The Rejected Mate

Chapter 26 – Exit Wound

Sound came back in pieces.

First Tamsin’s voice, too loud in Amara’s ear. Then Gideon’s curses. The wet, ugly noise of someone being dragged out of a truck cab. Her own heartbeat, pounding against the inside of her skull.

“Don’t move,” someone snapped.

Amara tried anyway. Pain flared through her left shoulder sharp enough to black out the edges of her vision. The world lurched and steadied again with her half‑sitting against the truck bed, Tamsin braced on her good side.

“i***t,” Tamsin choked. “Why would you—”

“Shut up,” Amara managed. “You’re supposed to be the one in a crate, remember?”

It was meant as a joke. It came out shredded.

Nira’s voice cut into her ear. “Beacon just spiked. Who’s bleeding?”

“Frost,” Gideon answered. “Through the shoulder. Human round, not a dart.”

“Of course she is,” Nira muttered. “Hold her. I’m coming.”

Amara peeled her eyes open properly.

The passenger lay face‑down in the dirt, Gideon’s knee between his shoulder blades, Sorrel’s hand twisted in his hair to keep his head turned away from the gun that glinted half‑buried nearby. Driver was slumped over the wheel in the crumpled cab, groaning.

“Through and through,” Sorrel said, eyes on Amara’s wound. “In the front, out the back. Missed bone.” She met Amara’s gaze. “You got lucky.”

“Feels great,” Amara said through her teeth.

The wolf in her wanted to drag the gunman up by the throat and show him exactly how “lucky” she felt. The human in her knew that would make everything worse.

Distantly, she heard other wolves moving through the trees—Rowan’s team cutting toward them from the logging spur, heavy and fast.

Tamsin’s hands hovered uselessly over Amara’s shoulder. “It went through,” she said, half to herself. “That’s good, right? That’s what they say in movies.”

“Stop watching human movies,” Amara hissed as another spike of pain rolled through. “They lie.”

Nira burst out of the trees a moment later, bag bouncing against her hip, hair coming loose from its braid.

“Move,” she snapped, and somehow Gideon and Tamsin both did, giving her space without really backing off.

Nira ripped Amara’s jacket open, yanked her shirt down off the shoulder. Cold air hit hot skin. Hands—competent, callused—probed around the wound.

“Not catastrophic,” Nira said, audible relief in her tone. “In and out, high and clean. Wolf healing will grab it if I can keep you from leaking too much in the first hour.”

“Translate,” Amara gritted.

“You’ll live,” Nira said. “Stay still.”

She pressed thick gauze hard to the front, something that stung even worse to the back. Amara bit down on anything she might have said and focused on the weight of Tamsin’s thigh under her hand instead.

Boots crunched over rock.

Rowan appeared at the edge of her vision, half‑shift still clinging to him—eyes too bright, teeth a little too long, control stretched thin. His gaze swept the wreck, the men, Tamsin, Amara… and stuck.

His scent hit her a second later, all iron and smoke and something frayed.

“Report,” he said, but it wasn’t to Gideon.

“Tamsin alive,” Amara said before anyone else could. “Truck disabled. Two humans conscious. Shoulder ventilated. Could’ve been worse.”

For half a second, something like bitter amusement flickered in his eyes.

“Could’ve been better,” he said.

“Always,” she shot back.

He crouched on her uninjured side, close enough that their knees almost touched, but careful not to get in Nira’s way. Up this close she could see the grime on his jaw, the faint smear of someone else’s blood at his throat.

“Can you move?” he asked.

“If you mean ‘walk under my own power,’ yes,” she said. “If you mean ‘start doing push‑ups,’ no.”

“We’re not leaving you,” he said. “Or her.” A nod at Tamsin.

The girl tried to straighten. “I can walk,” she said. “They just hit me with something that made the world fuzzy.”

“You’re walking,” Nira said. “Slowly. In the middle. Don’t argue.”

“Anyone else touch you?” Rowan asked Tamsin, voice gone softer and more dangerous all at once.

She shook her head. “Grabbed. Threw me in the truck. Talked about the wrong target. That’s it.”

“Wrong target,” Gideon repeated. His boot dug a little harder between the gunman’s shoulders. “They said that?”

“Yeah,” Tamsin said. “Driver was panicking. Said, ‘they wanted the Alpha, not some patrol rat.’”

The forest seemed to lean in on that.

Rowan’s jaw locked. His eyes flicked back to Amara. “They were expecting me.”

“Congratulations,” she said, lightheaded. “You’re popular.”

“Subject Zero was a bonus,” Lyra’s voice crackled through the comms from the other site. “The original prize was ‘Alpha asset.’”

“Later,” Rowan said. “Right now we get off this slope before someone gets arrows in their backs.”

Nira secured the bandage with a brutal efficiency that made Amara see stars. “Up,” she ordered.

Amara pushed, Tamsin hauling on her good arm. Pain roared, then narrowed to a manageable burn as her wolf shoved healing into the tear. Not fast enough to make it irrelevant. Fast enough to keep her on her feet.

The beacon on her wrist pulsed less frantically now, echoing her own slowing heart.

“Can you shift?” Rowan asked low.

“Not without tearing this open again,” Nira snapped before Amara could answer. “She walks human.”

“Fine.” Rowan straightened. “We strip what we can off the truck and the men, then vanish. Humans will hear the crash eventually. We don’t give them wolves standing over a crime scene.”

Gideon hauled the gunman to his knees. “Names,” he said. “Now, before I decide whether your legs need to match your truck.”

The man glared up, jaw set.

Amara started to turn away—

—and froze.

For a second, she could’ve sworn she saw it again: the faint glint high on the distant ridge. Glass. Lens. Watching their cleanup.

“Rowan,” she said, throat dry. “We’re not done being filmed.”

He followed her gaze, eyes narrowing.

“Then let them record this part too,” he said. “The part where their ‘window’ slams shut.”

He lifted his chin, voice rising enough to carry to every wolf on the slope.

“Break them down. Take their toys. Then we go home.”

Amara forced her feet to move, Tamsin’s shoulder under her hand, Nira a steady weight at her back. Every step away from the wreck felt like walking out of a scope’s crosshairs.

They’d stopped the grab.

They’d kept Tamsin out of a cage.

But high above them, hidden in the trees, a camera—or a rifle, or both—had seen exactly how far they would go for Subject Zero.

And whoever was watching was already planning what to do with that.