Page 72 of The Enforcer’s Rejected Mate (Red River Rejected Mates #1)

Chapter

Fifty-One

CORDELIA

T horne is going to teach me how to dance.

Thorne is going to teach me how to dance and he just kicked an alpha out of the dance for me. I think he also took his job away from him too, which…. woah .

“It’s okay, it’s easy. Just watch my feet, okay? Step forward,” I do as he says and then he nudges me to the side, “now to the side one-two. Do it again with me.” I look down at our feet so I don’t step on him and let Thorne’s hand on my waist guide me.

“One and one-two, that’s it.” I stumble over his foot and into the next round of steps. “Good job,” he praises me.

I can’t help it. I laugh when he tells me ‘good job’. “I just stepped on you again. What do you mean "good job?”

“Eh, the first time I tried to dance. I stepped on her foot so hard that she lost a toenail.”

My mouth falls open. “You did not.”

He grins at me. “Sorry. I definitely did. She was a good sport about it but that was the end of our date. Never saw her again.” I giggle.

The earlier drama with the pushy alpha, my worry over not seeing him and thinking he would reject me?

It’s all gone and I haven’t even been with him for five minutes.

Every second feels like an eternity and everything is right in the world.

“Hey, look at that. You’re dancing,” Thorne says.

“Huh? No I’m not.”

“You haven’t stepped on me once. You just did the box step three times. You’re dancing, sweetling.”

Sweetling.

Not my name, not omega, not even Cordy but sweetling? It’s like someone turned on a light in a dark room-if my body was that dark room. I feel like I’m glowing. I have to be from the looks I get from the pack members around me.

This moment feels delicate, like the soap bubbles I used to blow when I was on dish duty.

Those bubbles had been fragile, tremulous in the way they existed in the world, a mix of color and shape that made everything in me long to fly away with them.

Dancing with Thorne feels like this. I can see it now, light moving around us, cocooning us away from the rest of the dance floor.

I smile up at him and miraculously don’t step on his feet while we dance. “I’m happy I’m dancing with you.” Thorne’s eyes soften and he smiles back. The light above us reflects back at me from his eyes. There’s a flash and the bubble of light and color shoots out around us until it’s all I can see.

Wait…the light around us…it’s not just in my head that I’m seeing this. It’s real.

There’s actually a bubble of light around us. Holy hells.

The light goes gold and warmth shoots through me.

It feels like I’ve been shot and seeing as I have been shot, I know what it feels like.

I gasp, stumble and fall into his arms. All around us I hear the rest of the pack starting to notice.

There’s gasps and raised voices, I even hear some shouts.

Thorne’s the only reason I don’t end up in a heap on the floor but the big alpha isn’t steady.

He rocks back on his heels with a curse. I’m not the only one feeling this.

“What’s happening?” I ask him.

“I-I…” He doesn’t answer me. There’s a lost look in his eyes.

He’s just as stunned as I am by what’s happening.

Except, in the span of one heartbeat to the next, I know what’s happening.

I’ve felt this way before. It’s just like when the moon goddess revealed Keiran as my fated mate.

The threads of fate align, wrap themselves right around Thorne and I, and our future unfolds just the way it did with Keiran.

At least, it does until another wave of light and heat pierces me and I realize that, no, I’ve never felt like this in my entire life.

This is nothing like what it was with Keiran.

It’s not just years and a life that I see with Thorne.

It’s forever. Eons. It’s us being undone and remade, from the earth to stardust, from this lifetime to the next.

It’s not just forever, it’s eternity that pours right into me.

My mate dream becomes crystal clear. The faceless man I tried to see leans close and the sun shines down on him.

I can see his face. Thorne smiles down at me, eyes gentle and sweet.

The world moves, reality shifts just right and a bond snaps into place so strong that I see stars.

This bond is different. I know it straight away when a wave of emotions hits me.

Joy. Love. Longing.

They’re not my emotions.

I look at Thorne.

They’re his.

“Thorne?” I’m in shock. It was him this whole time?

The way that I wanted to be near him, the constant pull towards him and that first meeting in the meadows?

It was all for a reason. It was him. He’s mine.

My wolf is delighted. She howls with happiness.

He’s ours . Wonder floods my system and I can’t tell if it’s his or mine.

We grab onto each other and he pulls me right up against him.

“Sweetling.”

Again, that single world makes me practically feral. He’s my mate. My man. My wolf. I don’t know what’s happening around us. The meeting hall could be on fire for all I know. The light around us fades away and I get an earful of what the pack is doing.

They’re cheering. The sound is deafening. All around me I see the smiling faces of the pack members that have welcomed me. Piper and Clover are there cheering with tears streaming down their faces. The band stopped playing but they too join in the cheering.

The singer claps and lets out a whoop. “Let’s hear it for the fated mates, folks!

That’s a moon goddess blessed pair if I ever saw one!

” Behind him, the guitarist and drummer go crazy playing.

Joy, happiness, awe. That awe that makes me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world washes over me again.

I don’t have to say a word. Neither does Thorne. We’re being fed a steady stream of our mate’s emotions. It’s like falling head first into the deepest part of the lake. Exhilarating and disorienting, too easy to drown in. I don’t care, though. I want to go under if it’s Thorne that I’m going with.

