Kidnapped Rejected Mate (Silverville Firefighter Wolves #4)

Chapter 1 - Soren

“Another hundred acres,” Xeran says, slamming into the firehouse and pulling his gloves off jerkily before tossing them to the ground. I’m the first to follow him out of the engine and into the bay, which hangs with the faint haze of smoke.

“Oh, boy,” Felix mutters, popping his head out, his pink hair still just as startling as the day he dyed it. He runs a dirty hand over it and bends his knees, dramatically leaping from the truck and to the ground. “I think he’s pissed off.”

The engine bay hangs with the putrid, slightly rotten smell of daemon fire—a scent that feels as synonymous with Silverville as the namesake ridge itself.

“You think?” Lachlan mutters, the next one to step out of the engine, pulling off a ball cap to reveal sooty golden hair. It’s a far cry from his normal look—designer clothes and fancy watches.

“Baby Holden has wolves’ tooth,” Kalen whispers, the youngest of us and the last to emerge from the fire truck.

I’m sure Xeran’s toddler having a toothache isn’t making things easy, but that’s the least of his worries right now.

We all stand quietly as Xeran paces, waiting. This is normally the time we’d do a post-fire recap and run through what we plan to put in our reports.

As Xeran paces, he lifts his soot-stained arms and drives his fingers into his hair, looking up at the ceiling of the firehouse as if the answer to our problem might be written in the rafters.

We all stare at him quietly, waiting for him to pull himself together, and I take it as an opportunity to cross to my locker, strip off my gear, and grab my tablet so I’ll be ready.

The rest of the guys wait patiently. They’re all covered in fine, shimmering daemon dust from head to toe, and I’m sure if I looked in a mirror, I would be, too.

Normally, Xeran is unshakable. Xeran Sorel, our supreme alpha. Leader of the pack for almost five years now. We grew up together, and I watched him train for this position his entire life.

Except he never thought he’d be dealing with wildfires, on top of all the other pack issues.

Heaving in a massive breath, he leans down, picks up his gloves, tucks them into his belt, and turns to us, his eyes flicking over to me.

“Numbers? Casualties?”

“Looks like eighty-nine acres of dense forestry,” I say, glancing down at the tablet in my hand. After we invested in a drone-surveillance system for the fires, it’s been a lot easier to keep track of their path. And their destruction. “And two casualties,” I add.

It’s not the worst fire we’ve fought, not by a long shot, but we’re getting worn down. There’s something about breathing in the daemon fire that leaves your lungs feeling raw, and I haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep in two weeks.

“What about that bitch?” Xeran asks, turning and stalking toward his office.

I give the others a glance—I’ll follow him while they stay behind to check on the engine, strip off their gear, and pray for more time before the next call.

“No news,” I mutter, an image popping into my mind of the blue-haired woman. “The Denver and Fort Collins packs have both been in our neck of the woods, helping with patrol, but beyond the odd sighting of a figure in the woods, there’s nothing.”

“She must be feral,” Xeran mutters, dropping into his chair and rubbing at his brow. We’ve talked about this a million times already—gone over and over that day in the woods.

The woman who’s been starting the fires around Silverville.

Xeran reaches into his desk and grabs a little fan.

He plugs it into his computer and points it in his direction, though it looks too weak to actually cool him off much.

Although he’s only thirty-three—the same age as me—the past five years have aged him much further than that.

Between trying to rebuild after every fire and keep morale up, it’s been brutal.

Xeran goes on, “I just don’t see how someone could live out in the woods like that—no civilization—for so fucking long.”

A feral shifter—more wolf than human—spending their time hunting and living like a wolf would. Most of them end up losing touch with their human side. Hurting people. And when Xeran says civilization, what he really means is pack. Wolves need their packs. We need supremes.

He already knows what I think, but I say, “I don’t think she’s feral.”

“Then how do you explain none of the other packs knowing her?” Xeran counters, like he has every time we’ve had this conversation. “How do you explain her surviving this long up there without losing her shit?”

Images from a few weeks ago flash into my mind—all of us up in the mountains, in a clearing. Watching Phina, Valerie, and Maeve talk to the blue-haired woman. Tara.

Felix, defending his mate. Lachlan and Xeran doing the same.

Tara, going up in a blaze of blue light and flames. Her screaming at Felix to let go of her. Him, holding tight and refusing to let go, likely because it was the only way he could protect Maeve.

“Soren?”

I blink, returning my focus to the supreme, who looks back at me intently.

“I don’t have an explanation,” I say, clearing my throat and taking a seat at one of the chairs opposite his desk. “But the way she was talking, her ability to think and articulate—that didn’t seem like a feral to me. That seemed like a very smart woman trying to move some chess pieces.”

“Phina said Tara wanted to get the group back together,” Xeran says, his voice lowering to a scary octave.

