Page 36 of Moonlit Choosing Ritual

“Is it good?” he continued.

“Yes!” I snapped. “But why are you suddenly interested in the tree?”

He turned to gaze at me. “Because the girls will be tied to them for the Moonlit Choosing Ritual. One tree for each girl.”

My jaw dropped.

He walked toward the cedar tree he was looking at. When he reached it, he touched its bark and brushed it with his hand. “In the Choosing, each girl will be stripped naked and blindfolded before they tie her to the tree. There are seven she-wolves participating in the Choosing this year.” His eyes fell on me. “And there’ll be a dozen wolves contesting for them.”

“Naked?” Jealousy ripped through me at the thought that he was going to see them naked. To stop myself drowning in this irrelevant emotion, I wrapped my arms around myself.

He smirked. “Yes, naked. And blindfolded.” He circled the tree as if inspecting it. “The wolves will have to fight each other to reach the girl they choose to mate with. We might injure each other severely.”

Gods above. So he was going to fight for a she-wolf. It was good that he would have his mate. Then he might forget about me and maybe set me free. But despite all the self-counseling, I felt… betrayed. I blinked away my stupid tears. Why was I even thinking about it? Yeah, I had officially gone mad. Swallowing down my emotions, I asked, “Werewolves have mates. So why this Choosing Ritual?”

His dark gaze grazed me. “Mates are extremely rare in our community. Barely ten percent of us find mates. All the participants in the ritual are the ones who haven’t found their mates or have already rejected them because they are from families who seek political alliances.”

“What does the strongest Alpha in North America seek?”

A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips as the intensity of his gaze increased to the point where a nest of butterflies flutteredwildly in my belly. “Why do you want to know? Are you in love with me or are you getting horny already?”

I blew a strand of hair dancing on my cheek. “You’re right. I don’t want to know. Just take me back. Obviously, once your mate comes, I’ll have to move out of your room. So tell me where I should go. Back to the servants’ quarters?”

He looked away and walked behind the tree without answering me. A moment later he said, “This is a nice thicket. The ritual will take place over here.” Then he peeked his head from behind the tree. “Do you want to know what we do after we choose our mate?”

“I don’t care!”

“I’ll tell you anyway. We claim them and fuck them while they are blindfolded in front of everyone.”

Air whooshed out of my body as I froze, my eyes fixed on him. “You what?”

“And the she-wolves look forward to it,” he added with a smirk.

He walked toward me with a calm demeanor and stopped right in front of me. I craned my neck to see his face, my body betraying my logic as it shivered in his presence. “Once we reach the mate we’ve chosen, we claim them by fucking them in front of the Elders.” He brought his hand to my cheek but fisted it and took it back down. “The mating is done in the presence of the Elders so they can give their blessings to us, so they know we’re mated. This time the ritual is going to see some of the most powerful names in the history of werewolves. There are three Alphas contesting along with four she-wolves of Alpha bloodline.”

The shock was too much to bear. So he couldn’t see that I was physically shaking for no apparent reason, I turned and walked to the jeep. He followed me back. While walking back, he asked, “Did you like the tree?”

He was asking me about the fucking tree when I abhorred this whole shitty ritual, or rather him participating in it. “Yeah,” I managed to speak through the hoarseness in my throat.

“Why don’t you guys just choose someone to marry outside the ritual?” I asked after a while as we drove back.

“The law doesn’t allow us.” He veered his car into the driveway. “This ritual is like a marriage license in the human world. The male stakes a claim on the female and marks her with his cum and his bite.”

“Bite?” A delicious anticipatory shiver ran down my spine as I snapped my head to look at him.

He didn’t turn to look at me. “Yes, we pierce our fangs in their flesh where the shoulder meets the neck and inject our venom in their blood, which is our mark in our mate. Our smell gets infused in her body, which keeps other wolves away from her.”

Staking a claim. Goosebumps pebbled my skin. I needed to get out of the car because suddenly the place seemed too cagey for me. “Good for you,” I breathed.

As soon as we arrived at his manor, I opened the door and slammed it before rushing up the stairs and into the bedroom. I had lost my appetite for dinner or for anything else.

“The ritual starts tomorrow at midnight,” he informed me, coming after me.

I stopped in the middle of the room, clenching my fist tightly. “Okay…” I mumbled.

I knew what I had to do.

Chapter 19

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