Page 4 of The Enforcer’s Rejected Mate (Red River Rejected Mates #1)

Chapter

Two

CORDELIA

C old water sluices across my skin and washes me clean. Keiran didn’t get me too dirty and I’m grateful my dress escaped unscathed. I like to think I wouldn’t forgive him if he had ruined it but I know myself too well.

I would have absolutely forgiven him.

I shiver and cup my hands beneath the stream of water coming from the old iron water pump to scrub Keiran’s scent from my skin. I give myself another few minutes of desperate washing before I stand up, shivering and dripping wet and pick my way back to Maud’s hut.

Her door is open, the late afternoon sun slants across the porch and into the cozy space. She’s putting down a plate of roasted potatoes when I step through the doorway.

She doesn’t even look up from the table when she speaks, “You smell like the Alpha’s son.”

I go red and twist the ends of my cardigan. “I-I had to help him with something,” I say lamely to which Maud sighs. The sound is heavy. Tired. I wish she didn’t sound like that because of me.

“I bet you did.” She looks up at me then. “Sweet girl, why do you let him do that to you?”

Tears prick my eyes. I swallow past the lump in my throat and when I speak, it hurts. “I don’t know,” I whisper. All it takes are those three whispered words for Maud to sigh and hold out an arm for me to slip under. “I wish I was stronger.”

“Come here then. I’ll help you be stronger.

” I do as she says and hug her tight when she curls her arm around me.

She’s solid even if she’s small. Her arm feels like iron around me.

I know that even if the Alpha himself came to take me away there would be no taking me so long as Maud had a hold of me.

She doesn’t say anything and neither do I.

We stand together in silence, and I turn my face and bury my nose into the collar of her woolen shawl.

It smells like woodsmoke and herbs. The earthy sweetness of chamomile and lavender fills my nose and I relax.

Maud’s scent reminds me of being a little girl, of the rare moments when she held me and sang to me in those early days.

I take in a deep inhale and slowly exhale before I do it again, I’m on my third round of deep breaths when Maud strokes my hair and speaks.

“Tonight at the moon run the Alpha’s son will announce his mate. It won’t end well for you when he does.”

My toes curl in my shoes and tears wet my eyes again.

I don’t expect the tears but they make sense.

For so long, Keiran has been my secret , the only thing that’s truly felt wholly mine and now he’s gone.

Even when I was catching the worst of it in the village, or coming back to find someone in the bunkhouse had rifled through my things again, or I was put on a double shift in the laundry rooms during the summer while the others skipped out to swim at the lake, I had Keiran.

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go for me.

Not today. But now Keiran’s visit makes sense.

Why didn’t he tell me? My cheeks burn hot because I know the answer to my question.

I know exactly why he didn’t. He didn’t want to ruin his last chance to have me.

I don’t care what happens to me, or how little I do have that’s mine.

I won't mess around with a mated wolf. Keiran knows we’re done after tonight and I had to find out from Maud. Nausea washes over me.

He let me find out from Maud.

How could he?

I wish I had more than the cold pump water to wash myself clean from Keiran. I want to scrub every part of me he touched. How could he not have told me? Even if what we have is a secret, something he’s ashamed for the pack to know…I still thought we’d become friends.

A friend.

The only thing I’ve wanted—that’s why I let Keiran hollow me out like this, isn’t it?

“You know this means he’s chosen his Luna,” Maud goes on. She rubs my back as she speaks. The comfort of it does little to soothe the empty feeling in me but I take a deep breath and push it down just like I always do when something terrible happens.

I lift my head and look at her. “He’s dreamed his mate then? Finally?”

Finally.

I used to wonder how I would feel when Keiran finally dreamed.

Every time he came to see me in the woods there was that split second of fear that took up shop in my chest, made a home for itself and laid itself so heavy and sharp against my heart until he’d reach for me or smile at me, and then I’d know.

He hadn’t dreamed. Not yet, but even then I knew it would happen.

Sooner or later Keiran would dream and when he did he would see his mate’s face.

He’d know exactly who he was meant for because his dream would work the way it was supposed to.

He wouldn’t be like me.

“Keiran’s mate,” I say, those two words like lead on my tongue.

“He’s seen her then?” I ask Maud. We both hear the crack in my voice, the hitch that gives away how hard I’m trying to stay nonchalant, like the delicate house of cards I’d built with Keiran hasn’t been upended.

