Rejected Mate (Feral Shifters 1)

“What are you?” I ask softly. “I know you were ‘made’ or ‘created’ or whatever, but what does that even mean?”

Malix’s smile fades away and he moves toward me, seemingly considering his words. He stops before he gets too close, but even still, his sunshine and fresh air scent overtakes me. I fight the urge to step back—I want him to talk to me. To give me answers.

He lifts a hand out of the water and rubs his palm over his short black hair. His shadows move sluggishly over his bulging biceps. “I am the son of a shadow and a shifter woman.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Um. How?”

“Magic,” he says with a shrug. “Magic was used to create me, but I had a shifter mother who birthed me.”

“Had?”

Malix nods. The moon is rising over the mountains, and it glints off his eyes. He’s beautiful. Otherworldly.

Sad.

“She died when I was four,” he murmurs. “Because of me and my twin sister. Carrying us, all the magic and shadow, it… my mother never recovered.”

“You have a sister?”

He clenches his jaw and looks away, out over the lake.

“She died too,” I guess, my heart sinking at the tightness of pain around his eyes.

Malix swallows visibly and blinks his long, dark lashes several times before he looks back at me. “Kian and Frost are all I have left.”

The pull between us, that insistent tug that never seems to go away, suddenly feels stronger than ever. I can’t stand the way his brow is drawn together, the pain in his eyes, the fact that his smile has just completely vanished. I want to give his happiness back to him and take away everything that’s making his heart ache.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

What the fuck am I thinking?

It’s a good goddamn question, but I’m walking forward before I can even begin to think of an answer.

When I reach Malix, I don’t hesitate.

I just wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him.

His soft, full lips are wet with lake water, and they stoke a fire in me that rages through every nerve ending. He makes no move to touch me, but his lips respond to mine, kissing me back.

My heart’s racing when I pull away from the kiss. Our eyes meet, and I want to tell him how sorry I am about his mother, about his sister, about this shitty lot in life he and his brothers have been handed. But the words don’t come. They feel insignificant.

So I just turn away and start making my way to shore.

When I get back there, I swear I’m going to go into hiding forever.

I kissed Malix. What the fuck? Have I forgotten my entire reason for being? I’m supposed to kill him, not kiss him.

The water splashes around my thighs as I reach the shallows. I’m almost knee deep when a hand grabs my wrist and jerks me to a halt.

Startled, I whirl around to find Malix right behind me, water cascading off his torso like he’s some kind of water god. The tattoos that wind over his shoulders and arms look like deep shadows on his dark skin, and his violet eyes glitter in the moonlight as he stares down at my face like he’s reading my soul.

Then he tightens his fingers on my wrist and yanks me toward him.

Our bodies collide, and he crushes his mouth to mine.

Chapter 25

Malix’s lips are full and warm, and he kisses just like he did in my imagination—with a fierce, powerful sort of hunger that belies his usual laughing demeanor.