Chapter 22: The River

Miriam's POV

The river was the same black water, with the same white shelf of ice along the bank.

I stood on the stones where I had gone through at nineteen, and waited in the dark with my hands in my coat pockets.

I heard him before I saw him.

He came down through the pines alone, as I had told him, and stopped at the edge of the trees.

"Here," I said.

He crossed the stones and stood in front of me.

The moon was out, small and hard, and it lit the breath in the air between us.

"A hundred and eleven," I said.

"Yes."

"I would have voted black."

"I know," he said. "I would have, too."

That surprised a laugh out of me, short and unsteady.

"You fell through the ice there," he said, and pointed.

"I heard it from the road. I went in after you without taking off my boots."

"I remember. You carried me up the bank and shouted at me the whole way."

"I was terrified."

"I know," I said. "I thought you were furious."

He looked at the water.

"I've been afraid of losing you since that night," he said. "That's why I believed them. It was easier to be told you'd already gone."

"I know that too."

"Do you?"

"My wolf told me, the night she ran to your window," I said. "I didn't want to hear it."

He turned his head.

I took my gloves off, one finger at a time, and put them in my pocket.

"The bond is broken," I said. "You rejected me, and I accepted it out loud. I felt it tear."

"I won't ask for the old one back. Harlan and your father had a plan wrapped around it."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Rejected in Labor: The Lycan King's Stolen Daughter from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.