Page 40 of The Enforcer’s Rejected Mate (Red River Rejected Mates #1)

Chapter

Twenty-Eight

THORNE

W itch. Halfling. Fated Mate.

Whatever Cordelia is, she’s a thorn in my damn side.

She has to be a witch though.

That’s the only explanation I have for the way my world has spun right off its axis since Cordelia arrived.

From the first second I saw her, it was chaos for me.

Even before we got hit by the lightning, she unravelled me.

I was so completely gone for her that I didn’t even clock the hunters that shot us.

A rookie mistake for the Enforcer meant to keep an entire pack safe.

I never would have made that mistake before her.

It has to be magic.

“She’s a witch,” I say, eyes on the door Cordelia just left through.

Ronan sighs at me. “No, she’s not.”

Clyde just left with Cordelia a minute ago and I’m already antsy to follow after her. I try to act casual instead of tearing out of the room after Cordelia like I want to.

I lean back in my chair and stare up at the ceiling. “If she wasn’t a witch then why couldn’t I smell her? I bet you she’s got something going on with that Jazzy. She asked Clover if she knew her.”

“Jazzy is harmless.” Ronan waves me off. “That witch is too lazy to do anything to us. Cordelia is a shifter. She’s Amara’s girl.”

I don’t look away from the glass ceiling. It’s late enough that the stars blaze. I frown up at them.

“I’m not saying that.”

“Then what are you saying?” I can hear the edge in Ronan’s voice.

He’s good about not throwing his status as Alpha around.

I’m thankful for it seeing as it would make things awkward between the pair of us.

I’m the strongest in this pack, even over him and we both know it.

Maybe when Ronan was my age it would be an even split but not anymore.

In a fight, I’d be able to take him down if it came to it but he’s better at leading so I’ve never even thought of challenging him.

The pack trusts him and I’m happy to serve as the Enforcer. It’s an easy role for me to fill.

I look back at Ronan. “I’m saying that she doesn’t smell like a shifter. I’ve been with her since she first set foot in the Meadows and I haven’t picked up even a whiff of her scent, and aside from that, why didn’t she tell me she was one of us?”

My questions are valid. We both know it. I can tell from the way he narrows his eyes at me.

“Amara’s girl has her reasons. Luna will reveal it in time.”

Amara’s girl.

It’s no secret that Ronan was devoted to Amara Fireheart. She wasn’t his fated mate or true mate, but she was the Alpha’s chosen mate. He’s never moved on from her.

That makes Cordelia special if she’s really who she says she is.

She’s not the Alpha’s daughter, but she’s close.

When she was younger, Amara took up with a human down in Oak Fast and got pregnant with Cordelia.

That doesn’t change the fact that Amara was Ronan’s woman until Frostclaw tore us apart.

“She’s half-human if she’s Amara’s,” I remind Ronan, even though he’s the last soul I need to remind of that fact.

He raised Cordelia with Amara until she was taken.

He knows her better than any of us. I don’t remember much when it comes to her.

A laughing bright eyed pup that followed behind me and the others.

She was smaller than the rest of us, but fast. I remember that.

Ronan wasn’t lying. Her mother was the best teacher the pack ever knew.

She was kind to me when I didn’t get the math problems right away.

She’d teach us with Cordelia on her hip sometimes.

The windows in the school house open, the air sweet with the promise of summer while Cordelia napped in her mother’s arms and we recited times tables.

Life was easy then. Everything was easy before Frostclaw.

Ronan grunts in acknowledgement. “Half human or not she’s back and she’s not a witch,” he says before he jerks his chin at the door behind us. “I want you to take her to her cottage.”

“Clyde’s seeing to her, isn’t he?” I ask but I stand because my Alpha told me to.

“I know who Cordelia is to you,” I tell him.

I bite back the part of me that wants to insist that she’s someone to us too.

“Are you sure we can trust her? She’s spent her whole life with the Frostclaw. She could have been sent here to spy.”

Ronan pours himself another glass of wine. “If she was sent here to spy then what better way to keep an eye on her than keeping her close?” He levels a look at me. “Can you keep an eye on her?”

