My Mate Didn't Want Me, So I Refused Him Louder novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Not Yet

Torin's POV

I climbed onto the Stone with my hands bare and my heart going hard enough to hurt.

Two hundred faces looked up at me in the lantern light.

Some of them had filmed me, four weeks ago, saying the worst thing I've ever said.

I looked for her, and she was at the foot of the slab in a barn coat.

Her arms were folded, and her grey eyes were steady.

She didn't help me. I wouldn't have wanted her to.

"Pack," I said. "Put your phones up."

A rustle went through the ranks.

"The ones who filmed the Gathering. Put them up now."

They did. A hundred small lights rose in the dark, and my throat closed for a second.

Then I made it open.

"Four weeks ago in my own hall I told you I wanted no mate," I said. "I told you the woman beside me smelled of nothing."

I made myself say her name.

"Linnea Aaberg smells of wet hay and lake water. I picked her out of two hundred people from the doorway."

I kept going.

"I'd know her scent in my grave."

Somebody in the ranks drew a hard breath.

"I wanted her the second I saw her. I said otherwise because I was afraid, and because I was ordered to, and because I believed a lie about what I'd done."

I let that stand.

"All three were my fault."

I held my left wrist out under the moon.

"This was never a claim. It was a crime done to me, and I let it become a crime done to her."

My voice shook, and I didn't stop it.

"I took her name in front of you and made it dirt. I will take it back in front of you now, as many times as it takes."

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