Page 78 of The Enforcer’s Rejected Mate (Red River Rejected Mates #1)

Chapter

Fifty-Six

THORNE

C ordelia wants me to stay with her so I stay with her. If anyone else asked me not to go after a sack of shit like that sorry excuse of an alpha, I wouldn’t listen but it's Cordelia. I’ll always listen to her.

I go to her and kneel in front of her. “Are you okay?” I ask her and grab the cuffs around her hands.

They’re leather reinforced with silver. When I lift them up I can even scent wolfsbane on them.

It’s a miracle she’s awake right now with this on her.

I grab the cuffs, rip them off of her and toss them aside.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her because I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for not making sure she was safe. “I should have put a stop to everything with Cassidy. I should have told you that you were my mate.”

She smiles and looks down at her wrists. “You knew?”

“I did.”

She’s quiet for a second before she looks up at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I cup her face and bring her close. “Because this world is fucking ugly. I’m the one that’s supposed to stop that ugly and somewhere in all of that, I thought I was keeping you safe by not letting you close to me.

I wanted to make the world safe for you.

Make everything perfect before you were a part of my world and I fucked up.

” I lean my forehead against hers because I need to be closer.

Cordelia doesn’t fight me. She lets me gather her up in my arms and hold her.

“Even without the bond between us, it would be you, Cordelia. It’s always been you.

From the beginning you’ve been the reason for every decision I’ve made, you are the reason why I’m the man I am, why I chose the life I have.

You’ve been there guiding me through every day of my life and now that I have you I’m going to spend every single day of our lives making sure I keep growing into the man that you deserve. ”

Cordelia stares up at me. Her beautiful dark eyes draw me in, become my world, and my heart breaks when I see tears in them.

“I should have said it when you came home. From the very first second that you set foot on pack land and I held you. I love you. I’ve always loved you and I would choose you in every life.”

She sucks in a breath. Our bond wraps itself tight around us. I don’t need it though. I wasn’t lying when I told Cordelia that she was my reason for being. Love, hope, the delicate feeling of happiness threads itself through us, binds us together.

“I love you too,” she whispers.

Those four words set me free, break the world open and lay it in front of me.

I’m invincible. Nothing can touch me with the knowledge that Cordelia loves me.

She tilts her face up and that’s the only cue I need to claim her mouth.

I kiss her and I take my time with it. There might be an outright brawl going on in the police station we’re in but I don’t give two shits about anything that isn’t Cordelia.

If anyone is foolish enough to come near us, I’ll end them.

Throw them right through a wall like I did her shitty ex-mate.

We kiss slowly, the kind of unhurried exploration that sits low and slow in your body, sets you on fire for more.

When she breathes, so do I. She moans into my mouth and I take that from her.

I’m hungry for every fucking breath, every moan she has to offer.

I want to devour my mate in every way possible.

When we break apart, Cordelia looks dazed, her eyes glassy, cheeks flushed and her chest is heaving. Gods, I want to undress her, taste her, spread her wide open and feast on her.

I kiss her cheek, nuzzle her neck. “You okay?”

She lets out a shaky laugh, the sound of it vibrates between us and I smile against her skin. Nip her collarbones while she squirms in my arms.

“I-I think so. How about you?” There’s a lilt of nervousness in her question. Like she’s worried I’ll tell her I didn’t like the kiss. I should have thrown Keiran more than once.

“Oh, I’m beyond okay. That was perfect.” I lift my head and kiss her again.

I tease her with the slide of my tongue and my beautiful mate offers me her mouth.

I thread my fingers through her hair, cradling the back of her skull and deepen the kiss.

I pour every part of me into the kiss. I kiss her harder, try to will her to understand that I’m never letting her go again.

The bond sings and I know she understands.

I feel her there, thrumming and thriving, the joy that’s always lived in her awake and shared with me.

We hold each other and I tuck her close, head under my chin and we don’t move.

Still and silent, hearts beating together while the world rages on. We’ve earned this moment together.

It’s when we hear a crash and the squeal of tires that we look at each other. “We should probably go see what that is,” I tell her.

Cordelia nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, because that sounded like a car hitting something.”

“There’s nothing to hit but the police station.”

She looks around at her cell. “Where are we?”

“Oak Fast. They didn’t take you far. Why they chose here, I don’t know.”

“They’re not very smart.”

“Not in the slightest.”

We walk out of the cell hand in hand and down the hallway to the main office.

That’s where I left the others to deal with the Moonshadow and Frostclaw fucks that had gathered to defend the station from us.

There weren’t enough of them to hold us off for long, not when more and more of the pack kept arriving in waves.

The main office looks like a bomb went off, chairs are thrown and broken, desks are overturned, windows busted out with shifters climbing through them to help.

I look through the office and can see to the front of the police station’s entryway.

Cordelia and I weren’t wrong in what we heard.

There’s a police cruiser that’s been driven through the front windows, half in the lobby area and half on the sidewalk.

“Oh my goodness. There really is a car.”

“There is.”

She looks around and grabs my arm. “Why-is the entire pack here? Oh my gods, Is that Esme?” The woman she points to is clocking a Frostclaw goon with a book, and is one hundred percent Esme.

“It is her. She came as soon as she heard they had you.They all did.”

Cordelia looks around in disbelief. “But at the dance they didn’t believe me. Why would they come to save me? I don’t understand.”

“Because you’re pack,” I tell her. “We’ll always come for pack and it wasn’t that they didn’t believe you. We were in shock. What Cassidy did was- is unforgivable. None of us knew what to do.”

“She was working with them. I thought,” Cordelia looks down at her hands. “I thought even if you didn’t want me in the pack I had to tell you that she was the real traitor.”

Her voice sounds like she might cry. I can feel that she might. I can’t stand her feeling like that. I step in front of her and smile down at her. “We knew she was lying. She’s been banished for what she did.”

Her eyes go wide. “Banished?”

“Ronan didn’t want her around after what she did to you. With what you just told me, she should be lucky that’s all he did.”

She bites her lip. I can tell she feels bad about Cassidy, even after everything she did to her, Cordelia still has it in her to feel empathy for Cassidy.

I don’t fucking deserve my mate. I never have.