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

by Callie Rose

  But I mean… they aren’t exactly normal. The very short time I’ve spent with them has reinforced that unpleasant truth on multiple occasions.

  After a moment, Kian’s gaze refocuses on Erik’s dingy wooden door, then he kicks it off its hinges.

  We barrel into the house to the din of another door splitting somewhere else in the house. Frost and Malix, I presume, entering from around the back. They don’t appear, though—not right away. As small as the shack is, we should see them immediately. I glance down the dark hallway, but nothing moves.

  We clear the living room, where incense burns on Erik’s altar and the television plays an old nineties cartoon chock full of dumb toilet humor. The witch is nowhere to be found, though there’s a can of beer on the table, still half full, still condensing. We head into the hallway and finally run into Frost and Malix.

  Next to a staircase.

  I blink at the gloomy stairs leading up to a second floor that doesn’t exist. Or shouldn’t exist, anyway.

  Malix grimaces. “Yeah, so, turns out this place is a lot fucking bigger than it looks. We got lost when we left the kitchen.”

  “Magic,” Frost offers with a shrug.

  Kian glares around the darkened hallway. His anger is terrifying, radiating from him with a dominance that leaves no room for interpretation. He won’t be happy until Erik’s blood is on his hands for sending the shadows after him and his brothers.

  To be honest, I’m not opposed. That crazy fucking witch wanted me as payment. To carve my skin off? To eat me? To fuck me against my will? I don’t know.

  But he’s never going to get the chance to do any of that shit now.

  “He’s here,” Kian says sharply. “Find him.”

  The four of us split up to search—Frost and Malix going upstairs, while Kian and I handle the downstairs. I start opening doors and looking behind curtains in a dining room, then find myself in a strange kind of “grand parlor” like this place is an English manor house and not a metal shack in the desert. Erik fooled us real nice with the one shitty little living room we saw. He lives like a damn king.

  I pass out of the parlor and back into the hallway near the stairs. I’m considering where I’ll go next, when I glimpse something dark slinking through the shadows toward the back of the house. A flash of shadow against the barest hint of moonlight. My first thought is, oh shit, a living shadow.

  But my next thought is, that asshole is trying to escape.

  I sprint down the hall as quietly as possible, then lunge through the darkness, praying I’m not about to slam into furniture. The shadow lets out a sharp, girlish scream, and Erik the witch collapses beneath me.

  I follow him down to the floor, where his head bounces off the linoleum, then wrap my hands around his neck in an attempt to subdue him.

  He screams again, and magic pours from him. In an instant, the smoke is wrapped around my face and neck in an odd mimicry of what happened with Frost back at the motel, and I can’t see anything. The smoke tightens, cutting off my airway, my sight, everything.

  Erik’s bony form bucks beneath me. His elbow, or something equally as sharp, slams into the side of my head. My head whirls and I slump to the side, struggling to get past the blinding pain and the suffocating magic. The witch shoves at me, and I shove back, trying to pin him down more securely, but he manages to break free from under me.

  A snarl cuts through the room.

  I duck as something large whooshes past me, leaving the scent of woodsmoke and whiskey in his wake. Kian. I claw at the black magic around my face to no avail, but then Erik screams over the sound of running feet, and the binding vanishes so abruptly I fall onto my ass.

  I scramble to my feet and hurry out the open back door.

  Erik’s gangly form sprints through the back yard with Kian’s nightmarish demon wolf right behind him. Magic smokes and wavers, then lashes out when Erik turns around and points at Kian. But the wolf is undeterred—he leaps aside, then speeds up while the witch is distracted casting his spells.

  Kian leaps through the air and lands square on the witch’s back. They tumble to the ground, where the large wolf latches onto the witch’s neck and rolls him to his back.

  Then sits on him.

  I skid to a stop next to them, breathing hard. Frost and Malix jog toward us from the shack, clearly drawn by the screaming.

  Kian has his monstrous jaws clamped around Erik’s skinny neck so far it looks as if he’s about to swallow him.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Erik screams in a tight, high voice. “I didn’t mean it! I shouldn’t have done it! I take it back!”

