Rejected By My Alpha: My White Wolf Ignited novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Mark

I looked down at his open hand.

The water was pulling at his jeans, and his lips were already going blue.

Four hundred wolves were waiting for my answer.

I didn't give it to them.

"Get out of the river, Rhys," I said.

He didn't move.

"That's not a yes or a no."

"It's a get out of the river."

I stepped down off my rock into the shallows and walked past him to the north bank.

I didn't take his hand.

I heard the whole south bank start talking at once behind me.

I didn't turn around to see Rosamund's face.

I didn't want to know if she was smiling.

We walked home through the pines, the three of us.

Nobody spoke for the first half mile.

Rhys's jeans had frozen stiff to the knee and crackled with every step.

Greer kept glancing between us.

Halfway up the hill I stopped in the middle of the path.

"No," I said.

Rhys stopped too.

"No to the river," I said. "No to the year. I'm not doing it."

"Linnet."

"You heard her. You heard him. Every man who ever marked a white wolf. My father was twenty-six. My mother sat by his bed for three days and watched him go."

"I know."

"Stop saying you know!"

It came out so loud a jay went up out of the trees.

My fire came up with it, and the snow on the path hissed into slush around my boots.

"I spent three years being a thing people put up with," I said. "I'm not spending one year being the thing that kills you. I'm not going to wake up next winter and dig your grave and have your sister look at me across it."

Greer made a noise.

"Oh, don't you dare," she said.

We both turned.

She had her hands on her hips, and her face was red, and her eyes were wet.

"Don't you dare put me in this," she said. "Don't you stand there and tell him no because of me."

"Greer, she wrote that she'd be sorry for you."

"I don't care what that old witch is sorry for!" Greer jabbed a finger at the hill behind us. "That woman has done nothing but hurt you. And now she sends a letter saying 'oh dear, the curse,' and you're going to believe her on that one thing?"

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

"She's lied about everything else," Greer said. "Everything. Why is this the one she's telling the truth about?"

"Because my father's dead."

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