"I don't accept you" — he shouted it in front of everyone novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Mark

Ezra's POV

She did not answer the Seer in the hall.

She said, "Tonight," and walked out, and I followed her through the doors and across the yard with half of two packs staring after us.

She did not speak until we reached the lodge.

She went upstairs.

I went after her and shut my door.

She stood at the window with her back to me and her hands braced on the sill.

Afternoon light lay across her black hair.

"You don't have to," I said.

She turned her head.

"I mean it. Whatever the Moon says, you're a wolf who owns herself. You've said it to a hall full of people. You owe me nothing. You don't owe Black Fork a mating. If the second scent fades tonight, I'll still be at the border every morning with coffee."

"Is that your speech?"

"It's all I have."

"It's a good one," Imogen said.

She crossed the room.

She stopped an inch from me, and put her palms flat on my chest, and I felt my own heart go against them.

"Do you know what I thought in the lot?" she said. "When the wind shifted?"

"Tell me."

"That I was finally going to have someone who picked me. Then he opened his mouth, and I thought: the Moon has a cruel sense of humor."

"Imogen."

"And then you said 'Mine.'"

My throat closed.

"It wasn't a good time to say it," I said.

"It was the worst time. It was the best time." She smiled a little. "You were so calm and so late. I wanted to hit you."

"You can."

"I'd rather not."

She went up on her toes and kissed me.

It was slow, and sure, and there was nothing in it I had to guess at.

I put my hands in her hair and held on.

"I choose you," she said against my mouth. "I'm not choosing the border or the alliance. I'm not choosing it because the Moon sent a second scent. I'm choosing it because you put your arm in front of Dunstan Harwick's hand in a mill full of people, and you never once brought it up."

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