Page 39 of The Enforcer’s Rejected Mate (Red River Rejected Mates #1)

“It’s that way for all of you,” Clyde says and tips his head to look up at Thorne’s Embrace.

Above us the sky darkens and the curve of the limbs vanishes into the low hanging clouds.

“I don’t feel the way you do about it. Curse of being a human,” he says with a chuckle and puts a hand on one of the roots near him.

“But even I know it’s magical. Old stuff.

More powerful than anything around today.

Could feel it calling all the way from Oak Fast.”

“Calling? Calling you?” I ask and he nods. “So the tree…it’s magic?”

He pats the root. “Yeah, it called me. Not real loud with it but it was always there. Kind of like the feeling you have when you’re sure something is absolutely going to happen.

That the decision you make is the right one.

A bone deep knowing. That’s what it feels like to humans, but to your kind, it’s more intense. That’s what you’re feeling now.”

“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 with that 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 as stunning 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.

“You don’t have to earn it.”

My eyes water because I’m finally getting why the others kept me out as violently as they did.

Why the other orphan’s conformed as readily as they did.

The promise of home and belonging, of a pack and of a place all their own—a place that has always been meant for them was so much greater than me.

Maybe even keeping me out made it all the more special because I was the example of what they hadn’t been sentenced to.

I was the horrible example of the other. A fate narrowly escaped.

Maybe that’s why the sight of me made them so uncomfortable too.

“Everyone that has come before us. Every soul is here. It lives on and always will in Thorne’s Embrace.

This is the heart of the pack,” Thorne says, forcing me back into the now of everything.

I startle and blink up at the tree, wind rattles the leaves and branches overhead and I hear the shift of pebbles under foot when Clyde moves behind us.

It feels like a lever has been pulled and a little more of the weight I’ve carried with me falls right off.

How is it that I keep finding more to let go of?

When will everything that isn’t mine finally be gone?

I take in a deep breath and let it out slowly as I lean into the bulk of the root in front of me.

I let my hand settle against Thorne’s and smile when the cedar and pine scent of him tickles my nose.

I let myself enjoy this moment and I smile because I can picture what he looks like with a smile on his face without looking at him.

“Our home,” I say softly, repeating Thorne’s words.