Page 89 of Rejected Mate

And she meant it. I felt the fight leaving her body. Blood pooled in my mouth from where my fangs pierced her throat, but she would not yield. I had to give her that. She held on to her convictions.

Even if they were cruel and unredeemable.

But she didn’t deserve to die, and I had no intention of becoming a murderer.

Just as I was about to release her, something hit me in the side. Suddenly, my body was coursing with electricity. Pain blasted all my senses, jolting my muscles and locking my limbs. I fell, convulsing against the current that wouldn’t stop. It burned worse than the wolfsbane, igniting all my synapsis and boiling my brain.

And then it was over.

I lay panting and aching, burning and whining.

What the hell was that?

One of the vampire guards walked into view and stood, peering down at my face. He had a small handheld device that looked like…

Shit.

I’d been tased by Scarface, the asshole!

As I got up on shaky wolf legs, medics rushed onto the field. I stared as they descended on a naked, bloody woman before me. Laurel looked like I’d torn her to pieces, but I knew I’d only pierced her throat superficially. Still, there was a lot of blood.

She’d be okay, though. She was a shifter and would heal.

My eyes scanned from her to the people rushing onto the arena floor. They had to be Laurel’s parents. The yellow hair and pinched faces were unmistakable. They crumpled beside the medics. The mother brushed blood-tinged hair out of her daughter’s face while the father covered her with a jacket.

Then he whirled on me. “You! You killed her.”

I what?

He looked as if he were about to shift and take me on himself, but then William’s voice boomed over the whole arena.

“The contest is over. We will reconvene back here in an hour’s time for the final ceremony.”

I tilted my head up to stare at the box where he’d been, but he was gone. Only one figure stood on the balcony.

Ares.

He’d watched me win. I’d expected joy on his face, but what I saw chilled me to the bone.

He met my eyes, shook his head, and turned away.

As if he was disgusted with me.

As if I were nothing more than a savage animal who’d taken things too far.

I wanted to shift, to explain myself, but more guards with tasers were walking toward me.

“Get down below, dog. Back!” they commanded, brandishing their weapons like zookeepers with unruly charges.

I glanced at my parents but couldn’t find them. All I saw was a sea of disgusted faces.

Hatred. Revulsion. Anger.

How could this have happened?

Mind reeling with questions, I turned tail and ran back down the stairs before I did anything else and made things worse.

An hour passed at an agonizingly slow rate.

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