Rejected Mate and Following Fate novel Chapter 83

“Hey, Hey, wake up.” Carmen rouses both of us from peaceful sleep and I can see the daylight is turning dim as it gets close to sunset already. We both passed out and must have been unconscious for hours after their little argument.

“Where are we.” I rub my eyes, stifling a yawn and stretch out like a cat, uncurling my limbs from the awkward position I’ve been in.

“New Mexico, you better call Sierra as we crossed over a while back and I headed for Deming. That’s where Meadow said, right?” Carmen clicks her head from right to left to stretch out her neck and I can tell she’s exhausted from being the driver for so long. There are dark shadows under her eyes, and I can’t be sure, but there’s a telltale rosy glow across her cheeks, and nose, that hint that she might have been crying at some point. She seems fine now but my stomach lurches in sorrow that she chose time alone to cry out some of the pain she’s carrying and never woke us up for company.

“Yeah, I did.” Meadow stretches, yawns and balls a fist in her mouth as she wakes and uncurls properly beside me, a mirror to what I just did, and I giggle at her. “I’ll call Sierra and tell her we need more specifics. We made good time!”

Meadow yanks out the cell, blinking at it groggily before she blanches and rubs her eyes before facing the screen to me. It’s a text from Sierra, as though she knew exactly where we were and a more specific location to continue our journey onward. Spooky but then again, she is a seer and she had to know roughly around what hour we would hit New Mexico.

The location is a road, in Deming that’s near an address, but she’s told us the house is only an anchor point and once we get there, we would have to find her ourselves. To stay alert and watch for signs. Whatever that means.

Meadow furrows a brow as she repeats it all again, confused at the vagueness, but texts her back with a thanks anyway. There’s not much else we can ask her for if that’s all she knows.

“She must be tracking us with the locator spell, keeping tabs.” Meadow shrugs as if that’s the only possible answer to her knowing exactly where we were at this point in time and I smile softly. Warmed by her attentive care even when we have travelled far from home.

“She’s a seer…. she has gifts we don’t know about and maybe she just knows where we are… instinctually.” I shrug, forgetting for a second that she mentioned she no longer has visions since she awoke, but I’m sure she has other skills that might still be working.

“About that…. one of these days can someone please explain all the witch stuff, and gifts, and all that crap to me. I only know what I heard and what was shared in mind link. It still kind of freaks me out knowing Colton and Sierra are witches. And you’re……” Carmen flushes red and turns away hastily, eyes averted quickly with heat spreading to her forehead and I know it’s not a shy response. Its emotion, to the part of me she sees as the enemy, the part of me that is responsible for her mother’s end. It’s the same response I had when I found out what I was. That underlying hatred for being any kind of link to those monsters that did that to people I cared about.

“When this is over, I’m sure Colton can tell you himself.” I smile gently, throwing in as much charm and honest softness as I can, and Meadow throws me a look that says, ‘you’re insane’! I know she doesn’t get why I would insist my man and his ex would interact, but she is overly jealous on her best days, so I don’t expect her to get it. Being Luna, it makes things different in how I feel about wolves in my pack. I trust Colton, I know he would never betray me, and he sees Carmen as only someone in his pack that he’s responsible for now. The sooner I normalize her being around him in our home, then the sooner I’ll get over my past with her and the insecurity I still have when she’s near him.

“We’re not that far from Deming and this location is right on this outer edge of that town.” Meadow has pulled up google maps on her cell and shows it to Carmen, giving her new directions in where to head as I direct up at the sky and point out the obvious. Slight unease coming over me as I see how much duller it is now.

“It’s getting dark, shouldn’t we think about getting somewhere before the sun sets and lay low?” I ask in hesitation, but Meadow pats the dash with a smile, almost lovingly.

“The vampires couldn’t get into the homestead; I doubt they can get into this little beauty. If we keep going until we get there and then we can’t get a lock on any real location to where to go, we’ll sleep in here, wherever we end up. Who knows, maybe the fates will bless us, and we find the witch before sun down.” She seems a little too sure that our metal chariot is as safe as can be but I am not so sure I want to put it to the test in the dark. We barely got through he wolf attack unscathed and we were moving. Besides, the wolves seemed too dumb to figure they could hurl boulders and trees at us, I’m sure vampires will have the sense.

“Hmmm, shouldn’t have brought along the walking curse if you expected a smooth trip.” Carmen smirks in a self-depreciating manner but Meadow doesn’t miss a beat, or an opportunity to put her back in her place.

