Page 17 of Moon Guardian
My eyes went wide with shock as the certainty hit me. This was Charlie’s murderer. It had to be. I’d scented him out in the woods.
And he was still covered in Charlie’s blood.
“No,” I whimpered, all the fight leaving me.
My captor misunderstood my mewl, stiffening against the sound. “I reject you,” he said, the words hitting me like a punch in the gut.
Something inside of me snapped, a vicious breaking that I didn’t understand that forced me to my knees, cracking my very soul with a fracture that splintered my very being.
I gripped my fingers through my shirt, ripping at the ache in my chest when another alpha approached me, kneeling to look me in the eyes.
“I reject you.”
The sensation twisted like a knife, making me release a pained gasp.
It happened two more times, leaving me broken and dizzy on the ground until I thought I would die from the pain.
“Now, we begin the chase,” the green-eyed alpha said, all compassion gone from his tone.
Because the bond had been temporarily severed, but we weren’t finished. A thin, shredded fragment remained.
They all threw their heads back and howled, sending me scrambling to my feet, my muscles complying with the order to obey their command.
I ran.
Vern
My wolf clawed at me, retaliating against my choice to reject a chosen mate.
Except, she hadn’t beenchosen. She’d invaded a sacred ceremony and crushed the heart of our goddess, splintering her blessing and perverting it in ways that were never supposed to happen.
Wolves didn’t mate humans.
Multiple males mating the same female wasn’t unheard of, but all four alphas mating the same female definitely was. It would send the packs into chaos, the opposite of what we needed right now.
I watched her, ignoring my wolf that lashed against me and splintered my bones in a forced shift.
I would give her a head start. Everything about this had to match our tradition without any further deviations.
Rejection only temporarily severed the bond. A mangled strand remained, one that would be permanently snuffed out when I indulged the chase, shifted and let my wolf fall into the rut. He wouldn’t be able to control himself. He would try to claim her, and when I intervened with an order to bite a little harder than he should, he’d finish what I had started.
My human soul had rejected her.
Now I had to manipulate my wolf to do the same.
He snapped inside my soul, gnashing his anger at me for my betrayal.
He didn’t understand. He couldn’t see how everything about this was wrong.
I would make him understand.
The faint fragrance of jasmine and moonlight had nearly faded, the girl seeming to have maintained some semblance of her earlier display of stolen magic. She was almost to the woods now, which gave her enough of a head start.
Releasing a pained howl, I let my wolf free.
And shifted, beginning the chase.
One that would end in her inevitable death, because this was a courtship that could not be allowed to come to fruition.
