Page 23 of Sold Rejected Mate
As if on cue, Nora walks into the room, carrying something that looks like a candy bar. “Sorry,” she says, handing it to her mother. “I tried looking for something else, but this is basically what he had. Chicken, a million cans of soup, and protein bars.”
Phina laughs, taking the protein bar and starting to unwrap it.
“So a Sorel is going to legalize magic,” I say, still trying to wrap my head around the concept. “In Silverville.”
“Hopefully,” Phina says, grimacing after eating a bit of the bar, looking like she’s fighting against the tacky substance. “He’s trying to build support for a formal policy change, but the daemon fires are making it hard. People are scared. Andhe’s been working on recruiting more guys to the team, to fight the fires and put them out before they can reach the town. Sometimes he’s gone four nights a week, just dealing with the flare-ups. The rest of the time, he has to divide between pack responsibilities.”
“Right,” I murmur, and Phina turns to me, carefully chewing through another bite of the bar.
“He wants to regulate it,” she continues. “Do it in a safe way. I think all the rules they just encouraged people to practice in secret. Kids with no clue what they’re doing—and basically no control over their emotions—with that much magic was an obvious recipe for disaster.”
I can’t stop myself from thinking about us back in high school. “If we had a teacher, some guidance, it would have been safer.”
“The whole seventh hell safer,” Phina agrees, then shrugs. “Maybe that’s something we can make sure the next group of kids has.”
When she glances at her daughter, there’s an air of determination there. Phina is going to make things different for Nora. To make sure she doesn’t have to go through what we went through back then.
Magic has been forbidden in this pack for generations. Deemed too dangerous, unpredictable. And that banning only led to the ostracization of anyone who could use it. By the time I was five years old, I knew my magic ability was something I was supposed to hide about myself. Keep hidden even from my own family.
I’ve gotten very good at pushing the magic down. Especially since that night, when the five of us nearly set the town on fire.
“I know you have to tell Xeran,” I hear myself saying, eyes on the duvet. “But please don’t tell Lachlan.”
Phina hesitates. “Why him, specifically?”
It’s a good question. Maybe because this is the first time since my sixteenth birthday that someone has really, really taken care of me. It’s the first time I’ve felt cared for since my parents realized I couldn’t shift and stopped giving a shit about me.
And it feels good to have Lachlan’s attention.
It even felt good to want and want and want him in that bathtub, even knowing he didn’t feel the same about me. Even with the fact that I was literally like a stray puppy he’d brought in, getting its first bath. Even though I was covered in soot and greasy.
My nipples had hardened, and it had taken everything in my power not to keep rubbing when I washed myself.
What would he have done if I did? The thought sends a shiver down my spine, and I push it away, but the damage is done. There’s already heat in my cheeks, and Phina can see it.
I’d always wondered if, despite Lachlan’s best efforts, anyone knew about the two of us in high school. If they knew about his purposeful detentions, the way he stole tiny touches, and when we eventually started meeting outside of school.
The thrill of him picking me up in his sports car on a dark street. The touching that happened when we got to the ridge, somehow, a spot that nobody else ever thought to go with their boyfriends. We always had the place to ourselves.
“Valerie,” Phina whispers, her eyes intent on me, “is that—”
“He doesn’t even remember me,” I say, voice coming out hard. The heat on my cheeks feels like shame, like I’m a stupidlittle girl with a stupid crush. “And the moment he does, he’s going to wish he’d never taken me in. Where will I go when he kicks me out? Doubt Xeran is going to want a stray wandering around the pack without a place to stay when there are so many displaced from the fires already.”
Phina frowns. “I don’t think Lachlan will kick you out.”
“That’s because you don’t know the whole story,” I say, lowering my gaze and swallowing. I could tell her. And maybe I would, if it weren’t for Nora sitting here.
I could tell Phina, an old friend, about how I fell in love with Lachlan Cambias in high school. How I was convinced he was my mate. That he’d sought me out in detention because of the bond pulling us together.
How, the night I tried to give myself to him, when I told him I loved him and wanted to be with him forever, he pushed me away, a look of disgust on his face. How he laughed harshly, saying he let things get too far, that he should have known I’d start to have delusions about this.
Then, he pushed me out of his fancy sports car and left me standing up there on the ridge as he sped away down the road, leaving a trail of dust in his wake.
Just like that, the best thing that had ever happened to me was done. And all because I was selfish enough to think I could keep it forever.
“Okay,” Phina says softly, and I wonder if she can see the shame on my face, the history there. I glance between her and Nora and wonder about her own story, what I didn’t know about her back then. Whatshewas going through.
Maybe if we’d been able to talk back in high school, we could have prevented any of that from happening.
