Don't Touch Him! He's Not An Alpha, He's My Patient novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Wolfsbane

Wylie's hands were still fisted in the blanket.

"It wasn't you," he said.

"No."

"I'd know your voice through a brick wall. I've listened to it for four years."

"Then you know whose voice it was."

He didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

Arlene got up out of Gran's chair and put the kettle on, because she didn't know what else to do with her hands.

"That little..." she started, and then said a word I'd never heard even Arlene use.

I climbed up to the shelf over the hearth and took down Gran's book.

It was brown leather gone black at the corners, thick as a Bible, every page in her slanting hand.

I'd read it a hundred times as a girl.

I'd never needed the pages on rejection.

I found them by the light of the stove.

Most of it I already knew.

The stillness, the five Hunter's Moons, the Moonwell.

Then, at the bottom of the last page, a paragraph in darker ink, written later.

"A she-wolf who rejected her fated mate may take back her word under a full moon, while he still carries the wound. The bond then takes him whole, whether he wills it or no. Only a chosen mark already on him, or his own refusal spoken with his wolf awake, will stop it. A refusal from a weak wolf may kill him."

I read it twice.

Then I turned the book around and showed Wylie.

He read it slowly, his lips moving.

When he looked up, his face was gray.

"She can just take me back."

"Under a full moon. The next one's the Hunter's Moon."

"And if I say no?"

"With your wolf awake, you can. Not now. Not yet."

Arlene set the kettle down hard.

"Then she can't find out. Not one word, not to anyone."

"She already smelled him in the orchard," I said. "She just doesn't know what it means yet."

Wylie reached over and closed the book.

"Freja. Look at me."

I looked.

"I don't want her. I didn't want her through the hedge, and I don't want her now. I want you."

"You don't know that. You've been in a chair for five years. I'm the only woman who talked to you."

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