Page 45 of Rejected Mate Bride
She gave the shop one last look, making sure everything was in order for the following day, and went to the front door. She took the key from her apron pocket and turned the lock, ready to head back home to Camden and Sofia. She hoped they had started eating without her.
“Flora. Do you have a minute to talk?”
Alpha Harold was waiting for her outside the shop. It was the first time she could remember him addressing her by name. “That human girl” was what she was used to, although lately he had taken to calling her “Camden’s mate.” It was an improvement, at least.
“Alpha,” she said, addressing him respectfully. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, but I do need to speak with you. In private,” he added.
Flora couldn’t imagine what the alpha of Silverrose could possibly need her opinion on. He and Camden spoke to each other almost every day, and she assumed that anything that had any bearing on her life would have been taken care of by Harold’s nephew. But the two of them had been mending their relationship lately. Flora had seen how the alpha seemed to show a genuine interest in Camden’s ideas and, although he didn’t agree with them, had given Camden the chance to explain how changes to the pack could benefit everyone. She had no inclination that Harold would ever apologize for the way he had treated her, but maybe this private conversation was a means of patching things up between the two of them so that he and Camden could work together for the pack. As such a low-ranking member of the pack, she could hardly say no to him, anyway.
“Of course,” she said, turning the key in the lock and placing it back in her pocket. “Lead the way.”
Harold started walking down the street. Autumn had made its presence known in full force now, and the sun had set hours ago. Streetlamps flickered overhead, and Flora followed Harold around the block. He stopped near the alley that led behind the coffee shop and the businesses on either side of it. Harold had said he needed to speak with her, but not a single word crossed his lips as she approached him. His silence was starting to concern her.
“What can I do for you, Alpha?” she asked.
Harold pounced, grabbing her arm and pulling her roughly into the alleyway where a black car was waiting with the trunk open. Flora opened her mouth to scream, but Harold wrapped his arm around her torso, covering her mouth with his large hand.
“Easy, girl,” he growled in her ear. “You’ll only make this harder on yourself.”
She tried to break free, but his attack had taken her by surprise, and he was much bigger and stronger than her. He threw her into the trunk forcefully, and before she could even sit up, it closed overhead. Flora was thrown into pitch blackness.
She screamed for help, but there was no one around to hear her. She heard the car door open, and Harold got into the front seat, turning the key in the ignition.
“Help!” she screamed again.
“Quiet back there!” the alpha shouted back. “There’s no one here but me.”
“Where are you taking me?!” she screamed back.
“I’m returning you to where you belong,” Harold said, just loud enough for her to hear it through the fabric and metal of the car. “Back to Alpha Sier.”
The car began to move, and Flora slid against the back of the trunk. Flora looked around frantically, hoping that her purse was in the trunk with her. If she could get to her phone and let Camden know what had happened, he would come and rescue her. He wouldn’t allow Alpha Sier to harm her again; he had promised.
But her bag was gone, and with it, any hope she had of alerting her mate. She reasoned that it must have fallen when Harold attacked her. All she had was the key to the coffee shop, which wouldn’t do her much good now. She placed the key back in her pocket and listened, trying to figure out where Harold was taking her.
The drive didn’t last long, and soon she felt the car slowing to a stop. She waited in the dark for it to start moving again, but the trunk opened with a snap, and a bright light appeared above her as Harold shone a flashlight in her face. After being in the darkness, the light disoriented her. Flora put her hands in front of her eyes to block it, and Harold grabbed her roughly, pulling her from the car.
“Hold still,” he ordered.
Before she knew it, her wrists had been bound together with thick tape.
“Alpha Hughes, stop,” Flora said, her voice rising with panic. “You can’t do this. You can’t send me back to Ironbrand!”
“It’s the only way my pack will ever be at peace again,” Harold said.
Flora was surprised to hear regret in his voice, even as he pulled her away from the car and forced her to sit on the curb in the abandoned parking lot. Cigarette butts, fast food wrappers, and beer cans littered the ground, and a train rumbled in the distance. She vaguely remembered seeing an area like thisonce, on the trip from Silverrose to Ironbrand when she was a teenager.
“I’m already mated to Camden,” Flora pointed out. “You aren’t just hurting me by doing this. What about your nephew?”
Harold winced, and Flora could see she had struck a nerve. No matter what his feelings for her might be, Harold loved Camden.
“That is…regrettable. But what else can I do? Your return is all Alpha Sier is asking for. It has to be done,” Harold said.
But Flora wasn’t going to give in without a fight. She may be bound and at the alpha’s mercy, but she could still point him toward the truth of what he was doing tonight.
“If you think Demetrius will stop once he gets me back, you haven’t learned anything about him,” Flora said. “He knows that Camden took me from Ironbrand. The Joneses must have told him where I was, and he sent his men to collect me. The ones who were in Silverrose didn’t even know that the kidnappers had failed when they set fire to your people’s houses. What does that tell you?”
