Page 33 of Rejected Sold Mate
It had only lasted a few seconds, and if Jayce hadn’t been there to witness it with me, I wasn’t sure if I would have even believed.
“Was that…?” Jayce asked.
“Yeah,” Joy and terror warred within me. I had magic, just like I’d always wanted…and just like I’d always feared. It had looked light enough, but I had no idea how easy it was for it to fall into darkness. “It was my magic.”
Chapter 16 - Jayce
The spark of magic should have thrilled Rhie. Hell, it thrilled me, and its appearance had the welcome side effect of overshadowing any awkwardness that might have come the morning after Rhie’s heat.
Sleeping with her again had been so much more intense, so intimate, so incredible that it had thrown me through a loop. I’d expected the connection between us to grow afterwards, but I hadn’t expected just how powerful it would become. When I looked inside and touched our mating bond, it glowed, strong and golden. I knew it had to be the same for her, but neither of us mentioned it.
We weren’t afraid to fuck, but apparently, we were both too much of cowards to talk about what happened next. Which was why focusing on the magic, as unexpected as it was, turned out to be a lot easier.
Well, for me, at least.
For Rhie, it probably couldn’t have come at a worse time. She’d just spilled her guts about how magic had torn apart her family and pack, and then suddenly it was sparkling from the tips of her fingers like miniature fireworks. A complicated mixture of disbelief and horror had crossed her beautiful face, but after she admitted what it was, Rhie swiftly buried her face in my chest and willed herself to sleep. We were both exhausted after two rounds together, but her heart was racing for a long time after her eyes closed, and I knew she was faking it for a while. Anything to avoid acknowledging her new reality.
She wanted to pretend that it hadn’t happened, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
It made sense, in a way. The Lunas of the other three packs in the alliance were witches, so it only made sense that the mating bond between Rhie and me would help, and latent power she might have had manifested. It should have been something beautiful for her to bond with her friends over, but instead, she shut down any mention of it, doing everything but plugging her own ears to avoid talking about it.
Over the next two days, Rhie kept herself busy. She cleaned things that didn’t need to be cleaned, prepped an absurd number of meals, and hid in her loft to paint…or at least she said she was painting. The two times I checked up on her, she was curled up on the lounge chair in the corner, reading, her work for the day long finished.
She was avoiding her magic, and she was avoiding me, because she could tell I wanted to talk about it. I couldn’t blame her, not after what she had been through, but I also couldn’t leave my mate on the borderline between excitement and fear, never able to decide which way she was going to fall. What her father had done…it hadn’t just cost lives. It had left deep scars on his daughter's soul, and despite the years that had passed, they were still causing her so much pain.
Still, it killed me to see her pushing away something that was her birthright. A gift that would have been celebrated under any other circumstance. A witch’s magic could be wild and brilliant, and it could help to strengthen a pack in all sorts of subtle ways. It was like her magic had just been waiting for her to be ready before it appeared, but even when it fell right into her lap, Rhie was going to turn her face away.
If she wasn’t going to make a decision on what to do, I’d have to do it for her. I waited for her to leave the house on some errand, grabbed my phone, and made three separate calls.
***
The following afternoon, Rhie must have sensed that I was planning something, because she’d been hiding in the bathroom for an extended period of time.
Finally, I gave up on giving her space and knocked on the door. “Are you good in there?”
“I’m surviving,” she snapped, but there was no real anger in her voice.
“Put on something warm. We’re going out.”
There was a long pause, followed by a resigned sigh. “Is this a kidnapping?”
“Yes. A scenic one.”
Rhie sighed again, but I left her alone. After about twenty minutes, she appeared in the kitchen where I had been waiting, hair piled on the top of her head, and wearing a matching yoga set and hoodie. She looked so tired that it made me sad, and I almost considered letting her off the hook. My sweet mate hadn’t been sleeping in my room since her heat, and it was clear to me she hadn't really been sleeping at all.
Well, if it was worry about her magic keeping her up at night, I was ready to fix that for her. “Ready?”
Rhie bit her bottom lip, apprehensive. “This isn’t a pack activity, is it?”
“Nope.”
She exhaled, shoulders sagging. “Good. Then I guess I’m ready. Lead the way, almighty Alpha.”
***
I’d picked a spot on the eastern side of my territory, not too far away that the other Alphas would bite my head off for having their Lunas out in the middle of nowhere, but secluded enough that Rhie would be comfortable.
It was a peaceful stretch of grass beside a stream, dotted with early-autumn wildflowers, as the leaves of the trees began to turn. We’d used it for a few pack ceremonies—bondings and birth celebrations—so power had already seeped into the ground. Rhie had asked over and over again on the hike where we were going, but I’d stayed silent, even when she started to fume.
