“You’d die for this slut fuckthing, huh?” Her voice was caustic and pointed.
What the hell had he said to her? I rolled my eyes.
Kestrel lifted his gaze to hers, defiant. “Yeah.”
“Shit,” she whispered. “This is all real, this instant-bond thing. And it’s really awful.”
“Yeah, it sucks,” I said. “No matter what, now that it’s happened, it’s going to suck. But you have a chance. So, go back home, go back to the city, and forget about us.”
Now, she flinched.
“It’s better,” said Kestrel quietly.
She turned to Paladin, pleading with him.
Paladin hesitated, looked at me, looked at Kestrel, and then gave her a miserable nod. “It is better. We shouldn’t see each other again.”
“And next full moon? Not even then?”
“Find some other wolves,” I said. “We won’t even go out to the gathering.” Then I realized that was Kestrel’s decision, so I looked to him.
But he nodded, firm. “We won’t.”
She looked like she wanted to argue, but she fumbled around for something to say, and seemed to come up with nothing. She jammed her hands into her pockets.
“Good,” said Kestrel. “That’s settled.”
9
clementine
PALADIN WAS SUBDUEDwhen he took me back to the wall. He didn’t touch me, and it felt like someone had carved out half of my heart and left it to decay on the side of the road.
He kissed me goodbye, though, and when he did, there were tears in his eyes.
That broke me, and I sobbed and clung to him for a while, for too long.
Finally, I climbed back over the wall all alone.
I had to hike a little ways back to the place where I’d parked my car, because it needed to be somewhere safe, on the shoulder. I drove back to my dorm.
And everything seemed to turn gray.
The sharp, bright feeling that I’d been feeling now and then was gone. I felt muted and dead and sad. I trudged through my classes, mostly because I wanted something to do. I thought about researching tithes and wolf mates, but it was too depressing. I didn’t want to know.
Anyway, they’d rejected me.
They said it was for my own good, so maybe that was better than being rejected because they didn’t care about me.
When the weekend came, I went out drinking.
Unlike during my roaming phase, when I’d pressed into men and flirted until they bought me drinks, when I’dtossed my hair and danced and beckoned and teased, I ignored everyone, men and women included.
That was when I realized that it had probably never mattered what I did. Tons of men approached me, and I rebuffed as many of them as I could, refusing free drinks, getting gradually nastier and nastier as the night went on. I found myself saying things like, “Well, things were going well until you came over,” and when even this was too difficult for them to comprehend, “Go away.”
It was near midnight, and I was nursing a mixed drink that was mostly melted ice when another man came over to me.
I huffed, annoyed. “Look, let me spell this out for you. I don’t want any company right now.”