The Rejected Mate

Chapter 25 – Run

The forest tasted wrong.

Not just of fear and metal, but of direction—of something being dragged the wrong way through ground that remembered safer things.

Amara ran.

Not flat‑out; not yet. A controlled, eating pace that let her wolf work. Rowan’s order rang in her ear—You track. Nothing else. Her wolf snarled at the leash and kept moving anyway.

Behind her, the fast team fanned out: Gideon a little to her left, heavy footfalls deceptively quiet; Sorrel to her right, breath steady; two more from Silverpine, one from Blackridge. No one spoke.

Tamsin’s scent pulled them downhill.

Sweat, fear, the sharp chemical tang of tranquilizer. Under it, the wild edge of a wolf holding her form too tight for too long. Human, not wolfshape—that was something.

“Beacon?” Amara panted into the mic.

Nira’s voice came back, tinny but clear. “Still moving east‑southeast. Speed dropping—either they hit bad ground or slowed to switch vehicles. Signal strength okay.”

“Distance?” Gideon asked.

“Two klicks ahead and losing,” Nira said. “You need to push if you want them before the road.”

Gideon grunted. “You heard her. Pick it up.”

They did.

Branches whipped at Amara’s arms. Her ribs twinged where old claws had raked them; her lungs burned in a way that had nothing to do with gas this time and everything to do with not stopping.

“Might be a trap,” one of the Silverpine wolves—Jace—muttered behind her.

“Everything’s a trap,” Amara said. “We go anyway.”

A faint rumble bled into the ground underfoot. Not engine loud, not yet—just vibration, deeper than the usual forest pulse.

“Truck,” Sorrel said.

Amara’s wolf agreed. “Ahead. Small. They turned uphill again. Trying to swing around us.”

Gideon caught up enough to speak at her shoulder. “If they hit the service road, they can be off this mountain in ten minutes.”

“And into human traffic in thirty,” she said.

They cut left, angling to intercept. The slope steepened; mud slicked under the thin frost. Amara slid once, caught herself on a root, kept going.

“Beacon’s veering north now,” Nira said. “Looks like they’re aiming for the old logging spur. Rowan, that’s the one that skirts your border.”

“We’re already moving to cut it,” Rowan’s voice replied, distant but controlled. “You take them before the line if you can. If not, you drive them into us.”

The idea of Tamsin being pushed between two packs and a human truck made Amara’s stomach heave. Her wolf channelled it into speed.

The smell hit first.

Exhaust thick and recent. Hot rubber. Human sweat layered over the colder stink of men who thought efficiency was a virtue.

“There,” Amara hissed.

Through the trees, the outline of a pickup flickered between trunks, climbing a narrow, rutted track. Not a van. Smaller. Faster. One driver, one passenger in the cab. Something—a shape—tarped in the open bed, tied down.

Tamsin.

Amara’s vision went red at the edges.

“Positions,” Gideon snapped. “We’re not outrunning a truck on wheels. We’re stopping it.”

He pointed as they moved. “Sorrel and Jace, tires. Dan, engine block. Frost—” His eyes cut to her. “You get her. That’s it. You do not go for throats. You do not chase if they bail. You find her and you hold.”

Everything in her rebelled at that, but she nodded once. “Fine.”

The truck bumped closer, suspension creaking. The driver’s window was cracked; Amara caught a snatch of human voice.

“—said it was supposed to be the Alpha—”

“Shut up and drive,” the other hissed.

Good. Panicked already.

“Three,” Gideon murmured. “Two. Now.”

They hit as a single organism.

Jace and Sorrel dropped from opposite sides, slamming their weight into the front tires. Rubber screamed, then blew; the truck lurched, fishtailing. Dan’s weight hit the hood, claws digging into metal, dragging it sideways.

The driver yanked the wheel and stomped the brakes. Too late.

The truck skidded, slammed nose‑first into a stump with a crunch that shook the ground. Glass spider‑webbed. The engine coughed and died.

Amara was already at the bed.

The tarp had been thrown over something roughly wolf‑sized and tied down with cheap rope. Her fingers went clumsy for a second, then found the knots and tore.

The tarp peeled back.

Tamsin stared up at her, eyes blown wide, gag in her mouth, cheap plastic cuffs on her wrists and ankles. A dart was buried shallow in her thigh; the skin around it was angry but not black.

Alive.

Relief hit so hard Amara’s knees almost buckled.

“Easy,” she breathed, fingers flying to rip the gag free. “Hey. Hey. You with me?”

Tamsin’s chest heaved. “That—” Her voice came out ragged. “Sucked.”

“Yeah,” Amara said, throat thick. “You did great. Don’t ever do it again.”

Behind them, someone yelled, “Gun!”

Amara whirled.

The passenger had scrambled out of the cab, blood running from his temple, pistol in both hands. His eyes locked on Amara, not the wolves.

On the bounty.

He fired.

Time blurred.

Amara felt, more than saw, the shot—heard the crack, smelled the hot metal.

Then pain blew through her left shoulder, white‑hot and huge. The world tilted; her back hit metal, breath ripped out of her.

The gunman went down a heartbeat later under Gideon and Sorrel, but the damage was done.

“Amara!” Tamsin’s voice, high and wild.

She tried to say I’m fine and tasted copper instead.

The pack beacon on her wrist flared, pulsing like a frantic heartbeat.