  Malix looms over the prone man and crosses his arms over his massive chest. “What’re you sorry for, shithead? Turning us over to Felicity?”

  “Yes! She offered… I’m sorry!”

  I kick him in the thigh. “She offered what?”

  I have no idea who Felicity is, but my lack of knowledge doesn’t hinder his ability to tell us the truth.

  “You!”

  “I’m not hers to give you,” I bite out.

  Erik’s face screws up. I can smell blood on him from Kian’s teeth slicing into his skin.

  Malix speaks up. “Can you even create the antidote to the shadow venom? Or were you lying? Just stringing us along like a fucking cheat?”

  The witch’s eyes are so wide I can see whites all the way around his irises. His gaze pins on Malix, and he gasps out, “Yes! Yes, I really can! It’s on the altar! It’s almost ready!”

  Malix latches on to his words. “Almost?”

  Erik clutches at Kian’s fur. A single tear slips down his cheek as he gazes up at Malix. “It’s missing an ingredient.”

  “An ingredient you have?” Malix prompts.

  “No,” Erik admits. “But the source is close. Just two tablespoons of sap from the Tree of Life. Once that’s added, it’ll do what you need it to do.”

  “So just that one ingredient?” Malix says. “Just that, and it’ll work? Everything else is already done?”

  “Yes! I just need to get the sap!” Hope flares bright in the little worm’s eyes.

  He thinks he’s safe.

  Too bad he’s so naïve.

  Frost’s cold voice cuts through the night air. “Good. Then we don’t need the witch anymore.”

  Kian growls, then clamps down on Erik’s neck and rips out his throat.

  I manage to stay where I am and not make a sound, but the brutal violence of it turns my stomach. Erik’s green eyes stare up at the starry sky, his eyelids twitching, as his entire life’s blood spills from his ruined neck. There’s nothing left of his Adam’s apple, his skin tattered, most of it gone… all that’s left is exposed viscera and gushing blood, bubbling as he struggles to breathe through ruined airways.

  He goes still in less than five seconds, the light fading from his eyes.

  Kian shifts back. Black smoke and shadows swirl around him, and his nightmarish shadowy wolf limbs sink into his form like they never existed at all. Then he’s on his feet, naked, covered in the witch’s blood from his thick lips down to his navel. The sight is almost as terrifying as his shadow wolf.

  “What do we do with him?” Malix asks.

  “Bury him. Right here,” Kian adds with shrug. “I’m going to go clean up.”

  Frost glances around the yard, then angles off toward a lean-to shed against the back of the house. Presumably for digging implements.

  Malix crosses his arms over his chest and steps over to stand beside me, both of us looking down at the dead witch. “You okay, kitty?”

  “I hate you,” I reply, irritable at his incessant use of the rude nickname. “I’m fine. The asshole didn’t have good intentions for me, so I’m not mourning his death, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So you’re okay with killing,” Malix says.

  I glance over to find his violet eyes staring at me in the darkness. “When the situation calls for it.”

  That irritatingly adorable grin
cuts across his face. “Maybe you’re not a useless kitten after all.”

  “I really hate you,” I growl.

  Frost returns from the lean-to with three shovels. He throws one at Malix, then offers another to me.

  I glare at him for a long moment before snatching the shovel from his fingertips.

  Guess I’m digging a damn grave.

  Chapter 16

  When the three of us stride into the kitchen, sweaty and covered in dirt, we find Kian standing in front of Erik’s old-fashioned mint green refrigerator, a clump of lunchmeat in one hand. He’s wet from a shower and wearing only a pair of low-slung jeans. With his tapered waist and muscles on display, plus those tattoos I know so intimately, I find myself staring.

  He glances over at me, and our gazes lock before I can look away.

  Busted.

  So I cover up my completely unbidden and unwanted lust with snark.

  I raise my eyebrow. “Feeling peckish?”

  “Don’t you get hungry after you kill?” he shoots back, turning to peer into the fridge again.

  “No, I’m usually horny.” The words come out before I even realize it’s happening.

