Page 37 of The Enforcer’s Rejected Mate (Red River Rejected Mates #1)

Chapter

Twenty-Six

THORNE

I fucked up bad but I’m alpha enough to know when I’ve fucked up and that means I have no problems saying I’m sorry and admitting when I’m wrong. Tonight I was dead ass wrong about Cordelia.

“Yes, I-” she stops short and then nods, “I forgive you. T-thank you.” She sounds so unsure with the last part of it that I want to punch myself in the damn face.

A spy. I accused her of being a spy . I don’t know where the words came from or why I let them come so easily but I’m seeing an emerging trend of me not thinking and acting around the omega. I shake my head at myself. I need to lock that shit down. Now.

“Thank you. I won’t misplace your trust again.”

I mean it. Forgiveness and trust are big in Bloodstone Pack.

We rebuilt Red River after the fires with trust. We reclaimed what was ours through recognizing when we were wrong, when the smart play was atoning sincerely.

Our pack wasn’t always like this. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.

I’m too young to remember much of it from before the Blood Moon Days, but the old-timers talk.

Before the fires, Ronan’s brother and he led our pack.

It was crueler then, harsher but that’s the way of most packs.

After Wayne left and became an Ashford to found the Frostclaw pack we evolved.

It was that or cease to exist.

I wager Ronan’s brother thought we would die out, scattering to the winds so he could swoop in and claim what he swore was meant to be his.

That didn’t happen. We hung on, changed with the times and became a pack meant for safety.

In a world of chaos, of the strong forcing their will on others, we became the shield.

Shame weighs on me for my behavior with Cordelia. I’m lucky the omega deigned to forgive me. I will do better.

Clyde clears his throat. “Should we sit for dinner? I know the staff are ready for us and if the feast they’ve prepared goes cold we’ll hear about it for the next two moon runs.”

Ronan smiles and nods. He looks between Cordelia and I, it’s just a fleeting look but I can see him taking stock.

He raises an eyebrow at me as he stands a little taller and I understand his meaning.

Cordelia is Amara’s girl, his old flame.

He’s never taken on another female after he lost her.

Whatever happens in the future with Cordelia and I, she will remain important to him.

Ronan won’t let her go without. He’s going to keep an eye on me when it comes to her but I earned that.

I nod my understanding to him and the Alpha relaxes.

“Yes, you’re right. I’m sure Cordelia has had a long journey to get here from Frostclaw.

” He leads us to the massive dining table.

We cut the poplars used to build it when I was sixteen.

For a while this table was the only finished thing in this room.

I thought Ronan might replace it with a fancier model once we got settled and the money from the investments the pack seeded in Oak Fast and down the road in the towns along the Red River started to roll in.

Real estate, land, all of it is valuable to humans the same way it is shifters.

We bought in early, fixed up the properties under the construction company Red River Builds Ronan leads and one hundred percent of the profits come right back into Red River proper.

It’s a perfect model for giving shifters in town a job and making life as good as we can for every single pack member.

Plus, having experienced hands makes the expansion of Red River a lot easier.

I wonder what Cordelia will think of how the pack makes money.

It’s different than what she’s used to in Frostclaw.

They fight on the amateur circuit for prize money, an easy deal when they’re only going up against humans.

Other than fighting, I don’t know much of what they do.

Cordelia murmurs her thanks when Ronan pulls out her seat for her.

She’s to the left of the head of the table, a place of honor, and I see the panic in her face when she realizes the seat she’s been given.

Worry lances through me, digs itself in like a fishhook.

I shift and try to put space between me and the feeling but it’s no use.

If Cordelia is feeling it then so am I so I take a deep breath and ride this out with her.

In a panic, Cordelia looks at me and then Clyde nervously like she thinks we’ll scold her for sitting there but Clyde just smiles and claps when the staff brings out the food.

I keep myself even for her so she knows it’s all right.

“Have you had potatoes seven ways?” Clyde asks Cordelia.

