The Alpha's Stubborn Rejected Mate

Chapter 3 - Sasha

“Susie, would you mind staying for a couple of hours to help prepare for our guest tomorrow?” Alpha Hartford asked.

It was strange, I had been working for the Alpha family for over a year and yet he still hadn’t taken the time to get to know my name.

However, some things had changed in the last year. A year ago, I might have taken his comment as a request rather than an order, but I had learned some time ago that my time didn’t really belong to me. It was theirs to do with as they wished. It didn’t matter that I had plans for this evening or that I was already tired because I had to work a double shift for them yesterday.

Then again, it wasn’t as though I could talk to anyone about my plans for tonight, or ask another Omega to cover for me. My plans didn’t exactly fit into the list of accepted hobbies of an Omega.

“I would be happy to help, Alpha,” I replied, like the dutiful omega I had to pretend to be.

Maybe if I got the work done quickly, then I could still keep my plans for the evening intact. It was just a simple matter of condensing four or five hours’ worth of work into three, or maybe I could skip the shower I had planned to have before the meeting instead. Humans didn’t have a great sense of smell anyway, so maybe they wouldn’t even notice if I stank.

For the next few hours, I worked on readying the pack for Alpha Hartford’s visitors, all the while counting down the tasks I needed to complete before I could leave. I had been planning this evening’s meeting for months. It was the best chance I had of escaping this pack, and I wasn’t about to let it slip through my fingers.

Ever since I got rejected by my mate, I had become even more determined to make something of my life, and the only way I could do that was to leave. But to leave, I needed money, and to get money, I needed a job. Except that was proving difficult when I already worked so many hours for the pack and had no official documentation.

Over the last year, I had managed to scrape together some money and make a few friends. Today, one of those friends was introducing me to someone who might be able to get me some official papers, the kind that would make my new life a reality.

After tonight, I could get a real job in a town a long way away from here. All I had to do was show up and make sure that I didn’t say anything to spook them or reveal what she was.

By the time I had finished all of my tasks, I was already running nearly an hour late. I didn’t have time to shower. I barely had time to change out of my ridiculous maid outfit before jumping on my bike and heading into town.

The ride into the nearest human town took close to an hour from my cottage on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t usually too bad, but today I was already weak and tired. I hadn’t eaten since my breakfast this morning, and I didn’t exactly have time to cook anything before setting off. It was already difficult for me to think about anything other than my stomach, and yet I needed to push harder than usual if I wanted to make it to the meeting on time.

That reminded me of another thing I hoped to put an end to once I left this place. A werewolf’s metabolism was much faster than that of a human, and yet omegas weren’t allowed to eat when they were working. I spent more than half of my life feeling hungry, and it showed on my body. I was much thinner than I should be for my height, and I hated the way it made me look.

As I entered the town centre, I could see Dante waiting for me in the distance. Seeing him always brought a smile to my face. After Michael had rejected me, I didn’t think that I would ever be able to trust another man with my heart, but Dante gave me hope. Even though he had never expressed anything other than friendship towards me, my attraction towards him made me realise that I wasn’t quite as broken as I first thought.

Dante wasn’t a shifter, but he wasn’t exactly human either. His father was a warlock, and his mother was very much human. He was conceived after the two of them had a short fling together in college. Dante didn’t know anything about his heritage and the powers it gave him until his father showed up shortly before his eighteenth birthday to give him some warlock training.

“I was starting to worry, I thought you had lost your nerve,” Dante said as I pulled up alongside him on my bike.

“My boss made me work late again,” I told him.

Dante cursed under his breath as I locked my bike up nearby. He hated the way that werewolves treated their Omegas even more than I did. As he was only half warlock, he had received similar treatment from the magic community. It was the main reason he had agreed to help me escape from my pack.

“You won’t have to worry about that for much longer.” He smiled at me and looped his arm around my waist to lead me away.

We walked together in silence towards the bar where we were to meet the human contacts. It wasn’t very far, but it was a few streets away from the town centre, and the shift in atmosphere was quite drastic. There were less people walking around, and everything felt more ominous somehow.

