The Rejected Mate novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Burn

Nobody breathed.

Dinah stood with her palm flat against the Moon Stone and her veil lifting in the night wind.

Odette Braithwaite stepped to the other side of the slab and spoke in the old, level voice of the Luna at a rite.

"Dinah Ashdown. Before the Moon and before this pack."

"Do you swear that the pup you carry is of Caelen Braithwaite's blood, heir of Ironwood?"

Dinah's eyes slid sideways to Rufus.

He gave her the smallest nod, the one a man gives a child before a recital.

"I swear it," said Dinah.

Her voice was clear and sweet and did not shake at all.

For the space of a heartbeat nothing happened.

Willa had half-expected nothing.

She had half-expected the whole old law to be only a story, and her sister to smile at her with the Stone cold under her hand.

Then the grey rock went dark.

It did not glow.

It took the light from every lantern around the ring and kept it.

The clearing went dark, except for a thin white shine under Dinah's fingers.

Dinah frowned at it.

She tried to take her hand away, and could not.

The white shine spread from her palm in lines.

It ran up her wrist and into the lace of her sleeve.

The smell reached Willa a moment later, sharp and horrible.

Dinah screamed.

It was nothing like the scream on the carpet.

It tore out of her whole body, with no performance in it at all.

"It's burning! Rufus! Rufus, make it stop!"

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Rejected Mate from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.