Rejected Mate: An Enemies-to-Lovers Shifter Romance (Feral Shifters Book 1)

by Callie Rose

  Kian sprints across the parking lot toward the tree line where a Harley’s parked alone. Because of course he also has a bike. It only cements the whole “we’re star-crossed soulmates” shit.

  He tosses a long leg over his seat and revs the bike to life so quickly it’s like he’s one with the damn thing.

  I reach him as he lifts his feet off the ground and rolls into motion. I lash out, grabbing for his t-shirt, but as he gives the bike gas, the cotton tears beneath my hand.

  “Fuck!” I yell. Of course I chose not to drive over. Of course my bike’s across the fucking street. Because I’m an idiot. Three years of dead ends and false leads made me drop my guard too much.

  I don’t hesitate. It’ll take him a minute, maybe two to get out of the busy lot, even if the light is green. Hauling ass through the trees, I sprint for the parking lot of the motel and my own bike.

  The fucker isn’t getting away.

  I dart across the street, narrowly avoiding a collision with a Jeep. The driver honks and yells something obscene out his open window, but I keep running. I’ve got my senses turned up, shifter hearing on high. Harleys are loud. They’ve got engines that roar, so they’re not the kind of bike you want when you’re trying to outrun someone.

  They’re also not as fast as my Ducati.

  I sail onto the back of my bike and get it in gear in the blink of an eye, before I whip out of the parking lot on a squeal of tires. Down by the strip mall, Kian’s Harley is just pulling through the red light, turning away from the motel toward the empty highway.

  I look both ways, then run two red lights—earning a few irritated honks for my disrespect of traffic laws—and take a right onto the street behind him. Once I’m past the strip mall, the traffic thins.

  So I open the throttle and speed.

  The wind whips around me, and my long hair snags at my face and neck. Away from civilization, the air smells wild, like freedom and fir trees and the musk of dead things. I close the distance between our bikes and grin like a fool because I’ve got the faster one. There’s not a chance in hell he’s going to outrun me.

  Four lanes merge to two. Even though there are fewer cars here as we leave Oscura behind, we still pass a few traveling the speed limit. Kian whips around them in the emergency lane, and I follow suit, praying I’m not about to blow a tire on a stray nail or broken glass.

  We leave behind the outskirts of the town for open desert filled with shrubs and lined by low hills painted red in the sunset. Another couple miles down the road, the desert gives way to deciduous forest, thick with spruce and fir trees.

  He has to stop eventually. I’ve got a full tank of gas. I can go all night.

  But then Kian veers off the road.

  I cringe at the way his bike’s suspension bounces over the rough embankment. Harleys aren’t made for off-roading any more than they’re made for speed.

  My Ducati flies down the embankment like a goddamn champ, and I speed after him into the trees. It’s the end of the road—literally. There’s no path here. Only thickening undergrowth, giant tree trunks, and wilderness. Birds scatter from us, screeching their discontent to the forest. I bounce over a small fallen tree, then barrel right into a thicket of dead thorns, cringing at the paint damage. A sharp branch lashes at my cheek, and heat flares where it cut me, but I keep going.

  I’ll always keep going.

  Kian brakes suddenly, letting his bike lay down on its side in the undergrowth. As it slides to a stop, he leaps off with deadly grace. Before he even hits the ground, he’s shifted to wolf.

  Motherfucker.

  I really don’t want to damage my bike more than necessary, but I want to catch Kian more. So I mimic his movements, laying down my bike and then using it as leverage to launch into the undergrowth before it can pin me beneath it.

  When I hit the ground, I’m on four paws. I allow myself a brief second of despair for my destroyed leather jacket, then zoom after him.

  The sun’s hanging so low on the horizon that it’s already night inside the trees. That works to my advantage, given my near-perfect night vision in wolf form.

  Of course, that means Kian has the same advantage.

  Kian’s huge, muscular wolf crashes through the forest much faster than I expected. But despite his speed, he’s loud. I can hear every thundering beat of his paws on the dirt, and the undergrowth rattles beneath him. I keep my vision trained on him, but I focus on my hearing.

