Page 66 of Sold Rejected Mate
“You left me,” she says, her voice breaking, and when she lifts her gaze to mine, I see the pain there. Not deep, not permanent, but real all the same. “You left me, Lachlan, when you promised you never would again.”
Chapter 33 - Valerie
Phina is nice enough to offer me a guest room in their home. I love everything about this house—the old wood, the hand-carved details, the smell of a family baked into it throughout the years. I want my baby to grow up in a house like this, not some futuristic cube.
Each time I wake up in the middle of the night, missing Lachlan next to me, I wrestle with myself, providing both sides of the argument.
He’s just a man, a man who might make mistakes. I had my own strange emotions when I learned I was pregnant, and I didn’t have to share that moment with anyone else.
Then again, if he wasn’t happy to find out about the pregnancy, what does that say about the kind of father he might turn out to be?
That’s a ridiculous thought. Lachlan would make awonderfulfather. Not to mention the security he would offer, the opportunities our baby would have. And the fact that he could love me, could want me, even knowing I can’t shift—it means that our baby will never have a father who calls them astray, or leaves them in the middle of the woods, or forces them to choke down herbs that would “fix” them.
“You look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” Phina remarks.
I doubt she’s expecting the response she gets, which is me breaking down into hard, body-wracking sobs.
Phina immediately sets down her tea on the counter and moves to me, putting her arms around me and pulling me in close.
“Hey, babe, it’s okay,” she says, her voice impossibly soothing. Was she always like this, or did it happen when she became a mom? Or does it have something to do with her being the luna now, some sort of natural maternal instinct? “Just try to take a deep breath, okay?”
The sobs come up from deep inside me. It feels like they’ve been stored there for ten years, since that night Lachlan pushed me out of his car and left me at the ridge. Rejection after rejection—my parents, my friends, my pack, and finally, my mate.
Phina holds me and coaches me through the crying until I’m able to breathe, and only my hands are shaking. When she finally pulls away, it’s to fetch me my own mug of tea.
“It’s herbal,” she says. “Take a sip.”
When I do, it’s far more comforting than I think it’s going to be. It feels like it wraps around my lungs and heart, like a soothing caress.
“Let it out,” she says. “You have to talk about it, honey.”
“I’m so…pissed off at him,” I admit, staring down at the surface of the tea, which I realize now contains the very honey we brought them from the farmers market, which just reminds me of that day, which makes me sad all over again.
“Rightfully so,” Phina says, taking a sip of her own tea. “I’d be upset, too.”
“And I just—I don’t know what I’m doing,” I say, biting my lip. “I don’tknowhow to be pregnant. I don’t know how to be his mate, and I don’t know how to trust him again after this.”
Phina is quiet for a long moment, then she says, “Do you know about what happened? With Xeran and me?”
I blink at her, then shake my head.
“And you’d already left,” she murmurs, smiling sadly. “You missed out on a lot of drama. Basically, right after the fire, I was—well, I was trying to prove that I was a good person. To get out from under the weight of what they were trying to say, I did.”
I bite back my question for her—which is whether or not shereallyremembers what happened that day. I remember being upset, and I remember Tara and Aurela drawing us to the ridge, but other than that, most of my memories are hazy.
“For some reason, I thought—well, I tried to claim Xeran as my mate.”
I don’t mean to gasp—they’re married now. It’s not that salacious. But I wastherein high school. I remember how Xeran used to treat her, and how bad it could be sometimes. The taunting, the mocking. It’s part of the reason Phina needed the group, the magic. To let it all out.
“Yeah,” she laughs to herself, shaking her head. “Obviously, it didn’t go well. He renounced me in front of everyone. Called me a freak. When I think about it now, I still get angry.”
“So how did you get over it? How do you deal with it?”
She shrugs. “I’m not the girl I was then. He’s not the guy he was then. I’m not mad at Xeran, my husband, but Xeran, the teen boy who broke my heart amidst the largest tragedy this town had ever seen. I hold empathy for him while understanding that he’s changed, and he’s grown. He came back, after all.”
“It seems like we don’t really have a choice,” I laugh bitterly. “Maybe the town forces us to come back.”
“Maybe,” Phina laughs.
