Page 66 of The Enforcer’s Rejected Mate (Red River Rejected Mates #1)

Chapter

Forty-Six

CORDELIA

I want to say that I kick open the door to my cottage like a badass.

I’m sure Piper would kick it, Clover would be ready with a serious elbow but me?

I can’t do it even though I try. My hands shake too much when I open the door and I almost shift to let my wolf take over.

She’s one hundred percent ready to take Keiran on.

She sends me visions of his throat in her maw.

Him screaming and running from her while she howls.

It's confusing, the juxtaposition of her anger and my fear.

They both collide and mix until it's just one big wave of emotions. Even though I’m drowning, I manage to get the door open and I only hesitate for a half second before I walk inside.

“Keiran?” I call out. I don’t even bother trying to pretend that I don’t know he’s here.

His scent is concentrated here and hits me in the face like a brick the second I open the door.

He was definitely in my cottage. “Keiran, where are you?” No answer comes but I didn’t exactly expect him to answer me.

I close the door behind me and start to sweep the house.

It doesn’t take long because it’s small.

There’s not many places for an alpha Keiran’s size to hide.

It’s when I’m standing in front of the back door that I realize that’s where he must be if he’s not inside.

I sigh and walk back to my kitchen to grab a frying pan.

Earlier I was shocked, too thrown off by Keiran suddenly appearing to feel anything but nervousness and fear. But now?

I’m mad again. Mad enough to swing on Keiran if I see him. This time I do throw the door open and charge through, frying pan first. I flip on the back porchlight on my way out. “Keiran?! Where are you?” I yell.

The only answer is the rustle of the trees and the whistling of the wind moving over the mountain.

There’s no one back here. I can tell from the way Keiran’s scent is going old.

It’s stale. Like he spent time here first before making his way through the rest of my space.

Still, I force myself to walk the backyard and look to make sure he’s not there.

Once I’m sure he’s not I go back inside and lock all the doors and windows.

I didn’t lock them before, didn’t even think of it on account of never having my own space to lock up.

In Frostclaw the dorms were open and closed by the Enforcers and Maud never locked her hut up.

There was never any need for her to. No one would be dumb enough to try and break in.

I figured the same would happen for me here in Red River but that was before Keiran showed up.

“What the hells is he doing here?”

I start to pace the length of my cottage.

I look under the bed and check the bathroom again, frying pan leading the way, but he’s not there waiting to leap out at me from the corner of the room.

Even if he was in the corner of the room, my cottage is too small for much moving around.

I’d be able to nail him with the frying pan before he did much.

The thought comforts me while I go from window to window to look outside.

I put a pot of tea on while I pace. One hour, then two hours pass with me sipping my tea and keeping watch.

It’s in the second hour that my wolf perks up. She’s been on guard, watchful but quiet. Something is up from the way she goes on alert. Someone is here. It doesn’t feel like Keiran, if it was him she’d be losing it. Instead she’s interested in whoever it is that’s arriving.

I go to the door and open it. Keiran’s smell is still there but there’s another that cuts right through.

Pine and frost. It’s like winter arriving and wiping clean Keiran’s presence.

I take a deep breath and my wolf goes calm.

We both do. I drop the frying pan on the floor when Throne walks into view.

The clanging sound of it on the hardwood has his attention in record time.

“Thorne?”

I don’t know what he’s doing here but I’m happy it's him. There’s nothing to fear, not if he’s here.

But wasn’t he on patrol? I rub my eyes to make sure it’s him.

When he doesn’t vanish, I move. I don’t even think.

My wolf takes over just like she did in the meadow and I sprint towards him.

I’m not even aware if Thorne moves at all until he sweeps me up in his arms in the middle of my yard.

I wrap my arms around him and hold him tight. “You came back,” I whisper.

“Of course, I did.” Thorne’s arms lift me higher. I turn my face into his neck, nuzzle close to him and he goes on speaking. “I’ll always come back to you.”

Always come back to you.

I don’t think, I act. I wrap my arms around his neck and press my mouth to his. The wind picks up around us, swirling and whipping around us like a mini tornado.