  Even if I lose sight, I won’t lose him.

  Then he stumbles.

  It’s luck. Pure dumb fuckery of luck. The wolf stumbles over something on the ground, and he goes down hard. Kian rolls twice and lands with his legs splayed.

  I’m on top of him before he can stand.

  I latch my teeth to his scruff and use my momentum to throw him over my body. He slams into a nearby tree trunk, all the air expelling from his lungs. The blow doesn’t stun him for long. He’s on his feet with a low, furious growl before I can follow.

  We leap at each other, teeth snapping. I grab hold of his ear and shake my head with the intent to rip it the fuck off. His teeth grab the soft underside of my neck and tighten on my windpipe without breaking skin. I hold out as long as I can, but I need to breathe. So I release his ear and back away with a snarl.

  Kian stands his ground, teeth bared. But he doesn’t make a move to attack. We eye each other in the dim light, and I feel like he’s taking the measure of me.

  I’ve already measured him and found him wanting.

  I leap again.

  We tumble together, and for several long moments, we roll and flail, biting and growling. His teeth pierce my shoulder, and I take a chunk out of his neck. The taste of his blood in my mouth is incredible—hot, tangy, laced with whiskey. I feel his essence in every nerve ending. For a split second, I hold there, completely consumed by the feeling.

  He uses my moment of weakness against me.

  Kian rolls, pinning me beneath his bulk. I’m wedged on my back between the branches of a fallen tree, and I can’t buck him off. I can’t even reach him with my teeth, and my claws don’t do shit against his thick muzzle.

  He bares his teeth, his jaw hinging open.

  Jesus, he’s going to kill me.

  I glance around for anything to get me out of this situation, and I notice that the dead tree where he’s pinned me against has multiple thick branches that have broken away from the trunk. Many of them lay scattered well within reach. I can’t pick them up with my paws.

  But I have hands too.

  The magic that prompts my transformation washes over me like a cool mountain breeze. My limbs lengthen and thicken, and my torso stretches out beneath Kian’s bulk. I toss out my arm and latch onto the nearest branch, then swing it around with all my strength.

  It slams into Kian’s head with a painful crack.

  He yelps and ducks, his paws skittering on the ground around my torso.

  I hit him again, then again, slowly backing him away from my body. Crawling to my knees, I continue the beat down, even as my heart aches and my wolf screams at me to stop hurting her mate.

  I’ll beat him to a bloody death if it means I can save the world.

  Kian ducks a fourth blow, then leaps at me. He shifts in mid-jump, and my god, it’s the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen. His dark fur recedes like rain falling backward, and his body lengthens, grows, morphs like a work of art. Then his bare skin slams into mine.

  I slam into the underbrush on my back with Kian’s heavy weight on top of me. He rips the branch from my hand and throws it into the woods with an inhuman snarl, before turning his gold-ringed gaze on me.

  Suddenly, it’s not two wolves fighting in the trees.

  It’s me and Kian.

  It’s Kian’s body pressed to mine. His knee between my legs, his left arm slanted over my neck to pin me to the dirt, the heat of his cock against my hip.

  I know his body. I only had him for one night, but I know his body. I kn
ow the way it feels against mine. I know the rhythm of his hips, the bruising force of his fingers, the way he filled me when he sank between my legs.

  Heat flares between us and desire swirls through my core. The last time we were in this position, he was buried inside me.

  Something flickers in Kian’s eyes. Heat. Desire. Longing. I swear I feel his cock hardening against me.

  Then his forearm presses harder into my throat, cutting off my air supply.

  “You’ll never be able to stop me,” he grinds out. “It’s a mistake to even try.”

  Then his weight vanishes, and in the next instant, he’s a wolf again. Racing away from me.

  I scramble to my feet and struggle to get a breath. My throat’s taken a damn beating, and I feel like I can’t get enough oxygen in my body. I shift and fall into a sprint after him, where I leap to latch on to his fluffy tail. I drag him back, as he whips around and snaps at my snout.

