Page 2 of The Enforcer’s Rejected Mate (Red River Rejected Mates #1)

Maud swishes into her hut and I work as quickly as I can to keep my word.

Even if I don’t rue the day, I’ll be up shit creek if Maud is cranky.

And besides, the runs go into the early morning hours, and I’m not keen on working my kitchen shift on an empty stomach while the pack enjoys themselves.

In Frostclaw, hierarchy dictates the pack’s dinner plates from the alpha all the way down to me.

If I don’t eat with Maud, sometimes there’s nothing more than a nibble or two left for me at meals.

My stomach growls just thinking about the nights I worked with nothing to eat and I pick up my pace.

After only fifteen minutes or so I’ve gotten most of the sweetgrass moved, there’s only a trip or two left and I’m practically skipping as I load up the wheelbarrow with more sweetgrass than I should.

I can barely see over the mountain I’ve managed to pile in the wheelbarrow but I’m determined to do this in just one load.

There’s roast chicken on the line, after all.

I make it to the shed, only losing a few bundles along the way which is a victory but before I can relish the win, I smell him.

Him.

Even if I haven’t shifted yet, I’m sharper than a human in terms of my senses, and even if I was a human I bet I’d know Keiran Ashford from a mile off.

I don’t know why he started to do it but he started coming out here, to the woods beyond the clearing Maud’s hut is in.

At first he didn’t do anything other than watch while I worked, gone as soon as I scented him in the air.

I don’t remember who talked to the other first. I guess it was probably me. The ache in my chest is back and I rub at it absentmindedly as I remember how things began with Keiran. No. It wasn’t him that started it. It couldn’t have been. I’m so starved for interaction, I know it was me.

Those talks were just that, talking with a few awkward glances.

Sometimes we walked and talked but that was it.

And then somewhere along the way talking and walking turned to sitting and watching the sunset or the moon’s path across the night sky when I was supposed to be safe and in my bed in the bunkhouse. I snuck out to meet him in those days.

It didn’t take much at all before it turned to more.

Keiran was my first everything but all those firsts didn’t translate to much when we weren’t alone. When we were in public, it was like I didn’t exist, not even when the others talked shit or piled up on me.

Keiran didn’t say a word then. That was something I guess.

He could have joined the rest of them poking fun at the orphan.

I knew why the other’s did it. If they weren’t at the bottom then their rank, as low as it was in the grand scheme of things, was secured.

They were fine, so long as they weren’t me.

No, Keiran didn’t join in. He looked through me like I was a ghost.

That didn’t make sense to me.

If he’d said the word, the others would have been forced to leave me be.

If Keiran had shown me something, some proof that we were more to each other than strangers in the same pack my life would have been different.

But every day went by with nothing but Keiran’s silence in public.

Gods. It didn’t make me want him any less, did it?

Embarrassment washes over me like a downpour breaking and I want to run back to Maud. I should run back to her. I think it every time Keiran appears.

I lick my lips and look over my shoulder at Maud’s hut and I can see her form moving through the wavy-paned glass of the kitchen windows. She’s taking the chicken out of the oven to cool.

I should keep working, I ought to pile the sweetgrass, and go to Maud so we can keep to her schedule. I belong with Maud. I shouldn’t be thinking about how close he is. How good he smells or what his hands feel like on my skin. I shouldn’t…but I do.

“Cordy.”

I shiver. The deep bass of Keiran’s voice cuts through my shoulders and thoughts like a hot knife through butter.

“Cordy, don’t pretend you didn’t hear me.”

Cordy.

Keiran is the only one that calls me that.

I like the nickname. It makes me feel special to have something he gave me.

If I had friends, I like to think that they’d call me Cordy.

In my fantasy fever dream about the moon run, I have friends that call me that.

They cheer me on and it's with them that I run through the woods beneath the full moon.

A bird chirps and my daydream vanishes. The sun makes me squint as I wring my hands and step towards the woods.

“What are you doing here, Keiran?” My voice is breathy, even just saying his name has me feeling out of sorts.

