Page 31 of Sold Rejected Mate
“How could it possiblynotmatter?”
“Because I’m just a stray!” I lower my voice, try to calm down. “Becausehe doesn’t remember me, Phina.”
“Well, it’s not like you…” She trails off when she sees my face, gasping in a little breath at what she must read there. If she can read it, then why can’t Lachlan? “Wait…the two of you?”
“Yeah,” I admit, rolling my eyes, running my hands over my face. “Probably right around the same time you were with Xeran.”
“Gods.”
“Yeah.”
“So, maybe he doesn’t remember you,” Phina says, wincing as she says it. “But to be fair, you look completely different. And your scent is basically gone. I can only hardly smell it now, and I think that’s only because I know what to look for.”
I make a noncommittal noise, and Phina clears her throat, leaning on the counter. “Xeran is getting suspicious. Last night, he was wondering why Lachlan fought so hard over you. Why he offered to let you come stay at his place when he’s never been like that before.”
“What does that mean?”
Phina raises a disapproving brow. “Women in this house don’t normally last longer than a night.”
“Gods, you make him sound like a serial killer.”
“Xeran is threatening to tell Lachlan. He doesn’t think it’s right for him not to know who’s staying in his house.”
“I could just leave.” The words come out of me before I can pull them back, and when I look up, Phina is staring at me seriously.
“If that’s what you want,” she says. “But I get the feeling that’s not what you want, is it?”
“I don’t know what I want.” I don’t mean for it to come out so dramatically, but it does.
“Whathappenedbetween you two?” Phina whispers. “Was it just the fire?”
“No,” I swallow. “It was more like the other way around.”
Her eyes widen. “Lachlan and you split, then the fire?”
“Yeah, why?”
She’s silent for a moment. “Same thing for me.”
We sit with that for a moment, the fact that we were sharing something without even knowing it. Maybe if we’d opened up about things outside of our little friend group, we would have known.
Maybe we could have been there for one another.
“What happened?” Phina asks.
“I was in love with him,” I laugh, feeling stupid as I say it, and feeling even more stupid for the knowledge that somewhere inside me—and not even that far down—that feeling stillremains. “I told him that. Said I was…ugh, it’s so embarrassing. I thought we weremates. Fated. And I told him that. Told him I was excited to spend the rest of my life with him.”
Phina blinks at me and shakes her head.
“What?” I prod.
“It’s just—it’s so similar to what happened with me and Xeran. It’s uncanny.”
“Well, teenagers are all really on the same arc. Did Xeran leave you stranded at the ridge?”
“What?”
I laugh, trying to act like it doesn’t matter now, even though I still feel the sting. “He basically pushed me out of his car. Sped off. Luckily, I had plenty of experience with surviving in the woods.”