Her panic dissipates the instant he nudges a bowl of mashed potatoes her way and holds up a platter of twice baked potatoes for her to see.

Someone sets down a plate of potato puffs beside me and a platter of herbed roasted potatoes goes down next to Ronan.

Cordelia looks at all the dishes with wide eyes as more join them.

Meat comes out next along with cheese and bread.

Stew and soup, and fruit. All more than we can eat but the standard course of action when Ronan has a private dinner.

She shakes her head. “No, I can’t say that I have.”

The Gamma winks at her and motions for her to hold her plate up so he can serve her. “You’re in for a treat tonight then. Just wait until the cheesy bacon potato bites make their appearance. You’ll want to leave room for them.”

She laughs. It’s soft, slight, a barely there laugh but I don’t miss the way it makes her face light up. It makes her look younger.

“Every day in that pack was hell. It was an eternity. A prison sentence. I was beaten and isolated. I was stolen from and forced to eat scraps to survive. No one spoke to me but the Elder that raised me.”

My protective instincts fire away double time.

I want to hear Cordelia laugh again, see her smile, I want to find the little girl that she was and bring her home.

The last of those three I can’t do but I can see to the other two even if I don’t know how to go about it.

I settle for starting with piling her plate full of meat.

Steak, chicken, a porkchop. I stop when there’s no room left and ignore the looks I get from both Clyde and Ronan.

For his part Ronan looks pleased. He holds up his wine glass in a toast.

“To homecomings and new beginnings,” he says and tips his glass in Cordelia’s direction. “Welcome home, Cordelia.”

The rest of us lift our cups with his. “To homecomings and new beginnings.” When we clink our glasses I don’t miss the shiny look in Cordelia’s eyes.

She wants to cry. I’d panic but the Soul Tie tells me she’s happy.

Still, I watch to make sure. When she doesn’t cry and digs into her food, I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding and work on serving myself.

“What did you do in Frostclaw?” Ronan asks. “Did they train you in a skill? Or was there anything you liked doing while you were there?” He’s treading lightly, trying to figure out what her role was without directly asking her and letting her pick the way forward.

Cordelia sits a little taller. She’s proud of the answer to his question. Good. “I was a healer.”

Ronan leans back in his chair and gives her a happy smile. “This is fortuitous.”

Cordelia tilts her head. “For-what?”

“Good timing,” I tell her. “Lucky even.”

She looks surprised that I’m helping her but inclines her in thanks after a beat. “Thank you. I’ve never heard that word, never read it either in Maud’s books. That’s where I learned mostly.”

“Did you go to school?” Ronan asks.

“Not really. I went until I was about fourteen and then there wasn’t enough room so I wasn’t sent anymore,” she tells us and takes another sip of wine. “I didn’t mind it though. It meant that I got to spend more time training with Maud.”

“Maud was your healer then?” Ronan asks. He’s interested in Frostclaw. We all are. What we know about the pack is limited. His brother keeps a tight grip on who comes and goes. The humans in the town near there don’t even know what the pack is or that they have shifters living so close to them.

I went on recon with Lucian once. We took the bus into town and asked around about the Frostclaw Pack.

I’m pretty sure the humans in town thought we were crazy from the looks we were getting so we stopped asking and started hunting the pack.

The closest we got was the edge of their boundary.

Frostclaw is a town in itself. We could see the tops of the buildings from where we camped in the woods, but the Frostclaw Alpha’s defenses were solid.

They had patrols running the boundaries every hour on the hour.

We did manage to slip through them far enough to find an old hut.

No one was home, but it looked like the healer’s hut from the dried herbs and supplies we found.

Was that where Cordelia spent her days? I wonder if it was.

The place was small but homey, everything in it was worn and well-loved.

We almost went further into town but heard someone coming up the path.

Lucian and I hightailed it out of there before anyone spotted us but I wonder what would have happened if we’d stayed.

Would it have been Cordelia that saw us?

