Chapter 6 #2
“Fuck,” he said, the word torn from somewhere primal and raw. “You’re my fated mate.”
Yes, my cheetah said in my head. He will give us beautiful cubs. Claim him.
What the fuck?
Cubs?
We just met him thirty seconds ago.
Time means nothing, my cheetah replied with feline certainty. He is ours. We are his. This is the truth.
“There is a probability of zero for encountering one’s fated mate in a random location,” I said aloud.
“Apparently, fate doesn’t give a shit about probabilities,” he replied, moving toward me with predatory grace.
My pussy clenched and became wet with desire. His scent intensified, citrus, sandalwood, and something wild that made my knees weak.
“Jesus,” he breathed, his pupils dilating as he inhaled deeply. “I can smell your arousal.”
I lifted my chin defiantly, refused to be shamed. “You’re my fated mate. Biology doesn’t lie, even when it’s inconvenient.”
For a moment, I saw raw hunger flash across his features. His hand lifted toward my face, fingers trembling as they hovered inches from my cheek. I held my breath, waiting for him to ask to mate and claim me.
Finally, someone who saw me, accepted me, all of me.
Then something changed. Pain flashed across his features, so raw and sudden, it took my breath away. His eyes, which had been blazing with heat moments before, dimmed with what looked like fear. Loss. Something deeper that I couldn’t name.
His expression shuttered. He jerked back like I’d burned him.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice cold and distant. “I won’t claim you.”
Ours, she snarled. Take what is ours.
The rejection hit me hard. Something fundamental cracked inside me, a breaking so profound I heard it like glass shattering within my soul.
I stared at him in shock, the rejection like a physical wound that stole my breath. Every shifter cub grew up on stories of fated mates. Finding your mate was supposed to be the moment everything finally made sense.
Not the moment everything imploded.
For a split second, I saw myself through his eyes, obviously unworthy, fundamentally unlovable.
The revelation sank into my bones like poison.
If my own fated mate, the one person written in my destiny since birth, could look at me and decide I wasn’t enough, what did that say about me?
The question burned through my chest like acid, corroding everything it touched.
“What?” I managed to say, the word barely audible.
He was already walking away, his powerful body rigid with what looked like physical pain. For just a moment, his shoulders hunched as if carrying an impossible burden.
“Find someone else,” he called over his shoulder, but his voice cracked on the last word.
The casual dismissal snapped my shock and replaced it with pure, righteous fury. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I snarled, my voice carrying enough venom to make him freeze. “You just told me I’m your fated mate, and now you’re walking away?”
“That’s right.” His voice was hollow, empty of the heat that had filled it moments before.
“No.” The word exploded from me with such force that nearby birds took flight. “Absolutely not. You don’t get to drop the fated-mate bomb and then just leave.”
“Watch me,” he said without looking back.
“Wait!” I called after him, my voice breaking. The sound emerged raw and wounded, nothing like my usual controlled tone. “You can’t just…”
He kept walking, each step driving daggers into my chest as the partially formed bond stretched and began to tear.
“At least tell me why!” I shouted, hating the desperation in my voice but unable to stop it.
“You owe me that much. I don’t even know your name!
” I called after him, the absurdity of it hitting me like another blow.
My fated mate was walking away, and I didn’t know the first thing about him.
Not his name, not where he came from, nothing but the scent of him.
But he kept moving away, his powerful strides eating up the distance between us, leaving me alone with the wreckage of what should have been the most profound connection of my life. I stood there, shaking with anger and disbelief. I pressed my hand to my chest, where something vital felt torn open.
My fated mate had rejected me.
Weak male, my inner cheetah said. Fury bled through our mental connection.
He abandoned us. Fuck him. He’s not worthy.
“Fine,” I whispered to the empty savanna. “Fuck you too, wolf.”
My cheetah hissed inside me, claws raking against my human control. For the first time in my life, I felt her fighting to break free, to chase him down, to make him pay.
And for the first time in my life, I was tempted to let her.
Hours later, after his rejection in the savanna, I sat in Dr. Haku’s field lab, staring blankly at the data sheets she’d asked me to review.
My hands wouldn’t stop trembling. Every cell in my body felt wrong, like they were all vibrating at the wrong frequency.
“You look like hell,” Haku said, sliding a flask across the metal table. “Drink.”
I took a burning swallow. “I met my fated mate today.”
Her eyes widened, a smile starting to form until she registered my expression. “But that’s…” She faltered, the smile fading. “What happened?”
“He rejected me.”
Haku went completely still, like prey sensing a predator. “That’s not possible.” Her voice dropped to a horrified whisper. “In twenty years tracking shifter populations on three continents, I’ve never seen a mate rejected. Not once.”