Not only is Phina his mate, but she’s the luna of the pack.

Which means he’ll do anything to protect her.

And he has—since that night, Phina and his children have been under constant protection, no matter how annoyed Phina is with what she calls “the watchdogs” hanging around outside their place.

“I know,” I say. “But so far, after that day on the mountain, we’ve seen no other threats.”

Xeran is quiet for a moment, his gaze settled heavily on his desk. I have no doubt that he’s the right shifter for this job. That he’ll get us all through this, one way or another. I just wish he would talk to me about what he’s going through.

It’s a Sorel trait, though, for him to keep it to himself.

Even after the deaths of his brothers, he didn’t want to talk, to air out any of that grief. They turned on him—and this pack—and any time I tried to press, to see how he felt about it, he’d shut me down.

Jaw tense, Xeran raises his eyes to mine and says in a steely voice, “I want you to put a missive out to everyone in the pack. Get it on the boards in the pack center and make sure it’s in the newsletter. If you can send alerts to phones, do it.”

I shift in my seat, tapping around on my tablet to bring up the right avenues to make this happen.

When it’s clear I’m ready, Xeran drops his voice to a skin-chilling coolness and says, “Make it clear that if anyone is harboring Tara, they will be executed. If they make contact with her and don’t immediately tell us, they will be executed.

If I find out a single member of this pack is connected to her, or these fires, in any way, I will not show mercy. ”

Maybe I should push back against this—point out that it’s much harsher than the approach Xeran usually goes for. But he’s exhausted. We’re all exhausted. And part of me can’t deny the satisfaction I might feel at watching anyone involved in these fires get exactly what’s coming to them.

“I’ll send it out,” I promise.

“Good,” Xeran grunts out, waving his hand at me. “Now go home and get some rest.”

He’s telling me to, but I know he’s not going to follow his own advice. Still, I stand and turn, heading to the door.

The second I walk out of it, Kalen and Lachlan are on the other side, looking freshly scrubbed and in clean sets of firehouse clothes.

“Is he losing it?” Kalen asks, falling into step with me. As Xeran’s younger brother, Kalen is acutely worried about the toll everything is taking on his older sibling, especially since Kalen was the one who convinced him to come back.

“More importantly,” Lachlan says, glancing at the two of us as we make our way down the hallway, “is he going to have his head in the right place for our next call?”

Rather than say something pointless about hoping for a long break before our next wildfire call, I just turn and sigh, flipping around my tablet so they can see the announcement I’ve written up from Xeran’s mouth.

Lachlan sucks in a breath between his teeth. Kalen goes pale, then starts to shake his head, making to turn in the direction of his brother’s office.

“Kalen,” I warn, grabbing his arm and stopping him.

We’re both alphas, but I’m older, and Xeran and I spent our childhoods playing with Kalen, teaching him how to hunt.

We may not be brothers by blood, but he trusts my judgment.

“Don’t,” I tell him. “Not right now. If you have something to say, you need to wait for the right moment.”

I release his arm, and he nods, letting out a long sigh.

“I don’t like this any more than you do,” I mutter, hitting the button to send out the missive.

We move together to our lockers, grabbing our things to head out for the day. When I notice Lachlan moving a little more jerkily than normal, I look around my locker at him. “What’s up with you?”

He lets out a short, annoyed breath, staring into his locker and shrugging on a button-up shirt that probably cost more than my apartment rent for the year. “I have to shop for a groomsman's tux. As if I even want to be in the fucking wedding in the first place.”

I ignore the twist in my chest, the immediate flush of adrenaline through my body at the mention of his sister’s wedding.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t concern me.

“And if that wasn’t bad enough, we’re getting dinner with my parents after,” he adds. “I guess they want to celebrate Aurela finally picking out her dress.”

The sound of her name is like a sleeper-cell trigger phrase, waking up parts of my brain I’ve worked very hard to keep buried.

Her golden hair, hazel eyes. Soft hands and the gentlest voice I’ve ever heard.

“Anyway,” Lachlan says, rolling his shoulders and turning to me. “Have a good night, man. Try to get some sleep.”

He either doesn’t notice or isn’t bothered that I haven’t managed to get anything out for the duration of our conversation about his sister. Swinging his leather bag over his shoulder, he walks out of the firehouse to where his car is parked outside.

I stare into my locker, feeling lost, trying not to think about it.

But trying not to think about things has never worked for me. My brain loves to pick up on details, put together information for me that I usually don’t need, and don’t want.

They’re going to celebrate her picking out a dress. Aurela is getting married, and she’s happy about it.

And as much as my wolf is howling, twisting, and demanding I go and do something about this, I’m not going to.

I made my choice a long time ago. I chose her over me. Did what I could to make sure she would be happy. That she would be okay.

And if she’s happy, there’s not a chance in hell I’m jeopardizing that.