Chapter 2 #2
I sat on the bench with her smell all over me and my own come drying on my skin and the bond still pulling toward the path like a stupid dog. I did not try the door. I put the shirt on. I wiped my mouth. I waited.
Gray turned into thin morning. The stove went out. I could still feel her, up the hill, moving through rooms, talking to people I could not hear. The bond did not give words. It gave direction and heat. I was half-hard again by the time boots came back down the path. More than one pair.
She opened the door dressed for council.
Clean shirt. Hair tied. She had washed her face and not the rest of her.
I could smell myself on her from the doorway.
Marshall Huntington stood behind her. Older woman with a council pin I took for Idony Vetch.
Two more wolves at the turn. No boy. She had kept the brother up the hill.
“Out,” she said.
I stood. “If this is Hillsford, say it.”
“It isn’t Hillsford.”
That was worse.
They walked me into the yard behind the cabin, not up to the hall.
A strip of packed dirt and a view of the river and the last of the moon still sitting pale over the trees.
Witnesses enough for a rite. Not enough for a spectacle unless she wanted one.
She wanted one just large enough that she could not take it back in private later.
I stopped where she pointed. The morning was cold on the sweat I still had from her. My cock was heavy in my pants. The bond did not care about an audience. It cared that she was three feet away and I had been inside her a few hours ago.
Marshall looked at my throat and then at her and then at the ground. Idony looked at me like I was a document she already knew how to file.
Reilly faced me.
“Owen Tillson,” she said. Her voice was steady. Her hands were not, at the start, and then they were. “You crossed this pack during a raid. You brought a warning. I heard it. I will use it. That is all I can give you.”
“Say the rest,” I said.
Her eyes flicked to my mouth. “Don’t.”
“You don’t get to knot a man on your floor and then give him half a sentence in a yard. If you’re going to do it, do it properly.”
Marshall shifted. Idony did not.
Reilly swallowed once. I watched her throat move and hated her for it and wanted my mouth there anyway.
“I, Reilly Landers, acting Luna of Landers Ridge, reject you, Owen Tillson, as my mate.”
The bond kicked. Not gone. Bent. It felt like someone had put a hook in the place where I was still wet from her and pulled.
“Again,” I said. “The full rite. You know it. I know it. Your elder knows it. Don’t cheat it so you can sleep tonight.”
Her jaw tightened. “I reject you as my fated mate. I refuse the claim. I refuse the bite. I break this bond before the moon and before these witnesses.”
“Name me.”
“I break this bond with Owen Tillson before the moon and before these witnesses.”
“Once more.”
“Owen.”
“Once more, Reilly.”
She stepped closer. Not close enough to touch. Close enough that I got her breath and the smell of my own come still on her.
“I, Reilly Landers, reject you, Owen Tillson, as my mate. I will not claim you. I will not keep you. I send you from this ridge unbound.” Her voice did not shake on the last line. “Leave.”
I stood there until the words finished landing. The bond did not snap clean. It went sour and loud and hungry. My wolf raked down the inside of my skin and I held it by force. I was hard. I was still wearing her. The witnesses could smell all of it. I let them.
“You said it,” I said. “Don’t send a letter later like you said something else.”
“I won’t.”
“If Hillsford comes for the west cut, you already have the warning. That’s the only thing you take from me that you asked for.”
Marshall started to speak. I looked at him and he shut his mouth.
I stepped around her. My shoulder almost touched hers.
The bond screamed at the almost. I did not look at her face.
I looked at the path to the river because if I looked at her face I was going to put her back on the ground in front of her beta and her elder and make her reject me with my knot in her, and that would kill both of us in different ways.
“Owen,” she said.
I stopped. I did not turn.
“The west cut is real,” I said. “Check it yourself. Don’t take my word. You don’t want my word.”
Then I walked.
No one put silver on me. No one followed far.
I hit the tree line with the rite still in my ears and her taste still in my mouth and the knot-memory still sitting at the base of my cock like a bruise.
The bond dragged behind me toward the cabin and the yard and the woman who had said my name three times in order to throw it away.
I did not look back.
I wanted to. I kept my eyes on the river and my teeth in my own cheek, the same place I had bitten so I would not claim her, and I left Landers Ridge with her come dried on my skin and nothing else to show for the night except the warning she had promised to use.
The moon was a thin leftover over the water. I crossed at the marker. On the other side I put my hands on my knees and breathed until I could stand up without turning around.
Then I walked west, hard and half-claimed and furious, and I did not stop until I could not smell her hall anymore.