Humiliated & Rejected Me for an Omega Joke's on Him Now I'm Mated to the Lycan Prince novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Thirty Days

Soren explains the Rite and the bond's price; the stone must be her birth pack's, so Linnea writes her first condition and names the man who rejected her, and Soren says Dane has already written to the Lycan court.

"Thirty days," I said, "and then it hurts."

"Yes."

"And you didn't think to lead with that before you cleared a room."

Soren looked at his Beta.

"I thought the room was more urgent," he said.

"He did," Emmett said. "He was quite firm about it."

I put my cup down on the saucer.

The coffee tasted like nothing. I had been tasting nothing since the mark lit up.

"Tell me all of it," I said. "The truth, not the version for treaty talks."

Soren sat down at last, in the chair across from mine, and kept both hands on his knees.

"I'm thirty. At thirty a Lycan heir goes through the Rite on the full moon, in front of the court. The wolf and the man are meant to settle into one mind."

"And if they don't?"

"The wolf wins. The man goes under, and doesn't come back."

He said it plainly, with no weight on any word.

"What stops it?"

"A Luna. A mate who stands beside me at the Moon Stone and takes half of what my wolf wants to do."

"Any mate?"

"A Moon-pure mate. A woman of an old, unbroken line." His eyes stayed steady on mine. "Your mother's line is one of them. Lindstrom is a pure name."

My stomach turned over.

"You knew what I was before you walked in."

"I knew a family name from a Lycan registry, and I knew a mark was calling to me from somewhere in the west. I didn't know they were the same woman until the hall."

"Convenient."

"It was luck. I've had worse luck all my life."

I looked at him. His face was calm.

I had heard a calm voice before, behind a pillar, saying trust me, it's all going to work out.

"Let me tell you what I've heard," I said. "A powerful man needs something from me. He says it's fate. In my experience, Your Highness, that's the speech right before somebody uses me."

Emmett shifted in his chair.

"Linnea," Soren said.

"I was somebody's perfect match once. A pure bloodline, a good name on a list." I made myself say the rest. "In front of two hundred people, he said he'd rather bond with a rogue."

Soren's hands closed on his knees.

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"It's seven years old. I got over it."

That wasn't true, and Emmett glanced at the ceiling to avoid saying so.

"I'll tell you what I won't be," I said. "A trophy for a wolf who needs a bloodline. I've been that. I'd rather take the thirty days of pain."

"You don't understand what thirty days becomes."

"Then explain it."

Soren was quiet for a moment.

"At day thirty the bond pulls tight. At day sixty you can't be more than a mile from me without bleeding. By the new moon after that, one of us doesn't wake up."

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

"That is not a threat," he said. "It is what it does. I wish it was something else."

"You could be lying."

"I could be." He held out his left hand across the table, palm up, and the crescent glowed. "Ask anyone at this embassy who reads the Moon texts. I'll wait."

I didn't ask. I just knew.

My wrist was already uneasy, and my pulse was already louder.

"What do you need?" I said at last. "Exactly."

"The Rite, at the full moon, thirty days from now. At the Moon Stone of your birth pack, because the stone has to know your blood."

"My birth pack."

"Yes. Where were you born, Linnea?"

I had left the place in the middle of a night, with one bag, and I had never said its name aloud in Lyon.

"Stonebrook," I said. "In Montana."

Emmett whistled softly.

"Is that a problem?" Soren asked.

"It's the pack that threw me out."

"Then they have a stone that belongs to you, and they are going to stand in a circle and watch you use it."

He leaned back.

"Hear me. I'm not asking you to go home as anyone's leftover. I'm asking you to walk in as my mate, with my name and my guard, and with every wolf on that mountain bowing."

I stared at him.

"Why would you care how I walk in?"

"Because I was told you were rejected, and I'd like to see the man who did it when you arrive."

I wanted to say no. I wanted to say I had a desk and a flat and a life that had been entirely my own for seven years.

But I could picture the hall at Stonebrook, and the dais, and the grey-eyed man in a polo shirt who had stopped looking at me.

"I want conditions," I said.

Soren nodded at once. "Name them."

"All of them. In writing. Before anyone signs anything."

"Emmett," Soren said, without turning his head. "Paper."

"Already in my coat," Emmett said. "I bring paper to everything."

I took the pen.

"Condition one," I wrote. "Nobody at Stonebrook is told I'm coming."

Soren read it upside down and nodded.

"They'll learn the same minute he does," I said.

"Who does?"

I looked up and said the name aloud in Lyon for the first time in seven years.

"Dane Callender."

Emmett's pen stopped. Soren's eyes went very still.

"The Alpha of Stonebrook," Soren said slowly. "He sent my father a letter last week, asking the Lycan court for protection against 'a sickness in his pack.'"

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