Thorne brushes his thumb along my cheek.“You are the most beautiful soul I’ve ever known. There’s been no one else but you for me.”

“I know,” I whisper, choked up because I wish I could say the same thing. I wish I had that gift to give him but I’m allowed half a second of guilt before Thorne presses his forehead to mine.

“You have nothing to be guilty for. Nothing.”

Tears well in my eyes. “Are you sure you want me?”

His smile is gentle. “Sweetling, you are-

“Traitor! She’s a traitor!”

Thorne and I freeze and look towards the dais where Cassidy is screaming. She struggles with an older woman that I guess is her mother from the resemblance.

“Cassidy, no!” She tries to grab her daughter but Cassidy’s quick, I’ll give her that. She rushes up to the front of the stage and shoves the lead singer out of the way.

“She’s mated to the heir of the Frostclaw Pack! She’s a dirty whore of a traitor who’s only here to ruin us.”

I feel like I’ve been gut-punched. Not so much because of Cassidy’s words but because of the pack’s reaction.

All around me they start talking. I cling to Thorne and look around.

Everyone is watching us, they’ve closed in a circle and it’s my worst nightmare happening all over again but this time it’s not like the pack meeting.

This time it’s real. I see anger come to life in their eyes as Cassidy keeps talking.

“She’s a spy! Her mate was here last night. She saw him.”

I shake my head. “No! No, that's a lie.”

“Then you’re saying your mate wasn’t here?”

I hesitate. I don’t know what to do. Lie .

My brain screams at me to lie but I can’t do it.

Thorne knows the truth. He’ll know if I lie.

I look up at him but I can’t tell what’s going on.

He hasn’t pulled away from me but it’s like there’s a wall between us.

I can’t feel his emotions the way I did before Cassidy started yelling.

“He was,” I say and the pack descends into chaos.

“What was a Frostclaw doing here!”

“Why would he be here?”

“You’re his mate?”

I shake my head and look around the room.

“I was his mate but I’m not anymore. He rejected me.

” I grab Thorne’s arm. “I’m Thorne’s mate.

You all saw what happened!” The cheering is a ghost of a memory, that effervescent joy disintegrated into nothing with Cassidy’s accusations ringing through the room.

“I’m his mate! I would never betray you!”

“Then what was the Frostclaw Heir doing here?” Cassidy asks.

I drop Thorne’s arm. “I-I-don’t know. I swear.”

“You think that you can get out of this? He knew exactly how to find you. How to get past all of our defenses. You gave him that information. I’ve seen you out in the woods. I know you’re meeting him there.”

Until today, I’ve never been in the woods on my own. “That’s not true.”

“I saw her,” a woman says. “Today. I saw you coming up from the woods.”

“No, it’s not what you think. I swear. I can explain.”

Cassidy gives me a smug look. “You think I’m going to let you lie to my pack?

Take my mate ? Because he is mine. My mate!

,” she screams, voice echoing and bouncing off the walls until it sounds like there’s an army of her.

“He’s always been mine, not even your little fated mate shit was ever going to take him away from me.

He’s marrying me. It’s a play that was put in place long before you dragged your ass into our lives.

” She holds up her hand. “I’ve already got the ring on my finger too.

” She gives her hand a little wiggle and I almost vomit.

How is this my curse from the universe? Two fated mates and twice they’ve been promised to other women?

I look at Thorne. “I didn’t do any of what she’s saying. You believe me, don’t you? You know it’s not true. You have to.” I take a step towards him and Thorne backs up a step. I stop like he slapped me. He’s trying to close off his emotions, I know he is but as much as he’s trying I still feel one.

Regret .

“Thorne. Please. You believe me, right? Please, please say yes.”

“Don’t you dare talk to him!” Cassidy shrieks from the dais. “You lost that right when you conspired to destroy us.”

I look away from Thorne. “No! You’re lying! You’re lying about everything.” I refuse to believe anything she’s saying about Thorne being her mate. About the ring. It can’t be true. Gods. Please tell me it isn’t true.

Thorne’s regret ramps up. Disgust mingles with it so heavy that I choke on it and have to double over, hands on my knees.

“Why would I lie? I’m the Beta’s daughter.

I would never betray my pack. And anyways, if I was lying, would I know where your mate is hiding?

” She looks out at the crowd and throws her arm out to them as she speaks like this is some perverse version of a game show.

“Who wants to see the Frostclaw Heir? I’ll show you where he is!

” She points a finger at me. “But you already knew he was here, didn’t you? ”

“What? No. I don’t know anything.” I spin and look around the pack, at the people that I thought of as my friends, but they’re not friendly now. It doesn’t matter that I spent all week treating them and helping them with cures. None of that matters now. They believe Cassidy.

I see Clover and Piper. Nova and Lux are hovering behind them. “Clover, Piper? You believe me, right?”

Clover looks uncomfortable. “Cordy…why would she know where he is?”

That’s all it takes for the thin hold I have keeping myself together to snap. After all these years, after a lifetime of knocking at a door and hoping someone, anyone, would answer, I can’t do it anymore. My hope dies. I’ll never find my home.

“Cordelia, wait,” Piper steps towards me but I dodge her. I don’t even stop to look at Thorne or anyone else. I can’t bear to see what I would find there. I’ve been rejected by my mate and my pack again. There’s no use staying here for another second. I grab my skirts and run.