Page 89 of Rejected By a Wolf

Antonio Payne

The sight in front of Antonio was breathtaking. It wasn’t breathtaking because of the way the water reflected shades of pink from the sky. Nor was it breathtaking because of the sun’s golden hues that glistened off the gentle waves of this cove. Antonio wasn’t even phased by the surrounding rolling hills of grass that met sand as pink as the twilight’s sky.

It was breathtaking because this was Sophia’s favorite place in the world, which, in turn, made it his.

Somehow, he felt as if her energy - her courage, her enthusiasm, and her desire to help those she loved – was somehow imprinted into this very cove. He could feel it in his heart.

“Your little secret,” he breathed in awe.

“Our little secret,” she corrected.

He could feel her eyes on him. They had been on him since he first looked at the cove. And dammit, those eyes burned into him, deepening his desire to claim her.

Gods, how could he forget what she had just told him?

She had just been on the verge. From nothing more than the simple rocking of his hips. The thought of it drove him wild, his blood flowing to the erection straining against his pants.

He tried to push that thought aside. He needed to hold off for at least a few more moments, because he knew this moment was important to her. She was showing a remarkable part of her life to him, and she had yet to look away from him since she had. Which meant his reaction was important to her.

Sharing this with him was important to her.

“It’s breathtaking.”

She curled an arm around his and rested her head against it, sighing. He could scent no fear on her, no anxiety. She was completely comfortable.

Because she trusted him.

She always had, hadn’t she? Since she approached him that first day, giving him insider information about the opening ceremony in return for his protection – protection he almostdidn’tgive her that night.

What a mistake that would’ve been. A horrible fucking mistake.

“I found this place a few years after I was brought to Elaron. I would’ve found it sooner if it hadn’t taken so long for my body to heal.” His body tensed at the thought of what had been done to her for her to have been injured for so long, and as an immortal… “The past is the past, Antonio. What happened to me happened a long time ago.”

“I still want to murder the fuckers who hurt you like that.”

“I know, me too.” She sighed again. “I was already here months by the time I healed, but I was still so confused. So utterly lost and confused. I had lost everything – my parents, my friends, and my home. We lived in a cabin, my parents and I. Did you know that?”

“No.” She didn’t often talk about her life before Elaron.

“Well, it was a beautiful cabin. All sorts of flowers and vegetables grew around it. My mother was a gardener, she had been since the day I was born. Other than her family, sheloved nothing more than tending to her garden. Our cabin was beautiful because of it.”

He smiled at her memory and the way it brought up memories of his own. “My mother had a garden too.” He thought back to his own distant memories, long before Giselle had come into his life and altered it dramatically. But these memories also lasted long after he was born.

Because, unlike Sophia, Antonio lived alongside his parents for a very long time. They were an important part of his life for almost five hundred years. And when they had been killed in battle against of horde of vampire’s who had threatned their clan, everything was okay.

He mourned them, yes. But he did not mourn alone. He mourned with his clan. With others who loved him. Hell, even Lance had been at his side, supporting him when it happened.

Who did Sophia have when she lost her parents? Certainly none of the friends she grew up with or the neighbors who lived beside that cabin she seemed to adore so much.

No, they were gone too.

She had Casper, he told himself, wanting to convince himself that she didn’t have to go through life so alone. He hated knowing how alone she had been.

And where was he?

Ah, yes. He was hiding in a void of nothingness, isolating himself from the world. A world where a fey mourned alone, a fey who needed his help.

“How did you adapt after everything?” The end of one life, the start of a new one.