  What I don’t count on is Kian’s head being a lot fucking harder than mine.

  As he lunges his upper body back at me to get me to release his tail, his head slams into mine. The blow is devastating—like he hauled a cinder block right at my skull. I yelp involuntarily and pitch to the ground, my vision fading out on a spray of sparks and black edges. Pain sends spasms into my body so that I can’t feel my legs, and I kick uselessly, trying to find my footing.

  For a few seconds, everything goes fuzzy and indistinct except the wind in my fur. Then my senses return in pieces—my vision fading back in, blurry but serviceable. My hearing returns to the chorus of nighttime crickets around me. And I manage to stumble to my legs, even though they’re still tingling from the knock out.

  I shake my head and almost fall over, barely catching myself on a numb paw. Then I glance around for Kian.

  But he’s gone. I don’t even hear the sound of his big bulk crashing through the woods.

  Growling irritably, I put my nose to the ground and sniff around until I catch his scent. Even in wolf form, he smells like whiskey and woodsmoke, so it’s easy to find. Once I’ve got him, I take off through the woods, ignoring the throbbing in my head as I trail him.

  Half a mile into the woods, however, his scent begins to grow strangely indistinct. It fades little by little until suddenly, I’ve lost his trail.

  Fuck.

  Chapter 6

  I snarl in frustration, the sound echoing through the woods. A flock of tiny warblers takes flight to flee my anger, then the forest goes still again but for the breeze knocking through the trees. Dusk has fallen to full dark, and I can sense all the nighttime creatures slithering fearfully away from me in the inky shadows.

  But I can’t sense Kian.

  That son of a bitch.

  I’m not sure he even meant to headbutt me, but it certainly gave him the advantage he needed to get away while I was incapacitated.

  At the very least, I hope his head’s ringing with a concussion too.

  I sniff around a while longer, but I can’t find a good trail. Turning circles in the dark isn’t going to conjure the asshole up, so after a time, I begrudgingly set a trail back through the woods to my bike.

  Kian’s Harley is right where he left it next to mine. I shift back to human form and lift it up so I can dig around in its compartments.

  Except the saddlebags are gone.

  “That rotting pile of flaming trash,” I mutter and let his bike fall back to the ground.

  He came back and got his things, then took off.

  Hauling up my own bike, I knock the kickstand down so I can open my top-box. I dig around through the detritus inside until I find a pair of wire cutters, then gleefully go to work ruining his Harley. If it can be cut, whether mechanically or aesthetically, it gets a trim.

  If this was the wild west, I’d just steal his horse. Alas, I was born in a different time, and I can’t operate two motorcycles at once. The asshole runs from me, I make it so his bike can’t run. Tit for tat.

  I toss my wire cutters back in my top-box, then dig out some clothes. Nothing would get people’s attention quite like a naked girl riding around on a bike, so I started keeping a couple spares in the trunk a while back.

  The t-shirt chafes against all the scratches I’ve gotten. My hips and legs ache as I step into the soft cotton shorts, and I realize I’m going to have to find a store in town to pick up a new pair of boots. In the meantime, I step into my spare pair of flats and brace myself for engine heat on my ankles.

  I briefly consider sticking around. Kian has to come back for his bike eventually, right? But there’s no guarantee he will. I’m in pain. I’m pissed. I want to clean up my wounds and sleep for an entire day.

  I’ve made it this long searching for him. I can go a while longer.

  So I kick my bike into gear, carefully turn it through the undergrowth, and head back for the road.

  Returning to the bustle of Oscura feels… odd. What just happened out in the woods feels like it took place on a totally different planet. It’s like the girl who rode into town a couple hours ago isn’t the same girl coming back now. Not after the constant rush of conflicting emotions I feel around Kian. After the argument. The fight.

  Losing him again.

  As I pass Joe’s Bar and Grill, I remember that I had change laying on the table. I’d run after Kian without grabbing it, too caught up in his attempt to flee to think of anything else. No biggie, though. Poor Brandee was having a bad night. She deserves the tip. Hopefully the rest of her night goes a hell of a lot more smoothly than mine.

