Rejected Mate by Sam Crescent

I am so glad I discovered Rejected Mate by Sam Crescent. I have read many rejection stories but this one stands out. It is not about a rejected she-wolf being stronger than she thought she was. It isn’t about a bully who rejects a she-wolf changing his mind and deciding to accept her again. It isn’t about finding a second-chance mate.

This story was so well-written that I was captivated from page 1! It takes popular tropes (shifter romance, rejection, and age gap) and puts a unique spin on them. I hesitate to even call this a bully romance as the bullying part is incidental to the story.

Constance is a late bloomer. Where everyone else she knows shifted at 18, she didn’t shift until she turned 21. Tanner is the Alpha’s son. He has been bullying Constance for many years, calling her fat, ugly, and disgusting. Constance and Tanner realized they were mates on the day of her shift. Oh, horror of horrors! Constance hates his guts!

At this point in other books it would go one of two ways … Tanner would realize how he has been stupid all these years and would do his damnedest to win her or outright reject her. In this book, he chose the latter … Tanner rejected Constance and he did it publicly. Since he is the Alpha’s son, the pack took his rejection as a sign that they should all reject her, so they did. Her parents threw her out, she lost her job, and the rest of the pack turned their backs on her.

Rejection is painful, as we know from shifter lore, but this is the first time that I know of where the effects of the rejection go beyond chest or belly pains or pains caused by infidelity. Instead, the rejection is described as feeling very cold from the inside. Being rejected by one’s mate is bad, but imagine being rejected by the entire pack.

The entire pack, except for one … Gage, the Alpha, and Tanner’s father. In an emergency pack meeting, he announces that according to scripture, when a wolf is rejected, a relative of the one who did the rejecting can step up and accept the rejected wolf in their place. And that is what Gage did.

What a twist! Is it just custom or does Gage really want her for himself as a mate? Will Tanner change his mind and decide to take her back? Will Constance fall in love with Gage and decide to take him as her mate?

If you’ve never read any of the books from Sam Crescent’s Alpha Shifter Collection, this is a good book to start with. It isn’t in Kindle Unlimited but it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. You can get Rejected Mate by Sam Crescent on Amazon for $3.99. All the books in the Alpha Shifter Collection are $3.99 a piece.