Page 47 of Sold Rejected Mate
When he’s gone, Phina turns to me and lowers her sunglasses to peek at me. “If I could make a whipped noise, I would.”
“He’s getting you a drink, too,” I point out, kicking off my flip-flops and settling back in the lounger next to her. “What does that say?”
“He’s a faithful packmate,” she says simply, shrugging one shoulder. “Helping out his pregnant luna.”
“Right,” I laugh, but something about it makes me feel uneasy, the nausea rising in my stomach again, pushing at the bottom of my throat.
“Here,” Lachlan’s voice carries over the music as he appears, carrying two drinks in one hand and a plate piled high with pineapple and shrimp in the other. He’s shirtless now, despite the fact that he hasn’t even gotten in the pool yet. His swim trunks hang low on his hips.
I catch several other heads turning to watch him as he goes and feel a flutter of possessiveness.
“Gross!” Nora calls, and when I look at her, she’s laughing at me. “Stare much?”
“Whoa,” Phina says, whipping her sunglasses off and leaning forward in her chair, her hand settling on her modest belly—she must be three or four months now. “That’srich,coming from the girl who stayed up all night making friendship bracelets forDerrick.”
Nora’s face instantly flushes. “Mom!”
Phina laughs and turns to say something else, but shrieks and covers her face as Felix hollers, “Cannonball!” and launches himself into the other end of the pool, sending water cascadingmuchhigher than it should into the air and over the chairs.
“You’rekidding,” Phina says, shaking her hands, water droplets flying through the air as she does. “Nora—get him!”
Nora glances around, then lifts her finger and sends a massive wave of water crashing over Felix, who pretends to drown, going under, his hand sticking up from under the still-sloshing surface of the water before he disappears.
“Lachlan,” Phina says, glancing at him as he laughs, “do you know CPR?”
“Forgot it,” Lach shrugs, even though heobviouslyknows CPR. “Shoot.”
As the party goes on, I ease into the feeling of belonging, of being a part of the group. I eat the grilled pineapple on my plate, then only pick at the shrimp. Normally, I like seafood, but there’s something about it today that’s turning my stomach.
When I stand up to go inside, Lachlan glances up at me, his face a question,Everything okay?
I nod back. “Just going to the bathroom.”
Inside, the kitchen is blissfully quiet after the chaos outside, the air conditioning a relief against my sun-warmed skin. For a second, I just lean against the counter in the kitchen, careful not to touch any of the food that’s been left out, watching Xeran cross his arms and shake his head while Felix and Lachlan laugh.
Phina says something, and while I can pick up the sound of her voice through the glass, I can’t quite hear what she’s saying.
I turn away before one of them might look up and see me staring out at them like a creep, then follow Phina’s instructions to the bathroom, only accidentally opening one closet before I find it at the end of the hallway.
I feel my stomach flip again just as I reach the toilet. Not wanting anyone to hear, I turn on the tap as I vomit the contents of my stomach into it as I hug the bowl.
When I’m done and am washing my hands, I feel another twinge in my lower belly, and it reminds me with a sudden, startling clarity that I missed my period.
I freeze, the toilet paper wrapped around my hand, my heart starting to pound as the puzzle pieces come flying together, forming a clear image in my mind.
My last period was just before the daemon fire at Lachlan’s place.
For a second, I just sit on the toilet, frozen, shaking my head, my breath coming shallow. There’s no way I messed up so bad—there’s no way I didn’t realize. I must have had it and not known. I must have—
But no, I didn’t. Because I used the rest of my tampons just before the daemon fire, too. And I never got any more.
Now the shrimp has made me sick. In fact, I can’t even look at seafood without gagging. And I love seafood.
There are a million other explanations I could cling to. It could be stress, the change in my routine. The ways magic churns inside my body. The trauma of the fire, of nearly dying in that pool.
But deep down, I know. The same way I knew at fourteen that my body wasn’t going to shift, no matter how many home remedies my parents tried. No matter how many spoonfuls of bitter herbs I swallowed, or how many times my father took me out into the backyard, instructing me tobe one with nature.
At that point, I’d realized that the wolf inside me—the omega—didn’t want to come out. Or, even if she did, it was like my body just didn’t have the hardware to accomplish it.
