Rejected Forced Mate (Crystal Creek Wolves #5)

Chapter 1 - Noah

"Stay still. You're hurt."

The voice was soft and sweet, but the request was impossible. There was no way I could simply stay still, not with the pain that I was in.

I've had my fair share of injuries in my life, but nothing like that pain. I had never known agony like it. My entire body was composed of white-hot misery. My entire existence was suffering.

But that voice. It was a cooling balm on the pain, and when I felt the touch of gentle fingers, the agony retreated even more.

I forced my eyes open but could only see the blurry outline of someone with a halo of rust-red hair above me.

I inhaled, but the scent of the place was unfamiliar.

There were wooden beams above me, and a soft bed beneath me.

Mixed with the smell of unfamiliar wolves and dried healing herbs, there is one thread of scent I recognize so strongly that it was almost enough to get me on my feet again.

Sage.

"No, no, stay still, you stubborn wolf," Sage pressed her hands against my bare chest as I tried to rise, desperate to see her, but I had no strength, and she was easily able to push me back onto the mattress.

"You're at the pack healer's cabin, and you're still wounded. Stop moving around so much."

She wouldn't let me move, but as I blinked over and over again, my vision finally began to clear, and I was able to look my fill. It really was her, red hair curling around her face and freckles

dusting across the bridge of her nose. Sage's eyes were the rich brown of mahogany wood, but I could see no sign of the adoration she had once felt towards me.

Or the disgust she had felt towards me when we last spoke, but I was thankful for that.

This time, Sage looked worried, a crease between her gracefully arched brows. My chest had gone tight at the stab of recognition, and I was drowning in the memories of her. The woman I'd yearned for above all others. The woman I'd rejected so cruelly.

My mate, Sage Williamson.

"What—" I croaked, but she shushed me, one hand going behind my head to tilt it up and the other holding a glass of water to my dry lips. Suddenly, I was impossibly thirsty, but she only let me drink little by little.

"Quiet, now. You still aren't in great shape. You need to relax."

"Sage..." I rasped, wincing from the pain.

"Noah, please. Be quiet and let me take care of you, okay?

" Her tone was soothing, and I couldn't help but obey her.

She put the glass down on a little table next to the bed and then rested her hands on my chest once more.

It was the sort of touch I would have killed to have before, but there was none of the frantic pull of attraction in the way she put her hands on me.

Instead, it was the cool, professional touch of a healer.

And then I felt her magic.

Damn. She'd grown significantly stronger, and the flow of her power from her fingertips into me was controlled and practiced.

Sage didn't pour it over me all at once, trying to heal me in one go, but focused on one area at a time so she didn't tire herself out.

She didn't speak, absorbed in her work, and I marveled at the fact that she was with me once more.

"Sage," I tried again, but she ignored me.

Not that I could blame her, considering the fact that we had parted on terrible terms. I'd had years to go over the script in my head of what I would say to her if we ever had the chance to be face-to-face again, but none of those scripts ever had me critically injured and at her mercy.

When she pulled her hands away, I wanted to reach out to bring her back, but I was so sluggish that she'd managed to walk away before I could even raise my arm. She returned after a moment, sitting in a seat next to me, just out of reach.

"Can you tell me how much pain you're in on a scale of 1-10?"

I had no desire to talk about that. What I wanted to talk about was Sage, what she had done in our years apart, and if she ever thought about me. But I knew if I was too pushy, she'd assign another healer and she'd slip through my fingers.

Sage scribbled down some notes of her chart before continuing, "Do you remember anything before you woke up here? Or anything about why you were in this territory?"

Ah, that explained it. I was on another pack's land, the pack that Sage had joined after I'd rejected her.

I was both relieved that Sage had found a soft place to land after she left my pack, and jealous that she'd spent the years we'd been separated building a new life without me.

..even if it was my fault she had to leave in the first place.

I also couldn't remember a damn thing. My brain was toast, and the last thing I remembered was being at a Silvervine pack meeting. I couldn't even remember the subject.

After a few moments of me trying to dredge the memories up and coming up empty-handed, I groaned, "No idea." After a few more sips of water, I was able to ask, "Where am I?"

Sage pursed her lips, unhappy that I had no information to give her, but she didn't hold back because of it. "You're at the healer's cabin of the Brokenclaw pack near Crystal Creek. Do you know where that is?"

Surprisingly, I did. Apparently, it was only my short-term memory that was busted, but the older stuff remained.

This was Joe Longwood's pack, one of four in a quad-alliance that had garnered the notice of a lot of other packs on the East Coast. Four strong packs working together was rare, and it was common knowledge that messing with the alliance was a bad idea.

What in the world could have driven me to enter another Alpha's land without asking?

It was stupidly dangerous, and I couldn't imagine why I would have done such a thing.

"I know where it is," I said, "But I don't know why."

"Hm." Sage scribbled a few more things down before adjusting my IV bag. "Joe is going to want to talk to you. When you're better, of course. But do you possibly remember enough that I can at least tell him you aren't a threat?"

"I'm not," I assured her roughly. I had enough on my plate dealing with my own pack, so I was confident I had no reason to be picking a fight with another.

The only outlier reason was that I'd come to take Sage back, whether she wanted to go with me or not, but if the pack is allowing me to be healed, that tells me it wasn't Joe or any of his wolves that put me in the condition I was in. "Was I attacked?"

"That's what we believe happened, yes. You'd barely crossed into this territory before it happened, but no one in any of the local packs has any idea what happened. But we'll go over all of that once you're better. I'm going to give you some more medication so you can rest."

"Wait," I reached for her, fingers barely able to brush the sleeve of the long white healer's coat that she was wearing. "Sage, I want..." I coughed, and she offered me the water once more. "I want to talk to you. Please."

"This medication will knock you out for a few more hours, and one of us will be here to check on you again once you wake up."

I couldn't care less about resting, not when my long-lost mate was right there, our bond waking up from its years-long slumber. "Don't put me back to sleep. Stay. Talk to me."

"Once you're up again, we'll see if you can eat."

She was ignoring me completely, which made my heart sink. It wasn't that she couldn't hear me. I knew she could. But she was determined to be Sage the healer, and not Sage, my mate. I deserved it, but that didn't mean I was going to lie down and accept it.

Well. I was going to lie down for some time, at least. But once I was back on my feet, it would be a different story.

Still, the last thing I wanted was to see her go. It was like I was starving for her, and if I could only look my fill, that would have to be enough. "Sage. Sage. I don't care about the medical shit. Stay with me."

Sage still didn't turn, and after adjusting the IV line once more, I felt the cool medicine entering my veins. My eyes were heavy within seconds. "Sleep well, Noah. You're going to need it."

The last thing I did before passing back out was to reach for her. But Sage, of course, didn't reach back.