jobs to do, if you will. Wayne’s is to be a piece of shit liar willing to skin his own kin for a morsel of power. Yours is to leave this place and find better.”

I frown. “You make it sound like a game.”

Maud shrugs and leans back in her chair. “Because that’s what life is, isn’t it? A game.”

“I suck at the game then,” I mutter.

She chuckles. “No, you’ve just been trying to play with the wrong set of rules.

But that’s over. I promise. You leave here and you’re free, do you hear me?

You’ll be able to be anyone you want in a place that you want to be.

All of this was set in motion the minute they took you from your pack.

They can’t take your choice away from you, Cordelia. Hear me now and understand that.”

Your pack.

My eyes water. Frostclaw has never been my pack.

Not even when I tried my best to make it that way.

Maud is the only one I felt like I belonged with…

well, her and Keiran. I look down at my mug and a tear slides down my cheek and into my tea with a pathetic little plop.

Luna. How could I have been so stupid about Keiran?

I thought he was my friend. I hoped that in his own special way he cared for me.

That eventually, somehow, he might come to love me. I was lying to myself.

“I reject you, Cordelia.”

There’s no way any of that had a prayer of coming true with the way he threw me away tonight.

I sniffle and swipe at my eyes with the cuff of my night dress. “What’s going to happen to me? I mean after this? I-I’ve never met anyone that was rejected. I heard about Bondrot but I’ve never seen it.”

Bondrot.

I’ve read all about it in the dusty tomes and papers Maud keeps on the bookshelf beside her work table.

It’s what happens to wolves rejected by their mates.

No one understands where it comes from or why it happens but wolves waste away, their ability to shift and strength sapped right out of them the longer they go on with a severed bond.

The drawings of weak wolves and even weaker shifters in their human form makes me shudder.

Some of them looked like they were melting right off their bones.

The worst part of it isn’t even that they die, it’s that they don’t die.

They become the Unliving. Wraiths trapped in their bodies.

From the writings I’ve read it seems most packs take them out to the woods where the forest reclaims them.

I don’t know what it reclaims them as or how.

I don’t think it does to be honest. I think the packs just do it so they don’t have to look at the afflicted.

“That isn’t going to happen to me, right?” I whisper.

I say me because Keiran is fine. Because wouldn’t you know it? The surefire cure for bondrot is a new bond with a chosen mate. Just like everything else in Frostclaw Pack, it plays right into making sure Keiran has the best life has to offer. He rejected me and I’m the one that has to pay.

Maud hesitates in her answer again but this time it’s just a second. “No, I mean, it won’t. Not if you go home. It’ll…be better there for you. You could choose a mate there. That would fix the bondrot easily enough.”

She’s right. A new mate would be the perfect fix but I’m not ready to open that can of worms so I ignore her suggestion.

“You know something about me going home, don’t you?” I ask. “Just like you knew something about tonight. What aren’t you telling me?”

A pained look crosses Maud’s face and she shakes her head. “I can’t,” she says.

“Can’t what?”

“I can’t tell you, Cordelia. I’ve already influenced you more than I should but it’s a fair enough price with what happened tonight. I’ll pay the price for that when it comes time. I won’t have you staying here a single minute more than you need to. Not with Wayne sniffing after you now.”

My skin crawls at the mention of Alpha Ashford. “I don’t want any part of him.”

“That’s because you’re smart,” she says.

“And you’re a witch,” I say, bringing up the fact that Maud is a genuine witch. “Why did you never tell me? I mean, you were like seven feet tall back there when the Alpha tried what he did. And at the moon run? I’ve never seen you like that before.”

She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “You never asked me.”

She’s right, I didn’t.

“I was trying to be polite,” I tell her. “People bring up magic and witches like they’re bad.” It’s true. Shifters get twitchy around magic. They say it’s not natural in the village but I think it’s because they don’t understand it.

Maud grins at me. “That’s because I raised you right.

You have manners. And anyhow, even if you did ask, I wouldn’t have told you because my being a witch would have influenced you in your choices.

Your destiny is bigger than this pack, it’s bigger than me.

Hells, it's bigger than any dream you can think of. Do you want to know what I knew?” she asks.

I nod my head yes because of course I do.

Maud continues, “What I knew is that Keiran would choose his mate tonight and that choice would set your destiny in motion.”

“You knew he wouldn’t choose me.”

Maud clucks her tongue at me. “That choice could have gone either way,” she says. “But did I suspect? Yes, but only because I know him well enough. Keiran could have chosen you tonight but he’s too weak. Just like his father. They make a fine pair.”

“Like father, like son,” I mutter and then prepare myself mentally for my next question. “Did you know I was his mate this whole time?”

Maud nods once, just a dip of her chin. I jerk back at the slight movement. “I did. From the second Wayne brought you to my door that very first night.”

I suck in sharp breath at that. I don’t ask why Maud didn’t tell me, because I know she’ll just give me the same answer about not interfering.

The only thing I can do is sip my tea and think.

It’s all too much. We sit together, the fire crackling merrily away like it’s just another ordinary night where I’ve managed to sneak away from the dorms to spend the night.

We sit together until the aching hole in my heart doesn’t feel like I’ll die.

I finish my cup of tea and yawn. My body feels heavy now and when I yawn, Maud orders me to bed.

I sleep deep and dream about Keiran and the bonfire but in my dream, he doesn’t turn me away.

He holds me and kisses me. He tells me he loves me.

In my dreams, he claims me in front of everyone.

“I love you, Cordelia. I always have,” he tells me and I wake up with tears staining my pillow.