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My mate has rejected me.
Chapter 4
Present Day
My motorcycle purrs like a tiger beneath me as I lean into a curve on a remote highway, taking the turn a little too quickly. Adrenaline skitters through me, and I laugh out loud when I can sense the road only inches from my leather boots. Danger makes me feel alive, more than anything else has in years, so it’s par for the course for me to take a few chances here and there. Once through the curve, I straighten out on a long stretch of empty road as flat as a board beneath a sunset sky.
I like sunset in New Mexico. It’s the only time I see color in this desert country. Everything’s brown—brown mesas, brown dirt, brown rocks, green shrubs that are so dry they’re a hair shy of brown. I miss the green mountains of Montana, the colorful wildflowers, the big blue sky. The sky here isn’t ever brown, but when temps soar into the nineties, into triple digits, the sky turns colorless. Might as well be riding my bike on Mars.
I open up the throttle and shoot forward, taking advantage of the empty stretch of this two-lane highway. My ass has been on this seat for a big chunk of the day, and my tailbone’s sore. My body’s stiff. I’ll need a damn shovel to peel my thighs off this bike when I finally stop. A road sign whips past—Oscura, 5 mi.
As good a place as any, I guess.
For now, I take pleasure in the speed and in the wind whipping through my hair. It’s the same excitement I feel while running in wolf form, except turned up a notch. The power between my legs, the total control over my machine and my own destiny. Hell, even the lack of control is a turn on. I could hit a deer right now and unwillingly learn how to fucking fly.
A wreck at this speed would hurt. Maybe not kill me; shifters are pretty tough. But it would definitely fuck my day up.
But what’s pleasure without danger? These little things are all I have left.
That’s my fault, though. I’m the one who walked away from everything I’ve ever known and left my pack.
For six months after Kian disappeared, I tried to go back to normal. I never told anyone what happened that night in town, and nobody was ever the wiser that I’d met my mate. I did such a good job shoving all my emotions away and pretending that everything was hunky fucking dory that even Ridge never noticed I’d been broken inside.
It helped that some other shit came up to distract me. A major threat to my pack—to all the packs in our region, actually. There was loss. And war. We made new friends and rediscovered old ones. In the end, all three packs stood united and defeated our common enemy. Through it all, I perfected the art of pretending Kian had never happened, and I thought life would go on when the battle ended.
But it didn’t. Not for me.
Who the hell would ever have thought I’d choose to become a lone wolf? I guess I wouldn’t have, though… if not for the witch.
Gwen. I can still recall her face in as much detail as I can picture my own. She’s seared into my memories like a boogeyman. A moment in time I’ll never forget that rocked me to my core and changed my life forever.
She told me I don’t just have one mate.
I have three.
A memory ripples through me, so strong and sudden that it’s like I’m reliving that moment in real-time. I’m back there again in the sunshine while the people I love are celebrating our victory. Ridge is celebrating his new mate, Sable, who has become one of my best friends. Everyone is happy, despite the loss of life in battle. It’s a new dawn.
But I’m fucking hollow inside.
In my mind’s eye, Gwen leans in, her lips close to my ear.
“Three mates, Amora,” she repeats, driving the point home. “And they’re capable of bringing destruction to the world. Ruin. Death.”
I purse my lips and slow my bike as her words filter through my head. I dream of them often. I hear them in the quiet moments. The moments where I’m desperate for a reprieve from this weight on my shoulders.
It wasn’t just the words the witch spoke to me. There was… magic involved. Or something. I couldn’t explain it then and I can’t account for it now, but as she whispered her dire warning, I got a flash of knowledge. A vision, like a glimpse into the future.
The earth was burning, and my mates were at fault. I saw so clearly what they were capable of doing to this world.
I knew I couldn’t let that happen. I can’t let it happen, no matter what it takes.
So now I hunt for my mates.
Not to find my happily ever after, but to stop them.
I slow at a red light where an arrow points me right to Oscura, look both ways, then roll right on through as I make the turn. Civilization comes back in pieces. A few ranches with crude wooden fences and grazing cattle. A big box store and a giant parking lot, then a grouping of fast food joints that make the air redolent with oil and spices. I hit the downtown area—quaint, Spanish-style courthouse, a strip mall, people on the sidewalks going about their day. Oscura looks like every other small town I’ve stayed in over the past two years.
They all blur together. I started my search for Kian and the other two elusive mates close to home, back in Montana. Then I worked south, following my gut instinct and “leads” that led me nowhere. If I wasn’t so damn stubborn, I’d give up.
