Unwanted Shewolf novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Price

We ran the whole Moon Path in our wolf shapes, his huge and black, mine silver, and reached the Hollow before the sun.

Mabel stood at the gap in the boulders with a lantern, and her braid had come undone.

"I felt it go too," she said. "Forty years I've felt that altar hum, and it stopped in the middle of my supper."

Nobody said anything else.

We walked through the stone ring in the grey light.

The altar slab, which had blazed white the night I was accepted, was dull and cold.

Not one of the carved moons on its edge showed any light.

Rafe stood at the foot of it with his white hand held out from his side.

"What does she want from me?" he said to the stone.

For a moment nothing happened.

Then the cold in my wrist spread into my whole arm, and the voice spoke again, and this time everyone heard it.

Mabel's lantern flame bent flat and went out.

Warden of the Hollow, said the Goddess. Your oath was made to the Daughter of the line.

"It was," Rafe said.

You were bound to each Daughter as her mate when she was taken. You did not choose it. You were never asked.

"No," he said. "I wasn't."

The Daughter has taken her seat. The oath has done its work, and it ends at sunrise.

I felt the floor go out from under me.

"Ends," I said.

The bond ends with it, said the Goddess. The pull, and the compulsion, and the knowing. At sunrise you will feel nothing you do not choose to feel.

I looked at Rafe.

He was white to the lips.

"That's the price," he said quietly.

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