“Well, congrats,” I said, taking another burning swallow. “You just witnessed shifter evolutionary history.”
“Listen to me, Rozi.” Haku leaned forward, her face intense.
The scent of her anger, hot metal and desert sand, filled the small lab.
“What he did isn’t just cruel, it’s unheard of.
The mate bond isn’t some romance-novel bullshit.
It’s the most sacred connection in shifter existence.
Every shifter spends their life hoping to find that one person the universe created just for them. ”
I stared at the data, numbers blurring through unshed tears. My fingernails dug crescents into my palms, the small pain a welcome distraction from the gaping wound in my chest. My skin felt too tight, like my cheetah was trying to claw her way out to howl her rage at the moon.
“Guess I’m just special that way.” The words tasted like ash on my tongue. Bitter. Poisonous.
“No, you don’t understand.” Haku’s voice sharpened. “Rejecting a mate bond is like cutting off your own arm. No one does it. No one. It goes against every instinct we have.”
I finally looked up at her, letting her see the raw devastation I couldn’t hide. “Then why did he?”
“I don’t know.” Haku’s expression softened with pity that made me want to scream. “But it’s wrong, Rozi. So wrong, that in all my years studying shifter communities, I’ve only heard whispers of it happening, like some kind of ghost story they tell cubs to scare them.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out strangled. “So I’m the cautionary tale now.”
“What did it feel like?” Haku asked quietly. “When you recognized each other?”
“It felt like finding something I didn’t know I’d lost,” I whispered.
Haku nodded. “And when he walked away?”
“Like he ripped out something vital and took it with him.” My voice broke on the last word.
“That’s because he did.” Haku’s eyes glistened with unexpected tears. “What that male did to you, it’s the cruelest thing one shifter can do to another. It’s worse than death, Rozi. In our world, it’s worse than death.”
I pushed the flask away, suddenly nauseated. The truth of her words settled into my bones, validating the wrongness I’d felt in that moment. It wasn’t just me. It wasn’t my fault. What he’d done was universally recognized as an abomination.
“I’ll never forgive him,” I said, the words emerging with a calm certainty that surprised me.
“No one would expect you to,” Haku replied. “No one.”
The memory faded, leaving me back in the present as I moisturized my face while leaning against the vanity, my fingers trembling. “Tomorrow, I’m just going to play nice with Brody, but absolutely no way that I’m giving in to our mating bond.”
And just when I thought I’d actually convinced myself, a vision of Brody’s hands snaking up my thighs and spreading them wide flashed through my mind. I shifted uncomfortably, trying to ignore the ache between my legs.
“Dammit.” I slammed my palm against the cold granite. “Don’t go there.”
For months after he’d walked away, I’d woken up gasping for air, drenched in sweat, with my heart trying to punch through my rib cage. Always the same nightmare, running through endless savanna grass, lungs burning, chasing his retreating shadow while my cheetah screamed in rage and pain.
Even now, my hands trembled slightly as my body remembered what my mind worked so hard to forget.
After his rejection, I’d spent years becoming a woman who didn’t need him or anyone. And now fate had thrown Brody and me back together in the one place I couldn’t escape without abandoning my research and the shifters who needed it.
I could do this. I could work with him without reopening old wounds.
I could maintain professional detachment while developing treatments that could save unmated males in the Ridge.
I strode out of the bathroom and pulled out my sleep shorts, tank top, and socks and put them on.
Turning off all the lights, I slipped under the cool blankets.
As I fluffed the pillows, a memory flashed unbidden—Kenya, Brody’s eyes looking at me with wonder, with hunger, with recognition.
“You’re my fated mate,” he’d said, voice rough with emotion.
And then, his cutting words: “Find someone else.”
I shoved the memory away, just as I’d done countless times over years. My being in the Ridge wasn’t about the past. It was about ensuring my research could proceed without interruption. Nothing more.
When Brody picked me up, there would be no personal discussions. No rehashing the past. Just clear professional boundaries.
I groaned when my cell on the bedside table flashed, and I grabbed it. Unknown Number (TEXT): Your grandmother sends her regards. Enjoy your last days of freedom, Dr. Dhahabu.
My cheetah surged forward with a snarl that vibrated through my chest. The animal knew what the human was only beginning to understand. I wasn’t in Black Forest Ridge just for research.
I was being hunted.
I wasn’t that helpless eighteen-year-old girl anymore. And anyone who thought they could take me without a fight was about to learn exactly how dangerous a Dhahabu woman could be.
I texted back two words. Bring it.