3. Rejected
Rejected
Dakota
W hat the fuck was that?
I couldn’t believe that Jasper had just closed the door in my face like that. Seemingly indifferent to our bond. My bear alter was roaring, scrabbling for me to confront our mate and do something, anything, to sort this mess out.
Knowing there was no point trying to calm my stubborn alter, I ignored him. He wasn’t the only one that was hurt. In the last couple of hours, I’d met my mate and promptly been rejected by them.
Twice.
If that wasn’t a kick in the balls, I didn’t know what was.
Seeing no point in standing on the stoop, I headed back to my truck. I sat with my head on the steering wheel for a full minute as I tried to get myself together and decided what I was going to do.
The last few weeks had been a lot. Emotionally difficult and testing my limits.
I wasn’t like Papa and in touch with my feelings and full of the joy of spring or whatever.
When you just wanted some quiet, he was a pain in the ass.
Still loved the bones of him. I guess I was more like my dad, the pack healer.
He valued knowledge and had prompted me often to take the emotion out of a situation before going off half cocked.
Kade and everything there had really done a number on me.
I loved that kid. Had thought that maybe I’d been in love with him, but I hadn’t been, really.
There had just been a call to be close to him, to protect him and care for him that I now understood.
The Luna had put Kade in my path for a reason and that reason was Jasper.
The Luna knew I needed to be family for Kade while he didn’t have his papa. Kade was now, essentially, and in the eyes of The Luna herself, my son. Well, fuck. I couldn’t be. I’d had a mate already, and this pretender had rejected me. He’d completely shut me down.
Where did this leave me with the kids? According to shifter law, they were my family now. No small part of me wanted it to be true, even as the tiny masochistic part of me denied that fate would be that kind.
There wasn’t a whole lot I could do about the situation with my mate, if that’s what he truly was.
I wanted to explain to him it had to be some sort of mistake, a cosmic joke.
I’d already had a true mate, and I’d lost him.
For over thirty years, I’d grieved for the love that I’d lost. I still missed him.
There was no replacing him with another.
Shaking off the memories, I started the truck. I needed to be around familiar faces, so I headed to Heatwave. Not to look for an omega to fuck through their heat. I just needed to be around other shifters without the pack, and my family, breathing down my neck about Jasper.
My phone buzzed from where I’d left it in the center console, but I waited for it to ring off. I wasn’t in the mood, wanting to lick my wounds in private. It was stupid that I felt rejected, slighted, by Jasper, when I’d been about to protest that we weren’t mates.
I’d take the night, have a few drinks, then get some advice about the mate situation from one of our elders. Janet had never steered me wrong and I could be useful and take decorating ideas back to the pack, giving me an excuse to visit Kade.
Heatwave was quiet when I arrived. I didn’t pick up a band or sign in at the door since I knew I wasn’t going anywhere but home after a couple of drinks. The doorman waved me in, accustomed to shifters who just wanted to be around their own kind, but maybe were loners or in small packs.
The Sweetwater pack was pretty big as packs went, soon to be bigger when the bears rejoined.
Since his pack was the ruling pack of the area, Alpha Blake Sweetwater, my best friend Kade’s mate, was responsible for all the shifters that lived in Sweetwater, even if they didn’t call his pack theirs.
I’d thought about being independent in the days that had followed Kade’s kidnapping and rescue, quickly deciding that I wanted to be near Kade, and by extension, Blake.
Tate was at the bar and he gave me the once over as I approached. “You okay, man?”
“It’s been a day. Is there any of the strong stuff?
I’ll just have one and head out.” Usually Heatwave didn’t sell the stronger strength alcohol that could get shifters drunk since it could impair their ability to consent, but since I wasn’t wearing a band signifying I was here to fuck, then I was allowed something stronger, if they had any of it.
Deliveries weren’t always consistent, something I needed to bring up with my new alpha.
“Sure thing. There was a delivery yesterday. They really need to get the alpha a new assistant. That’s what they are blaming this all on, y’know?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, the alpha is the warehouse manager since they don’t have anyone that can run it like he does, or so I was told.”
“How are you told all this? You aren’t even pack. Aren’t you in the pride with Asher?”
Tate’s face fell momentarily, and I realized how insensitive that was.