I’m the pack’s Enforcer. I am the law when it comes to Bloodstone. I’m strong enough to challenge for Alpha. I can keep my eyes on one halfling.

“You know I can.”

He sips his wine with a nod. “Then go. See her to the cottage with Clyde. And stick close to her, that’s an order.”

“As you wish, Alpha.”

His lips turn up in a grin. “Don’t Alpha me. Get out of here.”

I don’t waste any time. I turn and leave after Cordelia.

She hasn’t gone far from the feel of our Soul Tie.

The bond feels different than it did when she was upset.

She’s happy right now, steady, the hum of the bond moves through me heavy and slow.

I could shut my eyes and relax right into it if I wanted.

I shake it off and follow my nose through the Keep and down the path towards Red River.

I find Cylde and Cordelia easily enough, they haven’t gone far.

They’re at the base of Thorne’s Embrace and when I find them, she has her hand against a root while Clyde tells her about the history of our pack and Thorne’s Embrace.

I don’t know what compels me to do it but I step from the shadows and pick up where Clyde leaves off.

“It’s the heartbeat of our ancestors,” I tell her. I surprise her it seems by the jump and yelp she gives when she hears me.

“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,” I tell her. Cordelia almost doubles over as she grabs her chest. Is she okay? She looks like she’s about to faint but I don’t feel much through the bond so she’s fine…I think.

Clyde lets out a hacking cough so bad that I wonder if he’s picked up smoking again. I almost ask him but he starts whistling so maybe not smoking but a bug he almost swallowed. Best not to bring up something so embarrassing.

“Nice night for rounds,” he says.

“Sure is,” I tell him and fix my attention back on Cordelia. She’s not fallen over but very nearly. She has her hand on the root which suits me for what I’m about to tell her. I come close and put my hand on the root next to hers.

“This is where their memory lives,” I tell her.

All pups learn this to prepare for their first shift.

The lore of Thorne’s Embrace is imbued in every little thing the pack does.

There’s no escaping it here, not when this is ground zero for the birth of shifters.

How does Cordelia not know about it with Frostclaw’s history?

“Its memory?” She tilts her head and looks up at me.

The stars shine back at me from her dark eyes.

Gods, her eyes are lovely. If this was the only way I was allowed to see the stars ever again I would gladly do it.

I must stare into her eyes too damn long because Cordelia shifts nervously away from me and drops her eyes to the ground.

I feel the loss of her attention immediately.

“I mean, the tree has a memory?” she asks me.

I sigh and lean forward. I breathe in the night and relax as the energy from the ancient tree at the start of everything seeps into my palm a little more with every second.

Sometimes it feels like this is the only moment I’m ever able to fully relax.

When I’m connected to Thorne’s Embrace like this with nowhere to go.

“Not the tree. Thorne’s Embrace.” I rub my hand along the root. “This is where our home is.” I can feel the shift in Cordelia’s mood. She’s close to tears but it doesn’t feel bad. There’s no longing or sadness, but there is a weight.

Good. She gets it.

“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.” I watch her as I speak. Even if I can feel her emotions, I’d rather watch them play out in real time.

She’s still for a minute and we all three stand there.

The wind stirs the leaves overhead and the sound whispers to me of the souls that have gone before us and speaks of the ones yet to come.

For right now it invites us to be. I hear Cordelia breathe deep and the heaviness drops from her like water off a duck’s back.

“Our home,” Cordelia says and moves her hand closer to mine. I almost take hers. I don’t though. Instead, I commit this moment to memory, the way the air smells, the coolness of the night, the comfortable silence that’s settled around us.

“Bloodstone has a long storied past of partnership with humans. My family served the Bloodstone Alpha’s for centuries. It was lost for a time though when we settled in Oak Fast, but I’ve reclaimed that.”

“Really?” Cordelia asks. I can hear the wonder in her voice.

A lot of shifters don’t like humans, or they see them as inferior.

Frostclaw holds to that archaic way of thinking but Bloodstone has never been a pack to entertain that way of thought.

We get that all beings are magic, even the less obvious ones.

Humans are still Luna’s children like we all are.

I’m glad she didn’t come back brainwashed to think otherwise.

She’s not a spy.