  What the actual fuck, Amora?

  All three men whip around and look at me, each with a slightly different expression. Kian’s jaw is clenched, like I’ve said the worst thing he’s ever heard. Frost’s face is as expressionless as usual. And Malix just looks amused.

  The violet-eyed man smiles and remarks, “Huh. Good to know. I’ll keep that in mind for the future.”

  I carefully keep my embarrassment to myself and hope nobody can see the flush heating my cheeks. Catching sight of a bottle in the fridge beyond Kian, I reach past him and snatch up the water before darting away from his whiskey-drenched scent.

  “So. Anyone want to tell me who Felicity is?” I say, unscrewing the top on the bottle and leaning a hip against the counter. “Better yet, how about why she’s sending shadows after you and offering me up as payment for information on finding you?”

  All three of them exchange loaded glances. Frost turns his back to try to fit the broken door back into its frame, while Malix snatches the lunchmeat from Kian’s hand.

  Kian glares at him, then leans back into the fridge for more.

  None of them answer me.

  I slam my water bottle on the counter. “Look, assholes. I’m here against my better judgment. I don’t like you. Any of you. But I’m not going to continue to put my life in danger for you if you’re not going to come clean to me.”

  Kian grunts, emerging from inside the fridge with a pizza box. He lifts the lid and grimaces, then turns to put it right back where he found it. His voice drifts out. “Your life is already on the line.”

  Malix makes a noise in his throat, shoving the rest of the ham into his mouth to free his hands so he can help Frost with the door. “Sap from the Tree of Life,” he mumbles around the lunchmeat. “Anybody got a damn clue where that is?”

  Kian slams the fridge door shut. “No.”

  “That poses a logistical problem,” Malix says with a grimace. “We’re gonna need the sticky goo.”

  “That’s what she said,” I say under my breath, grabbing my water up to drink.

  Malix guffaws, and even Frost cracks a rare smile. It utterly transforms his face from emotionless stone granite to something beautiful and alive. It nearly takes my damn breath away. I feel the dangerous desire to reach out and touch his face, to trace the curve of his lips with my fingertips.

  I cover that up with sarcasm too.

  “Oh, so you listen to me only when you want to. Got it,” I say, giving them a thumbs up and an eye roll.

  Kian’s lips press into a firm line. “Can we focus, please? We don’t need to deal with anybody else willing to sell us out to the highest bidder. But we need to find this tree. Any bright ideas are welcome.”

  Frost turns back around and dusts his hands off. The door is settled back on its frame, albeit somewhat precariously. Anybody else who wanted to kick it in could do so easily. “Books. There’s a library upstairs.”

  Malix drapes an arm over Frost’s shoulder and looks at me. “Have we told you he’s the smart one?”

  “You haven’t told me fuck all,” I point out, unamused by the way they’ve all danced around my questions.

  Kian ignores us both. “Astute observation. All right, let’s search the place. Journals, magic books, anything that might tell us where to find this tree. See if the guy’s got a laptop and Google. Also, keep an eye out for anything of value that might help in our goal.”

  I scoff. “What is our goal, pray tell?”

  He levels his hard gaze on me. “Getting out of this alive. All of us.”

  I give him a feral grin. “Sure. All of us.”

  Like I’d ever let that happen.

  Erik’s “library” is simply a converted bedroom lined with bookshelves that has an interior table and chairs. I hoped for something cooler, considering the parlor looks like something out of a duke’s manor, but clearly, the witch’s magic only ran so far.

  Frost enters first, then picks the nearest shelf to start shuffling through books. I head for the table, where half a dozen notebooks are scattered around as if Erik was recently in here researching something himself. Chances are good that something is the potion he was making for us.

  I settle in a seat and pull the closest spiral-bound notebook toward me, then start flipping through the pages.

  We left Kian and Malix downstairs to search the living room, where Erik kept his altar and magical supplies. When silence settles over us, giving my overwrought nerves a chance to breathe, I decide I’ve made the best choice in choosing to accompany the silent shifter.

