Page 82 of Rejected By the Alpha

No, he’d love it.

He’d fucking love it.

I drew my hands over his muscular chest. “Please …”

“No,” he said, capturing my wrists and clasping silver rings around them that I hadn’t seen before, chaining me to the stone wall. “You’re going through heat.”

“What?” I said in a breath. “No …” I yanked on the chains. “No, please …”

Once my wrists were bound, he did the same with my ankles.

“Please,” I cried. “Why?”

He captured my chin in his huge hand, lifted it just enough so I stared up into his blazing red eyes, and then drew his thumb across my bottom lip. “Because when I claim you, it’s not going to be because you’re going through heat.”

Chapter Forty-Five

Cade

I stalked through the woods, sniffing for Ember’s scent, and snarled in frustration. Pavel, Hazel, and I had been out here for the last hour, and all I could still inhale was the thick scent of blood from the battle on Davix’s property. So many fucking wolves had died today, so many hurt.

Too bad one of those wolves hadn’t been Davix himself.

That’d make my fucking day. No, year.

“Over here!” Pavel shouted from the river. “I think I found something.”

When I reached him, he was staring down at the river, gripping a pink shirt. After taking it from him, I sniffed it and shook my head. It wasn’t Ember’s scent. Someone must’ve shifted all the way out here yesterday before running toward the battle at Davix’s place. So, I tossed it down into the river and let the water take it away.

“We’re not going to find her out here,” I said, heading back in the direction of Java.

Pavel grunted. “We will.”

“I told you bringing her to Black Hollows was a bad idea.”

Pavel pressed his lips together. “It’s the only way to get her care.”

“So, it’s better that she’s been captured and could be dead altogether?” I asked, the mere thought making my blood boil.

All the warnings I had given him from the very fucking beginning, and he hadn’t listened.

While I could feel him approaching me, I didn’t stop him from grabbing my collar and shoving me up against the tree. He sank his fists up against my throat with all his strength, as if he was actually doing something.

Sometimes, I liked letting him think he would come close to hurting me, but maybe that was a mistake. Because now? Now he had moved Ember into Black Hollows because he thought he could protect her.

“My sister is fucking dying,” he said through clenched teeth, breathing heavily out of his nostrils. “I will do what I can to keep her breathing. This is the only way. We’ve tried so many other doctors—human doctors—who could do nothing but tell her it was too late.”

Pavel wasn’t worried about his sister being gone. No, he looked pissed.

Truthfully, I was, too, because why the fuck would Ember leave by herself when I had strictly told her not to step a single foot off the property without someone to protect her?! What was wrong with her?!

“She doesn’t know any better,” my wolf said inside my head. “She’s new to our world.”

I tightened my hand into a fist and growled. While I didn’t want my wolf to be right, he was. Ember didn’t understand the danger she was in by just being this close to a wolf pack. War could break out in any second, and rogues stalked around like it was nobody’s business.

And I couldn’t always keep an eye on her.

“There is no trace of her in the east,” someone said behind us.