  I park my bike on the sidewalk outside the motel then swipe the keycard to let myself into the cool AC. The door slams shut behind me, and I slump against it, staring around the pathetic room.

  Home sweet home.

  My head’s throbbing in time with my heartbeat. I straighten and limp to my bag for some ibuprofen, then carry the little brown pills to the bathroom sink. When I turn on the strip of lights above the counter, I wince at my reflection in the mirror and immediately consider turning them right back off.

  I look… rough.

  The past three years haven’t been kind to me. It’s never more obvious than when I’m forced to confront my own reflection. My thin face has turned hard and angular, and my once grass-green eyes are dull and haunted above dark hollows put there by sleepless nights.

  I toss the pills into my mouth and lean down to drink from the faucet. The water’s nasty—filtered with chemicals, nothing like the fresh, delicious well water back home. When I stand back up, I confront my reflection again, my lips peeling back from my teeth.

  I tug a handful of dried leaves and twigs from my long dark brown hair, leaving them in a fun pile on the countertop like I’m the Blair Witch. Turning my face to the left, I run my finger beneath a raw red scratch on my right cheekbone. Another cut, deeper than the first, is angled above my eye and through my eyebrow.

  Like the scar on Kian’s face.

  Even now, I can conjure up a vision of his face. The scar bisecting his brow, his sardonic grin, the hard glitter in his unique eyes. I hate how I can remember him in such perfect detail all these years later. Memories of our night together have been assaulting me since he showed up at Joe’s earlier, never far from the edges of my mind.

  Fury sets my blood boiling. I rip my t-shirt off over my head and step out of the shorts, then slam the faucet on in the shower. I climb beneath the surprisingly strong stream before it’s fully hot, and I turn my face into the cool water, cringing as it burns my cuts.

  Feeling his skin against me in the woods brought every satin memory of his body on mine back to life. I don’t want to remember how right the weight of him feels on me. I don’t want to breathe in lingering traces of whiskey and woodsmoke. I want to forget all of that. How can I kill him if I can’t stop remembering the way he completed me?

  Steam heats up the tiny bathroom. I unwrap the shitty motel soap and scrub at every inch of my skin, trying to rid myself of his scent. No matter how hard I scrub, e
ven if I use my nails just short of drawing blood, I can’t get myself totally free of him.

  I can still feel him everywhere. His hands on my body back in Montana. His skin on mine in New Mexico. It all blurs together. There’s no line between pleasure and pain anymore.

  Finally, I rinse off all the soap and turn off the water. While the faucet slowly drips into the pooling water, I dry off with anger still bubbling beneath my skin.

  It keeps me warmer than any shower ever could.

  After throwing on an oversized t-shirt and boy shorts to sleep in, I slip between covers that smell like industrial detergent. Bland. Bleachy. Void of life. I reach over my head and turn out the light, casting the room into total darkness.

  Somewhere nearby, a horn honks. The swish of cars on the road continues like my entire world hasn’t been rocked off its foundation.

  I found him.

  I found Kian.

  The man I’ve been hunting all this time.

  His face haunts my mind and his body haunts my memories as I fall asleep.

  Every nerve-ending in my body is buzzing, every inch of me both exhausted and insatiable.

  Kian has already made me come three times, but the feel of his body draped over mine, his cock sheathing itself in my core over and over again, is pushing me toward another soul-stealing climax.

  His cock drives into me with punishing thrusts, and he rests his forehead against mine as we both gasp for breath. I feel the warmth of his exhales on my lips, and I strain forward to kiss him once as our bodies rock together on the bed. The sound of the bed frame hitting the wall is a sharp punctuation to the smoldering heat building inside me.

  My heart is racing, and so is Kian’s.

  I can feel it.

  I can feel the heavy thud of each beat where his chest presses against mine, but more than that… I can feel it in my soul. The two of us are joined so closely together in this moment that the line between our two separate selves seems to blur.