Once Upon A Rejection
Part 2 Chapter 15

Grayson Ward’s POV

Molly’s friend didn’t seem to have any idea about the danger she was in. She looked at him with love and she spoke of their future together. She was 100% sure that she was his mate but she was also completely wrong.

I only had to see the way he looked at her to know it. I had seen enough mates together to know what that kind of love looked like. Mates who had just discovered weren’t able to take their eyes off their mate for more than a few minutes but Hayden barely looked at Ellie.

Hayden finished the last of his coffee in a large gulp and got to his feet. He said goodbye to everyone at the table then leaned down to give Ellie a brief k**s. She pouted as he pulled away.

“Can’t you stay any longer?” She asked.

“I can’t babe, I have a business meeting,” Hayden said.

He pulled on his jacket then walked out of the coffee shop without even so much as glancing over his shoulder. Ellie had her eyes on him until he had turned the corner and gone out of sight. As I watched their interactions Talen mindlinked me.

‘I will follow him but you need to keep an eye on Molly’s friend in case I lose him,’ he told me.

Talen stayed for another couple of minutes before finishing his own coffee. He pulled on his jacket drawing the attention of everyone around the table to him.

“I have to go but I will meet you later,” He leaned forward and kissed Molly passionately. I could feel myself getting aroused as I watched their lips moving against each other. I had to adjust myself in my seat so that nobody else could see my e******n.

I looked down for a second and when I looked back up Talen was standing beside me. He leaned down and pressed his lips against mine. His k**s was so brief that if you blinked you would have missed it but that was enough to take my breath away. When I opened my eyes again Talen was already heading towards the exit. Everyone around the table was looking at me and smiling.

“What?” I asked, wrapping my arms around Molly and pulling her close to me.

Her scent enveloped me, her scent was altered slightly due to her heat but she still smelled perfect to me. I nuzzled into her neck and took a deep breath.

“The three of you are so cute together,” Ellie said.

I could read between her words. She was lonely, I knew a lot about how that felt. I had known for years that Molly would be my mate. There was a certain comfort that came from knowing she was nearby and under the pack’s protection even if my dad forbid me from telling her the truth.

When she left the pack things changed for me completely. I no longer knew she was safe and I didn’t even know if she would ever come back. My wolf pined for her constantly, it took so much restraint not to go looking for her, I had to fight against that urge every day. I tried everything I could think of to distract myself but in the end the only thing that helped me was thinking of the future we would share together.

Ellie didn’t have that kind of dream to hold on to. It was rare for a human who didn’t have a shifter somewhere in their bloodline to have a shifter mate. That meant they had to rely on dating which if the films were anything to go by looked like a complete nightmare. I could see why she would want to believe Hayden.

“You will get that one day too, I am sure,” I replied.

“What do you mean? I have already met my soulmate.” Her voice and her face showed clear signs of distress, almost as though she already suspected that he was lying to her.

“No, I don’t think you did. I think he is lying to you,” Molly replied.

“I don’t believe you,” Ellie shouted.

“Do you know what the signs are that you met your soulmate?” I asked.

This wasn’t the best place to be having this conversation but it was the only chance we were going to have to make her see sense. We needed her to realise that he was using her and make sure that she didn’t see him again.

“Hayden told me that I wouldn’t feel any of the usual signs because I am….” She paused with a panicked look on her face for a second before adding the word “different”.

“That’s not true, you wouldn’t be able to sense your soulmate by their smell but everything else is the same.” Molly replied.

“She’s right, do you feel a warm tingly when his skin is in contact with yours? When you are with him do you feel complete in a way that you never thought possible before?” I asked.

As I spoke the words Molly leaned in a little closer to me. I know that my words didn’t really do the feelings I had justice but it was hard to put this kind of thing into words.

“You don’t know that, you aren’t even like me. What about you June? Do you feel all of this?” The pitch of Ellie’s voice was higher and she looked as though she was on the verge of tears.

There was so much hurt in her eyes that it almost made me believe she was his mate. I could feel Molly’s discomfort through our bond, she didn’t like seeing her friend this upset. I placed a k**s on the top of her head.

“Yes, I feel all of that,” June replied.

“Why have you never told me that?” Ezra asked.

“I didn’t want to make things too easy for you,” she replied.

Ezra smiled at his mate then pulled her onto his lap and kissed her passionately. Ezra had surprised me, he was such a womaniser that I always assumed he would struggle to adjust to having a mate. It seemed as though I was wrong about him. He had accepted his mate completely and not once had he tried to fight his bond to her.

Molly turned to me and buried her face into my shoulder. I know she was only trying to avert her gaze so she wouldn’t see her brother with his tongue down her best friend’s throat but I was more than happy to take advantage of that. I pulled her closer and ran my finger through her hair. I wanted so badly to take her to a secluded spot and make her scream my name.

“All of you are wrong. Hayden said we are soulmates and I trust him,” Ellie screamed.

She stood up from the table causing the chair behind her to skid backwards until it collided with the table behind it. The cups and plates on the table clinked together loudly drawing the gaze of the few remaining people who were pretending not to be listening to our conversation.

“We belong together. If you can’t see that then that is your problem not mine,” she continued.

She didn’t give us a chance to respond, as soon as the words left her mouth she angrily picked up all her belongings and practically ran out of the room. Once she was gone things in the cafe started to return to normal.

“This isn’t good, everyone is going to know there is something unusual about us,” Ezra mumbled. I could feel my heart rate spike as my panic took over but June and Molly just laughed in response to our concerns.

“This coffee shop is too close to campus for this to be considered odd, this is just another Tuesday afternoon.” June replied.

“She is right, there is always some kind of drama here. It is one of the reasons we love this place. It is a lot more entertaining than daytime TV.” Molly said.

After we finished our drinks we packed our belongings and followed her. We should have had no trouble following her trail, she had left only a couple of minutes earlier and everything started out fine. Once we left the coffee shop we followed her scent back towards campus. We only got a few hundred metres before her trail started to dissipate. It was almost as though it had been masked by someone or something.

We followed her scent for as long as we could but once we reached the more populated areas of the campus the other scents easily overpowered hers. There was no way to tell for sure which way she had gone.

We tried following her scent in a few different directions before we accepted the fact that we had lost her. We were about to give up when Talen’s mindlink interrupted my thoughts.

‘Do you still have Ellie with you?’ He asked.

‘No, she managed to lose us.’ I replied.

‘Hayden tricked me, they are probably together.’ Talen said.