Rejected Mate (Feral Shifters 1)

It’s Kian.

Chapter 5

Motherfucker.

Of all the fucking bars in all the fucking cities in this country, Kian has to walk into this one when I least expect him. I’m three drinks in, filled to the brim with a burger and fries, and half-dead from traveling all day.

Things just got really complicated.

He’s standing in the doorway, his gaze sweeping the bar for an open table. I’m transported back to Keggers in Montana, watching him walk into my life like a human wrecking ball. Here he is, doing the exact same thing in an obscure hole in the wall in middle-of-nowhere New Mexico like nothing’s changed.

Things have changed though. In the three years since I last saw him, he’s gotten harder, both in his face and in his sinewy, muscular body. His hair’s longer with a hint of curl at the tips, like he’s forgotten to get a trim. He still has broad shoulders and an imposing height as he looms in the doorway—a demon in black jeans. He’s got more tattoos, too, swirling up both sides of his neck and down to his wrists on either arm.

The sight of those tattoos makes my body respond. I remember my fingers pale against that black ink. My lips trailing up the curlicues across his abdomen, my tongue ringing his nipple.

God, I can still taste the salt on his skin. The hot, wild, intoxicating taste of him.

His eyes, though, they haven’t changed. His eyes are that same endless brown ringed by gold and framed by dark lashes. The same eyes that stared so lovingly into mine as he claimed me.

As he ruined me, heart and soul.

I’ve been dreaming of those eyes every night since we stumbled into his hotel room in a flurry of groping hands and hot kisses.

I want to stare into them forever—

—and jam my knife into both pupils.

Otherwise, he’s still Kian. He’s still exactly as I remember him.

Then he catches sight of me.

Time stands still. The bar disappears. No more drunk, shouting partiers. No more clinking dishes and raucous laughter. Just me and Kian and this vast ocean of hurt and need and absolute fucking fury.

I can’t breathe. I cling to the back of the chair, my head whirling, my lust and anger meshing until I can’t delineate between the two emotions. There he is like some dark god three years after he tore my soul from my body and left me to drown in the blood.

I want to fuck him.

I want to kill him.

While my heart’s doing its damnedest to escape the confines of my rib cage, Kian’s expression doesn’t even change. But he recognizes me. I can see it. I can feel it.

After a split second of eye contact, he turns away and makes his way across the bar to a small, empty booth, where he sits with his back to me.

Clearly, he intends to ignore my presence.

Pain ripples through me, his rejection of our bond like a knife slicing deep into old wounds. That old agony opens up, fresh as ever and ten times as hurtful. Isn’t absence supposed to make the heart grow fonder?

But as hurt as I am, as cut as I feel, anger is right on its heels.

Fuck. This. Asshole.

If he wants to play this game, he’s going to do it to my face.

I surge to my feet and snatch my drink off the bar, ice ringing against the glass as I whirl away from Joe’s questioning gaze. The bartender’s returned with my change, but I leave him standing there. I don’t care about change.

I care about ending this shit once and for all.

Stalking across the room, I keep my eyes trained on Kian’s bowed head as he reads the menu and imagine shoving the whole thing up his ass.