Page 86 of Rejecting his Mate

“Interesting.”

“What is?” I demand. This female talking in riddles is pissing me off.

“Your wolves are connected. The link is faint, but it is there.” She steps up to Halle, gently turning her head to the side. As soon as her hand touches her, I tug Halle back. Hester smirks. “And look how protective you are.”

“What does it mean that our wolves are connected?” Halle tries to pull free of my hold, which I don’t allow. Hester has essentially confirmed that she knows nothing about being a wolf, even if she has a wolf half. My suspicion of her increases tenfold. Every wolf in existence knows how mating bonds work. Once you’re joined to someone, there is no connecting to anyone else unless it’s through a pack bond. Perhaps that is what she is feeling.

“She’s part of my pack.”

Hester’s fingers trail over her lips, her gaze locked on us. “It’s not a pack link I sense.”

“Then what?”

The only other bond it could be is a mating one, and that is impossible.

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” I say to Halle. “Our wolves can’t be connected because you are mated to somebody else.”

“Her bond with her first wolf has not yet cementedinto place. You were at the beginning of that mating process?”

Halle frowns. “We’d been together six months, but neither of us particularly liked the other. He wanted a breeding mare, and he was cruel to me. I didn’t feel anything for him other than pity and hate.”

My wolf and I both feel the anger at knowing Dalton made her life miserable. I already knew that fucker had been cruel to her. I’d seen his abuse first-hand, stopped it even, but the little quiver in Halle’s voice as she says those words makes me wish I had killed Dalton in the woods.

Hester doesn’t elaborate, and when she speaks again, she goes in a different direction. “When I brushed across your mind, I felt a block. I don’t know what it is, but I’d like to look again. Will you allow it?”

Halle says, “Yes” at the same time as I say, “Absolutely not.” At my refusal, she turns to glare at me, and although she says nothing, I understand.

Stay out of my business.

But she is my business, and I don’t know how to switch that off, even if she wants me to.

“Please. I want you to look. My magic feels as if it is locked away somewhere I can’t reach.”

Hester steps forward and slowly places two fingers against Halle’s temple. She closes her eyes and speaks something under her breath that I don’t understand.

I don’t like this. I don’t like it one bit. This feels too invasive, too dangerous. I have no idea what this witch might be doing to Halle’s mind, so I try to tug her away, severing the link between them.

Halle stumbles, and I wrap my arms around her to steady her. “Why did you do that?” She berates me, and I want to explain that I’m only trying to keep her safe, but Hester speaks first.

“You’ve been bound.”

I can tell by the look on Halle’s face that she doesn’t have any idea what that means.

But I do.

It is a practice that I thought no longer existed. It is seen as barbaric, even among those who desire purity above all things, and it is hard to achieve. It relies on finding a witch who is both willing and able to perform the magic required, which is not easy since many see it as oppression of witch power.

There was a time when vargr bound their young, though not because they could do magic. They hoped it would subdue their strength and enable young vargr to live normally within a pack.

The practice was phased out before I was born. It was seen as cruel, and as relations got worse between wolves and witches, it became impossible to find anyone willing to perform the binding.

So, where the hell did Adeline find a witch willing to bind her niece’s magic?

I know I’m taking a leap assuming it was Adeline who did this, but I don’t think I’m wrong. Halle’s aunt knew something might not happen during the first moon ceremony—Halle told us that herself. Did she really think that binding Halle’s magic would be enough to give her a normal life? Halle is not normal. She has thisother side to her that is so special and precious yet remained suffocated inside her.

I didn’t like Adeline before, but now, I want to wrap my fingers around her neck and strangle the life out of her. How could she take the very thing that makes Halle who she is? I understand the risks of hunters discovering her, but she should have found a different way to protect her niece.

“What does that mean?” Halle asks. She glances at me, no doubt able to sense the anger swirling inside me.

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