The Alpha Rejected His Scentless Mate at the Altar, So She Came Back as the Luna He Kneels For novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Mark

Three hundred wolves were watching me.

The Council was watching me.

Theron was watching me most of all, with his pen still in his hand.

Tiernan stayed on his knees with his neck bared.

His pulse was beating right there under the skin.

I could see it.

I could smell him, woodsmoke and pine, and something else now under it.

He wasn't afraid.

That was the worst part.

He smelled like a wolf who had made up his mind.

"Get up," I said.

"No."

"Tiernan, get up."

"You said you came to break me." He didn't lower his voice. "So do it. I won't fight you. I never will again."

My wolf was on her feet inside me.

She wasn't growling.

She was whining, high and thin, pressing against my ribs to get to him.

I turned around and walked out of the hall.

I heard him get up behind me.

I heard him follow.

Nobody tried to stop him.

I didn't go to the guest house.

I didn't know where I was going until I was at the side door of the Ravensdale house.

He reached past me and opened it.

We went up the back stairs without a word.

His room was at the end of the hall.

It was plain.

A wide bed with a grey wool blanket. A chair. A window full of white pines.

On the dresser was a small framed photograph turned face down.

He shut the door behind us.

I stood in the middle of the room with my wrapped hands at my sides.

"Show me," he said.

"Show you what?"

"Your hands."

I let him unwind the strips of sheet.

He looked at the blisters, two burned half-circles across each palm.

He didn't ask.

He lifted my right hand and pressed his mouth very gently to the inside of my wrist, below the burn.

Then the left.

My breath went out of me.

"I meant it," I said. "What I said down there."

"I know you did."

"Then why..."

"Because I'd rather be broken by you than whole without you." He looked up. "I've tried whole. I've had five years of it."

I put my burned hand on his face.

His beard was rough under my fingers.

He turned his head into my palm and closed his eyes.

That was what undid me.

Not the kneeling.

That.

I kissed him.

It wasn't angry this time.

It wasn't slow, either.

It was five years of the hook in my chest pulling, and finally, finally letting it pull.

He made a sound low in his throat and walked me back until my legs hit the bed.

My coat went somewhere.

I pulled the crown off and threw it at the dresser.

His shirt went somewhere.

The bandage on his left shoulder was white against his skin.

I put my lips beside it, very carefully, on the burn I had made.

He shivered.

I kissed my way down his chest, the chest I'd never once been allowed to touch.

His hands found the buttons of my shirt.

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