Semua Bab REJECTED MATE : Bab 101 - Bab 110

My lips tightened, and I tried not to flare my nostrils. Any time people compared me to Dad, it was always to point out that I wasn’t as feminine or as graceful as Mum.“Is that a compliment or an insult?” I asked, keeping my voice measured.“After all that time in isolation, you knew exactly what to do,” he said.Some of the tension around my muscles eased. “Dad taught me from a young age how to prepare for anything. When he died, Gerrison did his best.”“Lydia’s father?”I nodded. “Did you get to spend much time with Dad when you were in Hell?”“Once he stopped kicking the shit out of me, we managed to have a few conversations,” Griff said. “If my father had been anything like yours, he would never have lost his pack.”I raised a shoulder, not knowing whether this was Griff’s attempt at starting a conversation or making amends. This was one of the first civil things he’d said to me since discovering my true identity, and I wasn’t about to push my luck and bask in his grudging admira

“A friend of a friend,” I shouted. “Where are you?”She didn’t reply for several heartbeats, but then a plume of fire blew out from several feet above us. I stepped back, my eyes wide, wondering what kind of magic user would dare to employ the element.“Griff,” I whispered. “Is Coral using fire?”“It’s legal now.”“Are you sure?” Back when I was alive, fire was a forbidden form of magic, punishable by death.“Something big happened between Yule and Candlemas, and Logris split into smaller villages. The Council even has a Fire Queen who is a phoenix shifter.”“Oh.” I squinted up toward the ceiling, where I swore I saw a green wing. “Is that a dragon?”A pointed head poked out from above us and glared down at us through red eyes.“Coral?” I asked.“Where are you?” she replied.“Inside the cave?” I licked my dry lips. “Are you looking for a green dragon?”“You’ve found him?”A column of flame appeared several feet in front of us, making us flinch. I clapped a hand over my mouth to suppre

I squeezed my eyes shut and rested my forehead on the door. The thought of spending the night with Griff as myself made my insides twist into agonizing knots.Beki’s sharp barks told me I was being pathetic. The worst part was that I couldn’t disagree. It turned out that I could withstand all that time in Hell—the torture, the pain, the humiliation—yet my insides quivered at the thought of being rejected once again by my mate.My wolf pushed against our bond, making my skin itch. This was her way of telling me that if I wasn’t woman enough to walk through that door and claim my mate, she would do it for me.“Give me a minute,” I murmured.The porter cleared his throat. “Miss,” he said with barely concealed impatience. “You have already contravened section twelve, subsection forty-two, article five of the Supernatural Secrecy Act, which states—”“Stop.” I cracked open an eye. “The door just got jammed.”He placed a gloved hand on the wooden surface and unlocked it with a pulse of magic

I stared into the furious amber eyes of my mate, my mind still struggling to pull itself out of its drowsiness. For the briefest of moments, my hand wouldn’t cooperate. My fingers spasmed around his erection, squeezing it tighter around the top.Griff’s snarl reverberated across my entire body, making my traitorous nipples tighten. “Cathwulf Aibek,” he said in a voice that curled around my neck like a garrote. “If you don’t release my cock this instant—”My fingers snapped open, and I rolled to the furthest side of the bed with my back pressed against the window. It turned out that the red I had been seeing throughout the dream had come from light streaming in through a lowered blind.Not that any of this mattered because I’d just molested Griff in his sleep.He rose from his spot and glowered, his lips curled with contempt. “First, you disguised yourself as someone else to scam a fuck, and now this.” He spread his arms wide, revealing his erection, which hadn’t so much as wilted sinc

As the red vehicle approached the stranded carriage and officers in black uniforms piled out, Griff snarled through the phone he clenched between his jaws to run.He didn’t need to tell me twice.The moment the enforcers, or whoever those people were, pulled the crowd of irate customers off of the porter, they would notice that the occupants of two of the cabins were missing. I turned around and bolted down the winding path.Leaves and low branches tangled in my fur as I passed, but the minor irritation was nothing compared to what would happen if we were caught. Griff followed a few paces behind me, either slowing because of the mobile phone he had to carry or out of a sense of protecting his mate. It was hard to tell which side of his soul was in charge, but I didn’t dwell on it too long.Our claws scraped across stony ground, and a cool breeze meandered through the trees and low shrubs. We continued down a winding slope leading to a fast-running stream that looked narrow enough to