SHE WAS REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA BUT CHERISHED BY HER TRUE MATE

Chapter 5

Jack

I hadn't planned on telling my beta anything, but Corin always has a way of finding out things anyway, but it made no sense hiding this from him, not when it was even clearly written all over my face.

"You're in a good mood," he said..While sitting on the chair behind my desk, without even being permitted to do so.

"I thought it to be kind of weird to say, but should I be worried?"

"I have found her," I said… Corin went still.

"Found who?"

"My mate." I answered..

The silence dragged on for so long as I gradually looked up from the trade ledgers, expecting to see that he'd fallen asleep from the shock. But surprisingly to me he hadn't. He was just there staring at me like I'd told him I could fly.

"Twelve years," he said slowly. "Twelve years of me telling you to ease up on yourself about this, and you finally found her on some random Tuesday and you didn't even bother mentioning it all this while?"

"Anyways I'm mentioning it now."

"Jack."

"She ran," I said. Even saying it out loud brought the ache right back, her scent disappearing over that ridge, like I'd dreamed the whole thing up. " Her name is Sinach Hart, from Amora Pack"

His face changed immediately. Not shocked this time, but more like he'd just assembled something together in his head. " You mean Hart Smith's daughter”?, the one Edwin Mongo humiliated at the equinox gathering?."

"You heard about that too?"

"Everyone heard about it. It was what everyone talked about, for about a week, across three packs. Poor girl..." He looked at me with a hardened face. "So your fated mate is the woman a rival Alpha stood up and called unworthy two months ago.

Great, it’s not complicated at all."

"She's not unworthy of anything." It came out sharper than I meant. Dwane growled, his agreement somewhere behind my ribs. "She's worth more than that whole pedigree-obsessed pack combined. Edwin's a fool. His loss is…" I stopped myself. Some things were too big to be said out loud, even though they were actually true. His loss is to be my second chance, at something I'd stopped believing I'd ever have again.

"His loss is your problem now," Corin said, flatly. "A wolf like Edwin doesn't lose gracefully, Jack, you know that. He 'll sit with embarrassment, it’s just fine right now until he realizes that his rejected mate gets claimed by a rival Alpha, that he can't stand losing her to. Then suddenly it won't be about her at all. It'll be about his pride. Just Watch out."

I already knew he was right. I'd felt it myself, standing in that garden, the sense that whatever this was turning into, it wouldn't stay simple for long. Sinach hadn't walked away from Edwin's rejection clean. She'd walked away from her own Alpha, right before the entire pack members. Men like Edwin don't easily forgive being made to look small, not when it was done publicly.

"Well he can actually try," I said, and I meant it. "I didn't wait for a whole lot of twelve years, to finally meet my mate and just to hand her back to the man who once had her heart broken and shattered."

She's ours, Dwane said, in a low and fierce voice, full of certainty. The same way he'd carried it since her scent first hit us in that forest. No matter what it may cost, we can’t afford to lose her.

Corin didn't push back further, though I could tell that he wanted to because it was written all over him, but he couldn’t say anything else but to watch me the way he did when he was deciding whether something was worth saying out loud or not..

"You've waited twelve years," he said eventually. "Wait a little longer, long enough to make sure this doesn't turn into a war before it even becomes a courtship. Go slow Jack, at least for her sake, and not just necessarily yours."

I didn't say anything further, because of course there is nothing I could say that would've satisfied either of us, not with Dwane already pacing under my skin at the very word "patience." Some part of me knew Corin was right, but the rest of me had stopped listening the second her scent hit the wind two nights ago, and no amount of sense was going to talk that part down.

"You're going to see her again tonight?," Corin asked… It wasn't a question, so at least I had to answer him.

"Yes."

He sighed, the way he always did whenever he realized that arguing about a particular subject was pointless. "But at least don't go looking like you're about to start a war, because whatever's coming for you two, hasn't come yet. Don't give Edwin a reason before he could even ask for one."

I didn't answer that either, but I thought about it all through the whole walk out to the pack border, boots quiet on the packed dirt, the evening cooling fast the way it always did once the sun dropped behind the tree line. Corin wasn't wrong. He rarely was, when it came to seeing trouble before it arrived. But knowing a thing and feeling it were two different things, and right now every instinct in me was tuned to one signal only, that is the fence line where I'd find her waiting, and whatever it would take to keep her safe.

I went back that night anyway, like I'd promised her, as I found her waiting by the fence, and I knew something was wrong. I could see it pale, tight around the eyes, hands twisted together. Every protective instinct in me stood straight up.

"What happened," I said, already crossing the distance between us.

"Edwin." The name came out of her lips, like something bitter that she was forcing down. "He asked for a meeting with my father tomorrow, which is all about me."

Something cold dropped into my chest, cooling off the warmth that had been sitting there ever since she'd climbed down to meet me the night before.

"What kind of meeting?"

She looked up at me, and I saw exactly what Corin had warned me about hours earlier, playing out faster and uglier than I never expected.

"My father wouldn't say anything. Just that Edwin's changed his mind."

Dwane surged under my skin, so suddenly and violently, a growl building in my chest, before I could even stop it, my hands were already curled into fists. But I managed to make myself unclench immediately. She didn't need my anger right now, what she needed rather was something steady.

"Sinach." I kept my voice low, even though everything in me was sparking but I held myself back. "Look at me, Whatever he wants doesn't matter anymore. He had all the opportunities in the world to take you, but he didn't, he allowed that opportunity to slip through his fingers, so right now, you definitely are not his to take back."

"You don't really know my father." She said, in a low tone. "It is important you know that he listens to Edwin, believe me he does."

"That doesn't make it right."

"No," she said, "being right has never mattered much in my pack, "

As she wrapped her arms around herself, like she was trying to hold something in, and "I kept telling myself that this isn’t just talk.

My father would never actually agree to something like this. But then I remember that he stood there and watched Edwin humiliate me in front of everyone, and he didn't say a word, “she added”.

"At this moment, I wanted to close the distance between us right and then pull her in. To tell her that nobody was going to touch her, not Edwin, not her father, not anyone. But it was too soon for that as I just remembered what Corin said earlier, his voice was still fresh at the back of my head, telling me to go slow...So instead of pulling her closer to myself, I let her stand where she was, but I was close enough that she'd feel my heart beat, and at least understand that I meant every word. I needed to let my voice carry the weight that my hands couldn't carry at that moment, by telling her that "Whatever it's he wants from that meeting, that he was not going to get it. At least not you, never again." Because I understood that, standing there in the dark with her fears hanging between us, is exactly what "changed his mind".

Edwin Mongo never wanted Sinach Hart..

He just couldn't stand another Alpha having her beside him, and that is the fact.

Tomorrow, he is determined to take her back, “But that I won't allow to happen”, she will either remain mine, or hell will cut loose!!!.