Thorne moans into my mouth. “Hells, I missed you,” he whispers against my mouth. He missed me . He’s not talking about the time he’s been gone, but the time from the meadow until now. I know he is.

“I missed you too,” I confess. There’s more I want to say but my brain feels like it’s turned to mush. There’s no other words now. Just my alpha.

Thorne teases my bottom lip and I don’t hesitate, I open myself up to him.

I’m needy and he’s greedy. A match made in heaven.

Thorne kisses me slower than he did in the meadows.

Then, we were both mindless. Just bodies moving and reacting, driven by our wolves more than anything but now…

now there’s something more to it. To us.

He’s tender in the way he holds me, body held flush against his, cradled close like he’s afraid I’ll vanish into thin air.

There’s a longing in his touch that I feel in my bones.

I understand that feeling, I’ve drowned in it before, so close to sorrow that there’s hardly telling the difference between the aches.

Our tongues move against each other, the dance and shape of it a mirror of our bodies.

I’m breathless when we break apart. Dazed more like it.

The world feels like it’s been turned upside down.

The windstorm we’re in rages on, the limbs of Thorne’s Embrace groan, the sound echoes off the mountain face and rains down around us.

It feels like the mountain is alive around us, like the earth is moving, still forming itself into the perfect mountain around us.

Thorne carried us while we kiss. The movement was lost on me until he kicks the door to my cottage open and I realize we aren’t in my yard anymore.

The second we cross the threshold he growls. “Where is he?”

He smells Keiran. Hells.

Thorne sets me down on my feet and instantly I want his warmth back.

“It’s not what you think,” I start, fully prepared to defend myself.

When Keiran thought he saw another alpha looking my way or that I was lingering near the Enforcers for too long during my chores he wasn’t shy about showing his displeasure.

Those were the few times he came close to interacting with me in front of everyone.

He caught himself of course, but later when it was just us, I got an earful.

I don’t want Thorne to misunderstand, not like Keiran did all those times.

Thorne steps away from me and starts to search my cottage. “What’s not what I think?” he asks. His voice is low. He’s angry for sure. He walks past me and towards the bathroom.

“I didn’t know he’d come here,” I tell him, tripping over my feet to follow him. Thorne shoves open the bathroom door so hard it bounces on its hinges. I wince at the sound but force myself to keep walking after him. “I promise, I didn’t-”

Thorne turns to look at me. We’re in the hallway, chest to chest. I back up and bounce off the wall behind me with a yelp.

Thorne’s face is hard, like it was that day in the meadow when I first met him.

This isn’t the alpha that said he’d always come back to me, this is a pissed off Enforcer.

Maybe I messed up following him. Right. I’m out of here.

I turn to go back towards the living room but he puts out an arm, stopping me.

He catches my face when I try to scoot the other way towards my bedroom.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I-I don’t know,” I stammer. I drop my eyes. “I didn’t know he’d be here.”

Thorne’s fingers gentle on my chin and he slides a thumb up along my cheek. “Of course, you didn’t. How could you?”

I look up at him in surprise. “What?”

“This isn’t your fault. He should not be here.”

Oh wow. I didn’t expect him to say… that.

“What?” I whisper.

“This is not your fault,” Thorne repeats himself.

“You know that, right?” He raises an eyebrow when I don’t answer because of course I don’t know that.

It was always my fault with Keiran. I squeeze my hands into fists.

Why am I still letting him ruin things for me?

Gods. I hate feeling like this. Like I’m going crazy.

When is he ever going to be out of my life?

Thorne takes a deep breath and I know he’s reading me like a book. Hells.

We’re both silent for a second longer than is comfortable before he asks, “Who is he?”

“My mate,” I say softly, but when both of our wolves growl in protest, I quickly amend my words, “my ex-mate. He rejected me before I left. I mean, that’s why I left Frostclaw. No use for a rejected mate in a pack that doesn’t want her on a good day,” I tell him with a wry smile.

“Fucking fools. You never have to see them again.”