That’s the effect of Keiran, though. I never think properly around him.

If I could, I wouldn’t be rounding the shed and stepping into the woods when I hear him growl in annoyance at how slow I’m walking.

“I had to see you.”

My question hangs in the air even more now.

Keiran never comes to see me while the sun is out, at least not normally.

He did when his father announced Keiran would be taking all challengers as his appointed heir.

Those weeks were hard and he was always on the mend from a fight.

The next time was when his grandmother passed.

He arrived in the morning that day and didn’t leave till the next day.

I’d caught a beating for not coming back to the dormitory but it had been worth it to be there with Keiran. He’d needed me so badly.

What is it this time that has Keiran showing himself in the daylight? Worry twists my gut into a knot and I push through the trees to Keiran.

“What’s wrong?” I ask when he comes into sight. “Are you all right?”

Keiran is big like all shifters are but he’s bigger than most. Muscular and broad-shouldered, he’s the best fighter in the pack and looks every bit what you would think of when you imagine what the future pack Alpha should look like.

Dirty blond hair that I’ve always thought looked like gold in the sunlight falls to his shoulders and clear blue eyes pair well with the easy smile I see Keiran flash around during dinner or in the village with the pack members.

Keiran smiles for everyone but me. Even now he’s frowning, the downturn of his lips a familiar sight that makes me want to do my best to earn his smile.

“Is everything okay?” I press when he doesn’t answer me right away. The big Alpha tips his head back and looks up at the afternoon sky.

“Is anything ever really okay?” Keiran mutters.

I cross my arms over my chest and pull my cardigan tighter while I wait for Keiran to speak.

I’m wearing my nicest sundress, it's a dress I bought just a few weeks ago when I was with Maud. I’d brought a handful of money on a whim.

Retail therapy after being stuck in the kitchens and being put through hell by the beta’s mate, Chantel.

She runs the kitchens and she’s mean as a snake.That day she’d caught me with a baking pan to the ribs for not moving fast enough.

My dress is white with red flowers on it, and the skirt flows around my hips when I walk.

It makes me feel nice. A gift, when so few things in the Frostclaw Pack make me feel that way.

I smooth my palms over my skirt and think about what the moon run will be like tonight.

Even if it’s delusional I’m going to hold on to the scrap of hope that tonight is my night.

Tonight is the night.

I’ll shift.

I have to.

And when I do finally shift, all of my mate dreams will have a face to them.

Shifters have the sight when it comes to their soulmates.

Dreams that come to a shifter when the Goddess and universe conspire to bring soulmates together.

There’s no mistaking when you belong to someone.

Two halves of one whole. Dreams herald true mates and the even rarer fated mates.

I’ve been dreaming of my fated mate for years, since I was a girl, but I’ve never been favored by the world at large.

And unlike the others in the pack, the ones who have been lucky enough to find the other half of their soul, I’ve never found mine because my dreams aren’t like the others in the pack.

They see faces. They recognize their intended immediately, even if it’s a wolf they’ve walked by a thousand times before and never thought much of.

Grown right up alongside and never had an inkling they were ‘the one’ until the moon goddess spoke it into existence with a dream.

The moon goddess’s gift is a single dream that once given never happens again, that’s how sure and strong the magic is.

All it takes is one dream, one moment, for their mate’s face to be forever ingrained in their memory.

But me?

It’s not one dream.

It’s dreams.

Because why would anything in my life go according to plan?

Like the rest of my life, my mate dreams are chaos but at least the chaos is consistent.

My mate dreams are constant, almost nightly, each one haunting me in its own way in a seemingly never ending procession.

Each dream I’m never given the one thing I hunger for the most, long for, the one thing that sometimes feels like it’s driving me mad.

His face.

I never see his face.

I’m pretty sure any other shifter with a half normal life where things go moderately according to plan would have gone mad. Lost it completely but I’ve got neither a half normal existence or much of anything going right, so I’m holding it together pretty all right.