Page 10 of Sold Rejected Mate
Without meaning to, or wanting to, I slip right back into the memory of the first time we spoke. Of course, I knew who he was—everyoneknew the Cambiases. Even before I became friends with his sister, I knew Lachlan.
In the cafeteria, I was painfully aware of his presence, of where he sat in the room at all times. I knew what he was wearing each day. Imagined the weight of those eyes on me, watching me from across the room.
When I turned to look at him, trying to do it inconspicuously, he never looked back. Instead, he sat at his table, holding court with his friends—Soren, Xeran—laughing loudly and never apologizing for existing.
Not the way I did. Every year that passed in high school without me shifting was another nail in my coffin. Each time we came back from the summer and the others could tell I hadn’t shifted yet, I lost another friend, another girl whispering that she was sorry, that her parents told her not to talk to me.
Back then, I wrote angry poetry about it. I scrawled in my journal, raging against the world that would make me like this. An omega who couldn’t shift, who made her mother cry each time another intervention didn’t work. Not just an omega without the shifting gene, but a teenage girl with magic swirling inside her, demanding to come out. To be heard.
Magic that pushed, and pushed, until I had to let the pressure out somehow.
And that was usually in the form of talking back to my teachers, pointing out how badly they treated me. Pointing out the inequities, the way they catered to and coddled the alphas.
Every Wednesday, I plopped down in detention, usually the only one there to serve my time.
But one of those weeks, when I walked in, I wasn’t the only one there.
Lachlan Cambias sat in the back of the room, his arms crossed, those eyes intent on me. It sent a jolt through my body that felt so physical, so like an electrical current, that I worried for a second I was having a stroke.
When I sat down at the front of the room, he waited until the monitor fell asleep and came to sit next to me. I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. I couldn’t even look at him.
I could only smell him. His scent, not cologne or anything else. And Lachlan Cambias smelled just like the wood planks from my grandfather’s wood shop, the sweet, woody scent of them going through the saw when we built a birdhouse together.
“Hey,” he said, leaning into me, and when I looked at him, his smile was enough to make my sudden heart problem a thousand times worse. “Valerie, right?”
The memory fades as a wave of pain moves in, making it impossible to think about anything. Even Lachlan.
When the wave of pain recedes, I take a moment to take stock of my body, make a list of everything that feels wrong. My left leg throbs. When I try to move it, white-hot fire races up my thigh.
But even worse than that is the hollow, exhausted feeling beneath the pain. Something empty.
My magic, noticeably gone. When I reach for it, I don’t even find a spark of it left behind. Did I kill it without meaning to? Did I turn it off forever?
Even with the trouble it’s caused me, the thought of losing it makes me ill. Like imagining the loss of a limb, of some organ being scooped out of me and pulverized.
Once I manage to look around without the lights making my skull pulse, I take in the room. I came to FR Hospital once before when I was a kid, but it didn’t look like this, and I can only imagine that’s because of the many, many fires that have plagued the town since.
The room I’m in is small, cramped. Where there might be another bed in a regular hospital room, a roommate of sorts, there’s only medical equipment crowding every available surface. A monitor to my left beeps steadily, and to my right is a stand with bags of clear fluid and a rolling cart filled with white boxes, bandages, and bottles of antiseptic.
“You have to give her a chance.” This time, the words come through, almost like Lachlan is moving closer to the door. “You’re not just going to punish her without a trial, are you?”
“Trial?” another voice replies. “You saw the same thing I did. That girl in the middle of that scorch mark. The magic—”
“But maybe it wasn’t her.”
“Whyare you so torn up about this? You’re acting like she’s your blood. Are you sure you don’t know her?”
“I can’t explain it, I just—”
Lachlan’s voice trails off again, getting quieter, and even though I strain to hear it, I can’t. The pain in my throat is getting worse, but the conversation puts me on edge.
Maybe I need to find a way out of here.
On the wall to my left, there’s a narrow window with the blinds drawn tight, but slivers of daylight creep in through the gaps. I could probably fit through it, if I manage to get it open—
But before I can get any further in that plan, the pain in my throat suddenly bursts, and I start to cough, tears coming to my eyes, the pain unimaginable. Like nothing I’ve ever felt in my life, the hacking, screaming agony increases until I’m almost certain I would rather forsake the air in my lungs than go through another searing cough ripping through the tender flesh of my throat.
“Here,” someone says.