  I can’t help but glance at Frost as he works. He has his finger pressed to a row of spines on the shelf, moving slowly along as he reads the titles. No clue what criteria he’s got in mind for picking out books that might help us. Native Trees of New Mexico or some shit, I guess.

  But it’s his tattoos that stand out.

  He’s wearing a plain white t-shirt, and his black tattoos are moving again. Doing that eerily beautiful shifting thing I’ve seen a couple times already. Frost’s tattoos seem… restless. They move more than Kian’s or Malix’s, and I wonder why. He reaches up to pull a book off one of the higher shelves, and there’s a ripple effect down his arm.

  I put down the journal full of Erik’s chicken scratch and ask, “Are your tattoos made of shadows?”

  His shoulders tense. He glances over his shoulder at me, the book open in his palm.

  I think he’s not going to answer. He usually doesn’t, being the strong silent type. So I speak again.

  “The shadows that attacked us,” I say softly. “Like the one the night you came into my motel room. Are you one of them? Is that kind of… I don’t know, magic? Is that what you have inside you?”

  I brought up the night in my motel room for a reason. I still have no idea why he came to see me, but I do know both Kian and Malix argued with him not to. Maybe he just wanted to see the woman fated to be his mate, maybe he was curious. Hell, maybe he wanted to kill me. I don’t know.

  But I think it was the right call to bring that night back to his mind.

  Frost’s hard expression falls away. His eyes soften, such a brilliant sapphire that they glow like spotlights in the light from the dim overhead bulb.

  He turns back to the shelf and shoves the book into the empty space. “I’m… not certain. We are the first of our kind. But it is a probability.”

  I turn in my seat to give him my full attention. “How so?”

  He lets his hand rest on the shelf overhead, his gaze on the books instead of me. “My brothers and I were created from shadow. We are the only corporal beings on earth made with that magic. So while we aren’t shadows, we’re... related. In that we carry that magic inside us.”

  “Made” with that magic. That’s not the choice of word I expected when I ventured down this path.
I open my mouth, ready to ask him what he means by “made,” but I stop before I utter a sound.

  These men—all of them, even Malix who never shuts up—are hard to get straight answers out of. If I want Frost to keep talking, to give me something to work with, I have to navigate this discussion carefully. Keep him talking. Keep him engaged.

  “Why do your tattoos move so much?”

  Frost’s hand falls away from the shelf, and he turns it over, palm up, to stare down at the black markings roaming the smooth skin of his forearm. “It’s always been that way for me. Since I was a child. The magic gets… restless.”

  “So it’s separate from you? The way shifter magic is separate and has its own thoughts and desires?”

  He finally turns and looks at me. I think, for the first time, I’m seeing him at ease. His brothers aren’t around to keep him from talking to me. His eyes are bright, interested. His stony walls seem to have come down, or at least lowered a bit.

  It’s just the two of us and my twenty questions.

  “Yes,” he says after mulling over my words. “The magic is a separate being, but part of us nonetheless. Like the wolf. When we’re far from the shadow realm, the magic aches.”

  The shadow realm. This isn’t the first time they’ve mentioned such a place. I don’t know quite what it is, but even hearing the words makes snippets of the vision I got from Gwen flash in my mind’s eye. “Why does it ache?”

  He shrugs, his blue gaze roaming the library, looking everywhere but at me. “Because we belong in the shadows, I suppose. The shadow magic hurts, like fire beneath our skin. Constant, unending agony. But if we get close to the shadow realm… it stops. We can breathe.” His gaze lifts to meet mine. “That’s why we want to bring the shadow realm to earth. To stop the pain.”

  I can see the brutal honesty on his face. Frost’s walls are gone, and his emotions are fully exposed. He’s not lying to me. He’s baring the single biggest secret he has.

  And it’s a horrific one.

  I try to imagine if my wolf was restless and achy inside me. And not in the normal way, where I get itchy and need to blow off some steam with a run or a fuck, or the way she howls for Kian, Malix, and Frost, a low level hum inside me every moment I’m with them. Those things don’t hurt. Not physically.