The Rejected Mate novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Token

The old kennels smelled of damp straw and a hundred years of dogs.

They put her in the last stall, behind a door of oak planks and iron strap.

There was a wooden bench, a bucket, and a slit window the width of her hand.

Willa sat on the bench with her back against the stone and listened to the enforcer breathe at the end of the corridor.

The bond had gone strange since they dragged her out of the east wing.

It did not hurt her, because she had refused it, but she could feel Caelen on the other end of it.

Every hour the pull got hotter.

He was somewhere above her, burning, and there was nothing she could do about it.

The light through the slit turned from grey to gold to nothing.

Her sister had not just lied in that room. Her sister had performed.

That was the thing Willa could not stop turning over.

Dinah had screamed on the carpet, and the tears had run down her face in perfect lines, and she had smiled at Willa a heartbeat before the first cry.

Twenty years, and Willa had never once seen the person under it.

Near midnight a key scraped in the lock at the far end of the corridor.

Slow footsteps came down the flagstones, and she knew the walk before she saw him.

Her father stopped outside her door.

He was a tall man, stooped now, in his good coat, with a covered dish in his hands.

"Your mother sent soup," he said.

"Did she come?"

"She can't."

"No," said Willa. "She can't."

The enforcer unlocked the door, and her father stepped in and set the dish on the bench.

The door shut behind him but was not locked.

"Ten minutes, Beta," the enforcer said. "The Alpha was clear."

Her father sat down beside her, and neither of them looked at the soup.

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