Could I have brought her home sooner if we’d stayed?

The thought is irrational. More than likely it wasn’t her teacher’s home, and even if it was, the odds of Cordelia coming on us are non-existent.

If we’d stayed we would have been caught, probably jailed and held for ransom.

Still, the idea that I could have rescued her takes root in me.

“She was,” Cordelia answers Ronan. “She’s a good woman, a wise Elder, and I wouldn’t have made it without her. She taught me nearly everything she knows and everything I know about healing. She sent me with enough supplies to start working if you have space for me.”

“If you have the mind to put up with this pack long enough to be our healer then the job is yours. The healer’s cottage is too.”

“Wh-wait, just like that? Really?” We all hear the tremor in her voice, the tell that she doesn’t quite believe him.

Ronan leans forward in his chair. “Cordelia, you are welcome here. Wanted. This is your home, we are your people, we are your pack. If you have a mind to earn a living in the towns, that’s fine but we provide for our own.

All resources, including money, are shared and paid out according to your role here.

There’s a cottage here you can have. It’s not within the Keep but it is within the settlement with most of the pack.

If you don’t like the cottage, we can arrange for something else in town.

It’ll be good for them to see the new healer up close and personal.

They’ll come to you more often if they feel like they know you. ”

“Wait, you’re giving me a house?”

“A cottage,” he corrects.

“Right. A cottage but still, you’re giving it to me?”

“Yes and no, you’ll earn it being the pack healer. We aren’t exactly easy on our bodies around here and the ferals have been keeping us busy. You’ll have plenty of work and the cottage will be well deserved after having to put up with the lot of us.”

Cordelia takes in a deep breath and then another.

I don’t have to see her tears to know she’s crying.

I can feel it. My palm itches with the urge to touch her.

I want to put a hand on her shoulder and let her know she’s not alone but I stay right where I am.

Ronan wouldn’t let that slide. He’d want answers to why I’m touching her.

I’m not exactly the touchy feely type. Ronan and Clyde would know something was up and wonder.

There’d be no getting around me having to explain about the lightning strike that knocked me on my ass and tied me to Cordelia.

Ronan would move on that quick, especially with who she is to him.

He’d see it as a way to take care of her, make sure she’s protected by the strongest in the pack, but most of all that she stays here.

The seconds Ronan gets wind of the Soul Tie I’ll be married off with a mate so fast my head would spin right off my damn shoulders.

Would that really be such a bad thing?

I shift under the weight of that. Would it be a bad thing to settle down with a mate?

Make a real home of my own? A soul tie means a fated mate.

There’s only been a few pairs in the pack in our entire history.

Right now there’s none. Only true mates and chosen.

In a shifter’s life, a true mate is likely, but not guaranteed.

It’s a match made by the fates, but a fated mate?

Those are rare. Legendary. Only made by the moon goddess herself and she does not match fated mates lightly.

The magic for it is ancient. None of us knows how it works.

Most of what we do know has survived in stories…

fairytales the old grans tell pups about fated mates.

“The closer to the olde ways a pack is the more fated mates they’re blessed with. Each one of them is a blessing by the moon goddess herself. Luna’s favor is marked by the fated mates a pack homes.”

Our pack homes none.

But it could. It could have one. Cordelia and me. Wouldn’t that be the affirmation the pack needs to know it’s going the right way? The kind of compass Ronan could use to steer the pack? But where does that leave me and the vow I made to keep this pack safe?

I get a home and a mate and all I do is open myself up to another weak point.

One more thing to lose when shit goes sideways, and things will always go sideways .

I can’t do that. Not while the Frostclaw Pack runs unchecked.

Not while there’s ferals pushing our boundaries and causing chaos.

Now is not the time, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a time.

I have to earn my peace, have to earn Cordelia and that starts with making the world safer for her.

My damned palm keeps itching but I ignore it. I pick up my fork and stab it through a potato instead. I’m not touching Cordelia.

Not yet.