The Mate He Never Wanted

Chapter 4 Rejecting Him Back

Nobody moved for a long moment. The morning wind carried the smell of pine and gasoline and the sharp, electric tension of two Alphas standing close enough to trade blows if either one decided the conversation had run its course.

"You're outnumbered on my own land, McCall," Rohan said again, quieter this time, which somehow made it worse. "If I were you, I'd think carefully about what happens next."

Scott's eyes flicked past him to the Rohan men waiting by the trucks, doing the math Rohan had already handed him. Four against fifteen, on unfamiliar ground, with no pack bond to draw strength from the moment things turned physical. Even a proud man could count.

"This isn't over," he said.

"It is for today." Rohan didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. "You want her back, McCall, you'll do it through the council, not by driving trucks onto my land like you still have the right to."

Scott's jaw worked. For a moment Elena thought he might actually argue the point, might dig in and force the exact confrontation Rohan had just warned him against. Instead he turned to her, and something in his face shifted, the fight going out of it, replaced by something that looked almost like pleading.

"Elena. Come home, whatever this is," he said, with a small, dismissive motion of his hand toward Rohan, "it isn't worth what it's going to cost you."

Home.

The word landed strange in her chest, hollow where it should have meant something. Home was supposed to be a place that wanted you back. Home didn't reject you in front of three hundred witnesses and then show up twelve hours later demanding you return to it like nothing had happened.

"You rejected me last night," she said. "In front of the whole pack. You made sure everyone saw it."

"I know. I…" He stopped, started again. "That doesn't mean I don't want you to come home. Theo needs you, his mother."

That landed harder than anything else he'd said, exactly the way he meant it to. She felt it hit, felt the old, familiar guilt rise up automatic and fast, the same guilt that had kept her trying for three years past the point any reasonable woman would have stopped.

Except this time, underneath the guilt, something else rose up to meet it. Something that had been building since the moment his voice cut the bond out of her chest in front of everyone she knew.

"Theo ran to Cynthia last night," she said. "Not to me. You didn't seem too worried about what he needed then."

Scott flinched like she'd struck him.

"That's not fair."

"No," Elena said. "It isn't. Nothing about last night was fair. And I'm done pretending that it was."

She felt Rohan's attention on her, steady, waiting, not stepping in to speak for her the way she half expected an Alpha to. He simply stood there and let her have the moment, and something about that, about being trusted to finish her own sentence for once, gave her the last push she needed.

"I release you," she said.

The words hit the clearing like a stone dropped into still water. Even the wind seemed to catch, holding its breath along with everyone watching.

Scott stared at her, uncomprehending for one full second, like his mind refused to process the words in her mouth. "What?"

"You said it to me last night, in front of everyone." Her voice didn't shake this time. She made sure of that. "I release you, as my mate, as my husband, effective now."

"You can't reject a rejection," he said, too fast, too defensive. "That isn't how it works, Elena, the bond is already…."

"Broken. Yes. You made sure of that." She held his gaze and did not let herself look away first, not this time. "But formally rejecting you back changes my standing. You know that as well as I do. I stop being bound by McCall law. I stop being anyone's problem to manage."

One of the older men behind Scott, gray at the temples, wearing the kind of quiet authority that only came with decades of pack service, stepped forward with his hand half raised, like he meant to object on procedure. Rohan's gaze cut to him once, and the man thought better of it and stepped back into line.

"She's right," Rohan said, mild as ever. "It's old law, but it's still law. She's within her rights."

Scott looked between them, and for the first time since he'd stepped out of his truck, Elena saw something crack in the composure he wore like armor. Not grief, exactly. Something closer to the realization that he had walked in here expecting to reclaim something, and was leaving having lost it twice.

"Fine," he said finally, voice tight. "Fine. If that's what you want."

"It's not about what I want," she said. "It's about what's true. You made your choice last night. Now I'm making mine."

He held her eyes a moment longer, and she watched him search for something to say that would land, some argument sharp enough to pull her back. She could see him come up empty. For once in three years, he didn't have the right words ready.

He turned without another word, gave a short, sharp gesture to his men, and walked back toward the trucks. Elena watched him go, waiting for the grief to hit her, the way it had the night before, and found instead a strange, hollow kind of calm settling into the space where the panic should have been.

It wasn't relief exactly, It was something quieter than that. The feeling of a door closing on its own terms instead of being slammed shut by someone else's hand.

The trucks pulled away one by one, gravel spitting under their tires, until the drive was empty again and it was just her and Rohan and a morning that felt entirely too loud after all that silence.

"You didn't have to do that," she said, once the sound of engines had faded into the trees. "Invoke old law on my behalf. You don't know me."

"No," Rohan agreed. "But I know McCall. And I know what it looks like when a man thinks he still owns something he already threw away."

Elena wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly aware of how cold the morning had gotten, or maybe how cold she had been the whole time and was only now feeling it.

"What happens now?" she asked.

"Now you figure out where you're going to sleep tonight, since your car is still sitting dead on my land and McCall isn't exactly an option anymore." Something almost like humor moved through his voice again. "Unless you'd rather I leave you out here to figure it out on your own."

Before Elena could answer, a new sound cut through the morning, a single car this time, moving fast up the same gravel drive Scott's trucks had just cleared. Elena turned toward it, half expecting Scott to have doubled back.

It wasn't Scott.

The car stopped hard enough to kick up dust, and the woman who stepped out of it was already furious before her feet hit the ground.

Cynthia.