Chapter 47

Jaxson

This pain is new. It’s worse.

I’ve been on the run for what feels like days, trying to clear my mind, hearing my father give into his pack’s whims over and over again. He’s caved into their damn complaints about how commoners are to be used, to be toyed with, and I can’t go back to the palace while I picture Aurora in any one of their places.

I can’t let this go on anymore. I’ve failed my mate, the most important woman in my life, and as I stumble in the woods, stammering to a stop, I know this pain building in my chest has to do with her. I kneels, catching my breath, my hand clutching my chest while a fire builds up my throat. It’s similar to the pain that hit me when Aurora and Luke had kissed.

If she’s doing it again now, my heart breaks, feeling heat and pressure swirl through my body. I have to keep from screaming, keep from shifting and ripping back through the woods, but I calm myself, letting the pain subside slowly. It’s agonizing to think what she is doing but I refuse to let go of her. I can’t release this rejection until I see her again.

Just so I can know, face to face, that she doesn’t want me anymore.

I just wish this pain would stop sooner. I can’t imagine my mate wanting to hurt me, but she has to know I wouldn’t reject her. I may have distanced myself while trying to make the palace a safe place for her, but it was a mistake. I never wanted to hurt her. I wanted to hurry up with my task to change the royal pack so I could bring her back knowing she would be protected.

Now I’ve lost my mate, and my pack is still a venomous bunch of neanderthals.

I’ve failed twice now and I can only imagine it being the reason for this pain. She has to be moving on from me, exploring the love she has always craved with Luke, and trying to move onto a life without the hindrance of being fated to a royal. I’ve caused her nothing but trouble.

“Aurora Hunter,” I breathe, trying to steady my hitched tone. “I don’t accept your rejection. You are my mate and I will not be rejected by you.”

My light trembles seem to fade out as I speak, the words repeating over and over out of my lips while I picture myself back to holding my mate, keeping her close, and refusing to let her go. I have to find her, but even after running for what feels like ages, I’ve not even found her damn scent anywhere.

I say it again. Each time I speak it, I feel a spark of hope back in my chest. I shift into my powerful wolf, letting him be confident and brave for us, pushing back through the woods and running through trails, up rocky mountain sides and promising my mate that I will see her again.

She will have to reject me to my face. Until then, I won’t stop protecting her.

Aurora

My wrists are tied, same as my ankles, while I blink alive on the floor of a room I am not familiar to. I can smell the combination of sage and lemon, the two scents swirling mercilessly in my head until I gag out loud.

The sound seems to catch an older man’s attention, a man who sits at a desk across the room. I don’t really recognize him, my vision fuzzy, and instead of trying to familiarize myself with his features I instead look down my body to see I’ve been put in a new outfit.

A dark shirt from a male whose scent is strong, matched with a set of shorts that are too tight for me, like a wetsuit, and I try not to ask where they came from. I’m just happy I’ve been dressed in something other than that shirt I have been wearing for weeks since I was brought here.

The bruises on my arms and legs are lightly faded, thankfully, and I feel more energized than before. My heart beats strong, whereas I recall it last fluttering in my chest every now and again, trying to pick up pace and then stumbling.

“I have something for you,” the older man hums

He plucks a small, glass vial off a shelf where hundreds of different colored liquids sit. I don’t have time to make sense of who he is, or what he is planning to do, before he flips the cap off the vial and empties the substance down my throat. I spit some of it up, expecting the old man to growl an insult and hurt me, but he only tenses his shoulders and stifles a chuckle.

“That was to make you tolerable to the pain, sunshine, but I guess you don’t care about that,” he says, a breezy edge to his stiff words.

He places the empty vial aside and returns to his desk across the room, studying a set of chemistry tubes and different sorts of earthy materials. I have too many questions to just pick one, my ankles wrapped so tight in the rope that my toes are tingling but I kick myself to sit up anyways. I scoot to the wall nearby and let it hold me upright, already breathless from such a short span of movement to get here.

“Who—” I breathe, shaking my head, so much echoing noise slamming into my eardrums at once that it makes me nauseated. I close my eyes, trying to stifle the voices and thoughts inundating my mind so much so that any concern of who that guy is and where I am at withers away in the chaos.

“I’m Herschel, the healer. You’re still with the Apogee pack, sunshine. Xander just left you here to make sure you’d stay alive,” he replies simply. “We lost you for a few minutes there. Took awhile to get you going again but here you are,” he adds while motioning toward me, like it’s some kind of a gift to have my miserable, captive life back.

My mind focuses on one piece of his explanation. “Apogee pack?”

“That’s what we’ve come to call ourselves,” he says, toying with glass vials and a pinkish, orange liquid. “Your mate has taken in mostly rogues at this point but he is a fair Alpha, accepting anyone of use to bringing down the kingdom.”

I feel dizzy, or maybe drunk, having trouble trying to understand what he is talking about. “I don’t have a mate,” I say, my heart wrenching. “I rejected Jaxson weeks ago.”

“Jaxson?” he say, peeking up over his desk. “No, you’re mated to Alpha Xander, sunshine. That’s how we were able to get you healed. Being marked by a royal is effectively the best way to cure any injuries and it seemed to work well on you.”

My eyes surge wide with dismay. “X—Xander?”

My body spikes with pain at his name pouring from my mouth. I ache, arching my back as it spreads up my spine and settles into the darkest corner of my mind. I feel more violated now than ever before, Xander’s enormous presence invading every single crevice of my psyche.

I’m nauseous at the snake that slithers through my every reminiscence and thought.

I groan, too weary to kick the royal out of my head. Instead, I weep, wondering how this has transpired. I was cleaning his room as normal and I got sick, feeling like I was going to pass out in sheer fatigue, and now when I wake, I’ve got another royal in my head.

“Reject,” I breathe, panicking, feeling him physically crawling through my mind without any restraint to stop him, to keep him from picking through the moments I’ve had with his brother.

He dissects them all, roaring in amusement at the moment where I rejected Jaxson and the pain it brought me. He is far too focused on that moment for so long that my eyelids feel heavy, the pressure in my head building too significantly, too rapidly.

I aim to reject him, my head tipping back as I feel too overwhelmed with Xander in my head to do so right now. Herschel stalks over beside me, holding my head upright with his warm, aged hands while he practically looks through me.

“Don’t reject him,” he hums, shaking his head. “It could very likely kill you.”

I shake my head, still trying to form the words but too disoriented with Xander toying with my mind from the inside. I thought having him violate my body was bad but this, this is significantly more painful and humiliating.

“I have to,” I pant, my hands sweating and trembling in my lap as I try to muster the energy it takes to endure the pain of rejection; again. “Have to reject—”

Herschel doesn’t seem too pleased with my response, snatching a vial off the shelf nearby and flipping the cork off before the heavy, syrupy liquid is slid down my throat. Instantly it taste calming, my tensions easing as I restrain a yawn that eventually breaks through. Sleep would be inconvenient at this moment but it is my only option. It overcomes me in minutes.