When they had mated a couple of years back, the aviary had ejected Tate.
He was lucky that the pride wasn’t as picky about mixed matings.
The pride hadn’t cared since as betas they couldn’t have children.
There had been no reason to deny a mixed pairing of bird and feline.
The aviary had blocked Tate from seeing his family, so I scrubbed my face and apologized.
“Sorry man, it’s no excuse, but it’s been a day. Or a month.”
“Nah, it’s cool. I should be over it by now.”
“No. You shouldn’t. It’s a shitty situation.” I said firmly. “Did the council help any?”
“There was no point in asking them to intervene.”
“Why not?”
“Because my mom asked me to stop trying. They sided with the aviary, Dakota.”
Well, weren’t we a pair?
“Can I tell you something that might make you feel a touch better?”
“Absolutely. Misery loves company and all that.”
“Met my fated mate today.” I could see Tate winding up to speak. “And was rejected. Twice.”
“Fuck!”
Yeah.
We sat in silence for a while until Tate was called away to serve someone else and his partner, Asher, came in.
They both made drinks for the patrons pouring through the door now it was getting later.
It was only then that I noticed they were on bar duty and weren’t on the floor as betas for hire to the omegas going through heats.
In Heatwave, omegas could pick betas to either take them through their heats with toys and magical assistance, or start them off and have an alpha finish it.
Tate and Asher worked together on the floor and were the regular heat partners to my friend, Hiroshi, that I’d been alpha to a few times.
While Kade had gone off to have his heat with Blake, I’d partnered with Hiroshi.
I loved the guy in a platonic way. We had a lot of fun together and it was great to blow off some steam with no expectations.
It reminded me I needed to ask Hiroshi why he’d had a heat so early, more than a week earlier than expected. He’d been off too. Almost like he was sad but trying to mask it.
“How come you aren’t on the floor?” I asked Asher as he passed me.
He shared a look with his mate. “We, uh, just wanted to. Fuck! Look,” he leaned down to speak in my ear so other shifters wouldn’t hear.
“I’m only saying this because you won’t judge us and won’t say anything, but we’re a thing with Hiroshi.
So we aren’t doing that anymore.” He paused, and I tried to say something, except there were no words.
“He’s still open to his fated. We assume our thing will end when he meets whoever.
But for now… we love him, Dakota. He fits with us. ”
My mouth snapped shut. Who was I to say a thing?
This whole situation with Jasper had me thinking that our goddess, The Luna, was up to something.
I knew our birth rate was shrinking, but it wasn’t like Hiroshi was denying a mate in favor of his betas.
He wanted to wait for a fated mate before bonding, which was smart.
“You haven’t bonded with him, have you?”
Asher gave me a scathing look, his anger covering another unnameable emotion. “And turn the council on us? Fuck, no. When the time comes, we’ll give him up and probably head for somewhere else.”
“Why leave?”
“We couldn’t watch him with someone else, and what kind of alpha will take on an omega and two betas?”
That question stuck with me the whole night and all the way home. When I wasn’t thinking about Tate, Asher, and Hiroshi, I was thinking about Jasper.
My past still haunted me and I wondered if I’d gotten it wrong all this time. What if Cooper hadn’t been my mate after all? Had I wasted over thirty years grieving for a man that wasn’t supposed to be mine anyway?
I couldn’t afford to think like that. Coop wasn’t less deserving of my grief, or the love I’d given him, just because he might not have been my fated mate at all.
I’d loved him dearly from when I’d met him when he was nineteen, nearly twenty, and hadn’t stopped when I’d lost him before we could bond.
Just a month short of his twenty-first birthday when we would finally find out if there was a bond there set by The Luna.
My mind wandered. Coop’s face was still fresh in my mind, like it had been only yesterday. What would he say to me about all of this? My minor obsession with Kade and now a fated bond with Jasper? I imagined him laughing his ass off wherever he was.
What would he have thought about Jasper? Come to think of it, what did I make of Jasper?
Not that it mattered. The man that felt like my true mate didn’t want me and wouldn’t even entertain having a conversation with me about it.
Tossing and turning the entire night, I finally got up unrested and worked my way through my usual routine. Since I had an important meeting, I attempted to iron a shirt and wore a tie as I headed to the Mercury Delivers depot for a meeting.