She gives me a pitying look, and I have to look away.

Pity I’m used to seeing in the eyes of the pack but Maud?

She doesn’t look at me that way. Never.

“I’m fine,” I tell her quickly.

“If you weren’t, there wouldn’t be a soul that could blame you, Cordelia.

” Her voice is soft, words measured. She’s worried for me but she’s misreading my pain.

The pain she’s seeing now isn’t just about finally losing Keiran.

I'm hurting over what Keiran took from me when he tricked me into doing the one thing I vowed never to do.

Part of me screams. It knows I should have never started any of this up with Keiran, the stolen moments of fantasy, or pretending that I was a normal girl.

The kind of girl that had a family and a home waiting for her.

When I was in Keiran’s arms it was easy to fool myself into believing that I had a place in the pack, that I belonged.

Because if I was good enough for him then someday I would be good enough for the pack.

And little by little, I let him in. I let him get close to me and as much as I don’t want to admit it, I let him into my heart.

I gave him everything. Every part of me was his and only his.

“I’m okay,” I whisper, eyes on the table.

I’m not. We both know it. Oh Luna, I’m going to have to see his mate, look her in the eyes every day and wish that I had what she did.

Bitterness aches through me like a drum beat so loud that my bones rattle.

I feel sick just thinking about it. I always knew I’d have to give Keiran up, but if he was mated, it stung less.

In the pack, mate bonds are fast and loose with mates stepping out on one another when a stronger partner or infatuation sways them to do so.

Bonds easily made are easily broken. I’ve never wanted that.

Not when Luna the moon goddess has picked my true mate out for me.

I know I don’t have a fated mate, those are rare, precious and magical, given only to the moon goddess’s favorites.

Outside of Maud, I’m no one’s favorite.

I can’t even see my mate’s face in my mate dream.

Even so… everyone gets a true mate. Everyone means me.

The entire pack has always had their dreams come true, and one day so will I.

I’ve waited just the way Maud has told me to.

I will see his face one day and when I do, fidelity and trust are going to be what we build our life on.

No room for secrets in a true mate bonding like I aim to have.

It’s easier to breathe when I think about my true mate waiting for me.

Keiran doesn’t have to be the end of me. Not if I don’t let him.

“Has he seen his mate?” I ask again and this time my voice isn’t so shaky. I sound…well, I don’t sound great but I don’t sound terrible and that’s a start.

“No, he hasn’t.” Maud shakes her head and then pulls out a chair for me. “It’ll be a chosen mate to strengthen the pack. A political match. I don’t know much about her other than she’s from the Moonshadow Pack.”

Moonshadow Pack. Of course.

The news of a political match doesn’t surprise me.

Our Alpha isn’t one for sentiments. If the payoff was worth it he wouldn’t hesitate to marry Keiran off to forge an alliance.

The Moonshadow Pack is almost as powerful as Frostclaw.

They’re also filthy rich if the stories I’ve heard are anything to believe.

I bet Keiran would be choosing one of their best for his Luna tonight. She’d be nothing like me.

“Sit,” Maud orders and starts fussing over fixing a plate for me. I do as she says and can’t help but smile while I watch Maud. For everything I’ve been dealt, I’ve always had Maud and for that I’m grateful. “Eat every bite,” she says and slides the plate in front of me.

“Yes, ma’am.” I dig into my food and it's easier now that I’m grounded. I have Maud, I have a future as a healer, I have building a room to look forward to, and I’ll get my car. I have more than enough. I have plenty.

We eat in companionable silence for a few minutes when Maud breaks the silence. “You’ll steer clear of Keiran then? No matter what, after tonight you won’t go to him, will you?”

She’s chewing on a chicken leg and spearing a potato when I look up at her. It’s the ‘no matter what’ that does it. She doesn’t sound right when she says that.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Maud shrugs like it's not that big of a deal but we both know different. “I mean that you won’t let him come sniffing around for you, and that you won’t fall for whatever heartstrings he pulls, you’ll stay away from him. Promise me, Cordelia.”

I put my hand over my heart in an oath. “I don’t fool around with mated wolves. You know that.”

She smiles but it looks sad. “Good girl,” she says with a nod and then goes back to her dinner like the conversation is done so I let it lie too.