But then Kieran tenses. His hands are still cradling my face, but his lips never meet mine. I open my eyes and find that his are open too, staring at something over my shoulder. The tender expression on his handsome features is gone, replaced by something hard and cold.
He drops his hands and steps back so quickly that I stumble forward a little. The loss of his touch leaves me reeling, and I reach out instinctively for him, but he’s already turning away.
“Kieran?” Alpha Cade’s voice cuts through the silence like a blade. “The mate bond is waiting for your response.”
When Kieran looks back at me, his face is a mask of ice. Gone is the man who whispered my name so softly. Gone is the awe, the adoration, the promise. In his place stands the future alpha, cold and untouchable.
“Aurora.” My name is flat on his lips now, emotionless. He shifts his weight, looking away and then back at me again.Clearing his throat, he speaks in a loud voice that carries through the whole room. “I reject this bond. You’re too weak to be my mate. You can’t even shift.”
It takes me a moment to process his words.
To realize what he just said.
My world shatters, humiliation burning through me as the whole pack watches him reject our mate bond. I stumble back from him, whimpering in pain as the bond snaps and tears away. A great wave of energy pulses out, from him to me, searing through my body and leaving wounds inside me that no one will ever even see.
I cry out, my voice echoing in the stillness of the amphitheater. Curling in on myself, I feel a rush of emotions: fear, terror, heartache, and above all, a pulsing pain that beats in time to the beat of my broken heart.
It’s too much. Too many feelings, too much disappointment. Voices around me murmur that it’s for the best, that I’m too weak. The curse, the madness, my pack, they say.
She wasn’t meant to be the mate of the alpha’s son.
Whatever passes for a wolf inside me whimpers and hides, going deep within me where she’ll never be found and hurt like this again.
I look up at Alpha Cade, my voice small as I ask, “Am I going to be exiled?”
It happens to shifters who are rejected. Especially to those who can’t shift. There are places they live, on the fringes of shifter society, eking out a meager existence.
Alpha Cade’s lips curve downward, and he opens his mouth to speak, but Kieran’s voice cuts through first.
“No, you won’t be exiled.” Kieran’s tone is matter-of-fact, clinical. “You’re too weak to survive on your own. We took you in out of pity for Pack Onyx and all they’d been through, not because you belong here. But you can stay.” He hesitates,something flashing across his face so fast that I can’t register it. Then he straightens his shoulders and adds, “As long as you know your place.”
I stare at him bleakly, searching for any hint that he’s lying. That he doesn’t mean it. That this has all just been some massive misunderstanding. But he holds my gaze steadily, letting the silence stretch on until my last shred of hope dies.
My heart feels like it’s bleeding out from a jagged cut, pain pooling in my chest and spreading. I’m so cold that my fingers and toes are numb, and I tremble—but he just stands there, unmoved.
Kieran. Who has always been so kind to me, who stood up for me. I guess those two years changed him.
Or maybe the shame of havingmeturn out to be his mate broke something inside him completely.
I can’t stand here near him anymore, seeing how little this affects him. Tears blind me as I rush off the stage. I stumble through the rows of seats, trying to ignore the murmured words of faux concern and the cutting insults.
“…must be a mistake?—”
“He should’ve just exiled her.”
“—so weak. No one that weak could lead us.”
Rushing out the amphitheater, I run past my bike and straight into the woods. Branches whip past me, and I stumble over gnarled roots. My braid whips around and comes undone at the end, ash blonde hair flying as sticks and twigs get wrapped up in it.
As fast as I can, with what little shifter speed and strength I have, I race through the woods. To the fringes, far from their knowing stares and their murmurs.
When it all gets to be too much—when my lungs are heaving and my palms and knees are skinned from stumbling—that’s when I stop. Falling to the ground, I curl in on myself, huggingmy knees to my chest. Tears fall free until there are none left, and I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to make it go away.
Trying to forget the cold look in his ice blue eyes as he rejected me.
The pain and misery is unbearable. I can only hope it fades with time, because this heartache, this wretched misery—I won’t survive it for long.
Especially knowing that he feels nothing,nothingat all.