The bar itself was unlike any place I had ever been to before. The small, dark room may have been inviting if you were a human, but to a werewolf, it felt like a trap. There was only one way in and out of the room, and there were far too many scents fighting to capture my attention. Even so, I could tell that the people that we were meant to meet were already there. I could instantly tell them apart from the other humans because they not only looked out of place, but they also reeked of fear.

“So this is the chick you were telling us about. Why didn’t you say that she was hot?” One of them said, his eyes trailing shamelessly over my whole body.

I had been worried about dealing with these humans, but apparently, I didn’t need to be. It was just the same as dealing with all the ranked members of my pack who treated me like property. Except with these guys, I was able to speak my mind without the fear of being punished for it.

“Now that you have finished ogling me, can we get down to business?” I asked, raising one eyebrow and c*****g my head to one side.

“Oh, I see, the little kitty has claws. I like that in a woman. How about we forget about money, and I take one evening with you as payment for my services.” He leaned forward and tried to stroke my hair, but I pushed his hand away from me. Why did everyone I met seem to think that it was fine to touch me without consent?

“You need to back off,” Dante growled, barely hiding his anger.

“I don’t know what you are so angry about. I just want one night with her, it’s not like I am trying to steal your woman.”

The situation was getting out of hand. Dante and the other men looked as though they were going to start fighting at any moment, and I was stuck in the middle of it like some kind of prize. It wasn’t how I saw the meeting going, and I needed to do something drastic to bring it back on track.

In desperation, I slammed my fists down on the table between us. The sound was enough to interrupt the escalating tension and draw their attention back to me. Satisfied that I had their attention, I sat down at the table before stating in a calm tone. “I just want to make one thing clear. I will not be sleeping with any of you. Now, can we get back to the reason we all came here?”

A smirk slowly spread across the sleazy man’s face. There was something about the way he was looking at me that made my skin crawl. I needed to complete this deal as quickly as possible, or I was going to end up punching this guy in the face, and after that, they would never give me the papers I wanted.

“Seeing as we are making things clear,” he stated, leaning over the table so that his face was only a few inches away from mine. I could smell the beer on his breath along the pungent scent of old cigarettes on his clothes.

“If you don’t agree to my terms, then the deal is off. I don’t need the money, but I do enjoy making feisty girls like you bend to my will. So those are my terms, you can either take them or leave them.”

Dante got to his feet, leaning over the table to push the man back into his seat. All of his muscles were tense, and I could feel the static charge of magic in the air as Dante struggled to retain his composure. I had never seen Dante this close to losing control before. I knew that I should probably find it frightening, but I didn’t. If anything, it only made me more attracted to him.

Thank the goddess that he wasn’t a werewolf. If he were, then I wouldn’t be able to hide the scent of my arousal from him.

“That is not the deal we spoke of before this meeting, and Sasha is not for sale.” Dante’s jaw was tense as he spoke. The man opposite him shrugged his shoulders before getting to his feet.

“It sounds as though we have nothing left to discuss. Feel free to call me again if you want to accept my terms.”

He tapped his friend on the shoulder, and the two of them walked out of the bar, blissfully unaware of how close they had come to their own demise. Once Dante was sure that they weren’t coming back, he practically collapsed into the seat beside me. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself and regain control over his magic.

“I’m so sorry. I knew he was a creep, but I didn’t realise he was that kind of creep. We will find someone else to help us out.”

I nodded my head in agreement, trying to hide some of the disappointment I was feeling. It had taken us months to find someone with the right contacts to give me what I needed. I had been so hopeful about this working out that I hadn’t thought about what it would be like to have to go back to my normal life after it fell through.

“How about I take you out for a meal in a couple of days as an apology?”

“That sounds nice,” I replied. Ignoring the butterflies which had just taken flight in my stomach. I knew he only meant it as two friends having a meal together, but my love-starved heart apparently didn’t get that message.