Page 23 of Rejected Alpha Mate

Or something wearing his face, because that’s not the Tobias I remember.

His skin is ashen, his eyes black pits that swallow the light, his smile carved too wide, stretching at the corners like it’s splitting his mouth open. His shirt is torn, stained with something dark, and his hands…his hands are wrong. Too long, too sharp, the fingers curling like claws.

“You said I was your friend,” he says softly, the tone mockingly tender. “You said you’d never run from me.”

He takes a step closer, and the forest quakes with his movement like a lightning strike. Shadows ripple outward from his feet, swallowing everything behind him.

I back away, heart thundering, every instinct screaming at me to run, but my legs won’t comply. My breath fogs in the air in front of my face, the mist curling around me like it’s alive.

Tobias tilts his head, eyes flickering with an inhuman gleam. “Why did you believe him?”

His voice fractures on the last word, breaking into static. “Nicholas lies, Donna. He always lies.”

Then his shape distorts, his face splitting, features warping until there’s no trace of the man I knew as my friend. Just a blur of smoke and teeth lunging for me.

I scream—and bolt upright in bed.

The sound tears from my throat, raw and panicked but dry, my sheets tangled around my legs like vines. My chest heaves as if I’ve been running for miles, sweat beading across my brow when I lift the back of my hand to my forehead. For a moment, I don’t recognize the room or the soft glow of the moon filtering through the curtains, but the faint scent of cedar that lingers in the air reminds me of last summer.

Then it clicks. Nicholas’s house. Wells. Reality.

My hands tremble as I clutch at the blanket, my heart still galloping out of rhythm. The echoes of the dream cling to me like smoke from a fire, the voice, the chase, those black eyes haunting me now that I’m awake.

It felt real. Too real.

Pressing my palms to my face, trying to calm my breathing, I whisper to myself, “It was just a dream,” but even to my own ears, it sounds like a lie.

Because deep down, beneath the fear, there’s a gnawing truth I can’t shake.

Maybe it wasn’t just my subconscious tormenting me. Maybe Tobias really is the monster Nicholas said he was.

Of course, Nicholas would recognize a monster. He’s one himself, after all. It takes one to know one, right?

Scoffing under my breath, I wipe the back of my hand against my forehead, but my throat still feels too dry. Because this is my first night in Wells, I didn’t have time to set water out on my nightstand.

Who am I kidding?

Myself, maybe.

The real reason I didn’t settle in properly is that I’d given a performance earlier tonight that shocked even me. My little feisty act of defiance came out of nowhere when I asked Nicholas to unzip my dress before slamming the door in his face. But I felt satisfied when I did it, like I added a point to my revenge plot.

Still, I couldn’t ignore what it did to me when I felt his fingers on my skin. Little flickers of electric currents crept through my indifference, sizzling into my fingertips even though I hadn’t touched him. When I threw the door in his face, it was mostly to escape that feeling and to rush into the bathroom to wash my hands off.

I stood at the basin, frowning because the tingling sensations in my fingertips shouldn’t have been there. I’m careful not to touch him because I’m afraid of the mate bond and the reminder that comes with making physical contact.

But I couldn’t rinse off that feeling, so I thought I’d escape into sleep.

So much for that! Remnants of the tingly sensations remain in my fingertips, and Nicholas isn’t even in the same room. Why can’t I escape this?

Another bitter scoff leaves my dry throat, but this time, I decide to take action and do something about it instead of wallowing in my negative emotions. I glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand, and a wave of relief washes over me when I see that it’s past midnight.

Nicholas will most likely be asleep already, which means I can sneak into the kitchen and get some water and maybe grab something to eat.

I hardly had an appetite at dinner tonight after the mating ceremony, what with being flung into marriage with my archnemesis upon learning that my best human friend wasn’t human at all. The blows keep coming, and it’s like the universe is shaking me to crack me open again.

I thought it was enough of that when Nicholas broke my heart, and I thought I had healed from that, but I guess I was wrong. Otherwise, the universe wouldn’t have sent me back in his direction, down the same road, in the same house, unless there were still lessons that needed to be learned.

I guess time will tell, but for now, I just need something to eat. I can ignore the tingling on my back, but I can’t ignore the rumbling in my tummy.