“I brought you as a distraction, quick vampire snack if we need to make a run for it.” She clicks her fingers to emphasize the point and again they lock eyes and have themselves a short simmering visual battle. I give up trying to stop this with those two and look at the road ahead instead, internally sighing at this constant war and try my best to ignore it.

“Okay, so we head for Eighth Street. There’s apparently a nearby park or forest, she says the locator is sitting there and that somewhere around is the presence of that witch.” Meadow goes back to the text to check details and Carmen follows signs as she drives, focusing her attention and relieving me of their bickering for now. The air is turning colder as night comes in and the atmosphere turns serious and tense as the end of our journey begins to get close.

We left at dawn, and it’s around dinner now but at this time of the year the sun sets early. We don’t have much daylight before it sets completely and I’m understandably on edge as we push onward.

“Here!” Meadow hands the cell to Carmen, with a satnav app bleeping away as she nestles it on the dash where she can glance at it, against the dials and fuel light symbols so she has a clue where to go without searching for road signs.

“Any idea what we’re meant to do or say to find her? I mean we can’t just walk up to humans and ask where the witch is.” Carmen raises a brow, looking somewhat skeptical about how this is meant to work, and I shrug tiredly, also unsure but we have to trust the fates aren’t leading us a merry dance.

“We have her name, maybe we just ask if anyone knows her. I guess someone might have met her or knows of her whereabouts and we can just say we’re visiting from out of town and want to surprise her.” I try for helpful suggestions and flinch when the phone beeps in another tone, indicating a text and Meadows slides it back as I see Sierra’s name pop up.

“Sierra has added an afterthought and said to watch for the birds… she said look for black ravens, that the more of them there are, it’s probably because she’s close.” She too shrugs, a quizzical expression taking over her face as she widens her eyes in an ‘okaaaay’ kind of gesture that unifies the fact all three of us have no actual clue as to how we are meant to find her. I narrow my eyes, exhaling heavily at this lack of logical help from Sierra.

“That’s weird.” Is the only contribution I have for now.

“So are witches.” Meds points out and I smile at that, breaking the strained moment with a little affectionate teasing of our kin, and it reminds me of my missing mate. Sierra and Colton do have their own special charms but yeah, at times they can both be weird. There’s no getting around that fact at all.

“So, we’re looking for a bird version of a spooky cat lady who has a fondness for living in woods, despite being right near a town? Is she old, young…. eats children? Do we need to crumble breadcrumbs along the highway in hopes of accidently falling upon her gingerbread house.” Carmen quizzes with a deadpan tone and a serious expression that somehow amuses me, despite her lack of emotion. This time I do laugh out loud, at the girl’s weird dry humor that I never realized she even possessed. A childhood visual of the old witch from the library Hansel and Gretel book pops into my head and only increases the giggles I exude.

“I hope not, I’m barely grown, and she might add me to tonight’s menu. I’m too big for an oven!” I point out between snorts of stupid laughter and Meadow caves and starts giggling too, lightening our whole mood. I guess the tension and the heavy weight of this journey has us strung out enough, that even a lame joke like this has enough power to break the strings and have us erupt. It’s needed, between us, this bonding over awful jokes.

“She’s immortal, and powerful…. if that was me, I would make sure I look forever young, or at least make enough anti-wrinkle cream to stall time for a few centuries.” Meadow is the first to calm back to a straight face, wiping her eye where a tear had formed, and she snuggles up beside me once more in this new less hostile atmosphere.

“Yeah, but three thousand years? I’m sure even the strongest Botox is going to struggle with that timeline.” I point out, thinking back to Meadow finding an article about Botox and humans preserving their youth some months back. She was unimpressed with how vain she considered humans to be and the extreme measures they would take to fight the aging cycle. Easy to judge when wolves literally don’t age like that and we stay healthy and youthful until we die. We reach adulthood, sort of around the looks of a thirty-year-old human when we get to that age and then we stay that way.

“Um Meadow…. Luna Alora, um …. look.” Carmen draws our attention up into the sky over our head with a pointed finger up at the windshield and it’s hard not to miss the unmistakable flock of large black birds flying level with us, at our speed, even if they are like thirty foot up above us. “That has to be a coincidence, right?” She murmurs and throws us a highly doubtful eyebrow rise that is matched with our own falling expressions.

“I don’t believe in coincidences.” I point out, casting my mind back to a certain forest that led me East so long ago. The fates always find a way and this time, it’s ravens. “Follow them” I command surely, a wave of excitement tremoring deep in my belly that this has to be a sign that we’re on the right path, but Carmen looks a little unsure, glancing to me and the window back and forth with hesitation under that etched brow of hers.

“I don’t think we can! I think they’re following us….. do we stop? What do we do?”