Rejected Mate and Following Fate novel Chapter 30

I sit staring at the little fire I pulled together in the basin of the clearing I managed to find. My ass on a fallen rotten tree, feet at either side of my rock circled mini campfire. Somewhere caught in the unremarkable depths of another dense dark wood, in the middle of nowhere, that is not as far from the mountain as I would like it to be. Sunny today, with no breeze and the atmosphere has an almost serene calm to it.

I'm far enough that fires no longer make me nervous, even when sat in an open clearing like this, as I doubt anyone would see the smoke now. No idea anymore on where I am, only know how to go back to where I came from.

That's the thing about us… we can always find our way back to places we've been or left, but without a map, I have no idea how far I am from where I started, or where I am if someone asked me. It all started to look the same to me after only two days and finding landmarks in almost identical forests is not that easy. I have to keep climbing trees to check where the mountain is on the horizon, so I stay heading south of it.

Lord knows I would probably end up U turning accidentally and heading back if I didn't. I don't seem to have a sense of direction that I'm sure most wolves should. I just have this constant pull to go home and I'm not convinced it's fully because of homesickness.

Sierra's dream keeps haunting me, even in daylight now too, and for some reason, keeps replaying whenever I have to make a choice in direction, swaying in the canopy and gazing at the miles around me. More than once, I've noticed that when I come to a crossroad in my path choosing, she becomes prominent in my mind and my gut tries to pull me east. Not even back to her son, but off to the left into the unknown. I'm not sure it's related, or why my mind keeps wandering that way.

I've wondered what would happen if I said screw it and just went that way, more than once, but I know it's probably nothing more than my being dumb and imagining it. I'm lost, emotionally, physically, so it's no wonder my mind is trying to give me some sort of guidance, or fake purpose, to get me out of this funk.

My plan was always south, my instincts keep on trying to sway me away from the south and I shouldn't ignore my gut, but if my instincts are as faulty as the fates, I'm better off ignoring them completely. Look how wrong they were about Colton. He did it … ignored them despite our bond. He marked a mate and forgot about me. In the end I guess, it wasn't as hard as he thought it would be. He just needed me to get out of his way.

South is where my mother said her family came from, not that I know much about them as she never really spoke of her roots the way my father did. My mother was not a Radstone wolf, nor a Whyte pack. She came from somewhere else, shrouded in mystery, and always said meeting my father was fated and magical, but never really told us the details or expanded on it.

As a little child I was not overly invested in love stories, so I never pushed. Father would shrug and tell us that their story was much like any other and brush it away, evasive, but then he wasn't the gushy romantic type. I do know that she said she came from a place where the weather was warmer, land flatter, and her own pack never kept in touch or reached out in all of the years we lived on the mountain skirt.

My grandparents were my father's family, and my mother, she just never brought hers up. We didn't really talk about it. My family was small, due to my father being an only child, born late in my grandparents mating life, and older generations had passed away in my early life before I knew them. Wolves live longer than humans, but not for hundreds of years like the vampires are meant to.

It never used to make me think, or dwell, but now knowing I have red eyes and a strangely rare gift, it makes me wonder what I actually knew about my mother. Memories are mostly her in human form, and the few occasions I glimpsed her as a wolf, I don't recall ever seeing her eyes. There isn't much need for a pup to see their parents in wolf form when you live on a peaceful settled farm growing vegetables and raising cattle. Turning used to be a personal thing when there was no need. Like a recreational time to yourself activity among the peaceful dwellers who didn't have to fight, or defend, or lord over anyone. The Whyte pack leader was equally stable, and calm, and I never saw him turn at all in the time I knew him.

My father never mentioned it, no one did, so I doubt they were red. I mean, she was a snow-white wolf, and that was mentioned enough over the years as though it was a bad thing. I knew it meant she was different. I'm sure her eyes would have been a talking point too if they had been like mine.

They said her fur was white because she lacked a pigment, like a flaw in her genetic makeup, and I wonder if it's why my eyes are red… like an albino. Although my wolf is half grey and I'm sure albinos have pink eyes, not blood red. It's all so confusing and I wish Meadow told me more about the legends, or that the Shaman had taken time to talk to me. It just feels like they should have some relevance, or that my gift should. Maybe all it means is what Juan said is true, I'm a diluted impure bloodline, and completely flawed.

It's after noon, the sun's still high but it's doing little to warm me through and lighten my dull mood, not that I care. We have a gift in that the cold doesn't really affect us the way humans are, and we don't need the same temperatures to survive. We can feel it, we can enjoy being warm and cosy, but we can sleep in freezing surroundings and not get sick. And if we do, we turn and voila, healed. I'm not worried about getting ill or injured out here as long as I can muster enough energy to turn for a few seconds, but it's my mental state that worries me.

I keep thinking about Luna Sierra and her broken mind, and I would be lying if I didn't have a deep-rooted fear that I may not be strong enough to endure an oncoming war. I can hide and avoid it as much as I want, but one day, I'll find myself in the midst and I won't be able to escape it. It's always there in the background of my mind.