The Rejected Mate novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Hall
Before the whole pack Willa makes Caelen answer whether Dinah's pup is his, and he says it may be; that night he comes to her door and begs her to stay away from the rite.
"Come along, Willa," Alpha Rufus said. "The pack will want to hear this from the family."
He said it kindly.
Willa had been dressed for four minutes, and her hair still smelled of Caelen's sheets.
"Hear what?" she said.
"Whatever your sister has to say. She has courage, that girl."
He walked away without waiting for an answer, and the whole pack house seemed to be walking with him.
By noon every wolf in Ironwood stood in the great hall.
Two hundred people, shoulder to shoulder under the antler lamps, with children on their fathers' shoulders at the back.
Willa stood at the front with her arms at her sides.
She had decided in the corridor that she would not cry in this room.
Her mother stood beside her, gripping a handkerchief.
Her father, the Beta, stood on her other side and looked at the floorboards.
Dinah sat in a chair on the dais with a blanket over her knees.
Caelen stood behind her, dressed now, and he would not look at Willa.
His father's hand rested on his shoulder.
"Pack of Ironwood," Rufus said, and the room quieted. "I have two pieces of news this morning, and I won't pretend they sit easily together."
"My son has found his fated mate in Willa Ashdown. The Moon blessed them last night."
A rush of joy ran through the hall, and some of the women actually clapped.
Willa kept her eyes on Caelen.
"And," Rufus said, lowering his voice the way he did when he wanted people to lean in, "Dinah Ashdown carries the first grandchild of this house."
The clapping died.
Dinah put a hand to her mouth and wept right on cue, and the sound traveled through the room.
"I never meant it," she said. "I would never hurt my sister. It happened the weekend of the funeral, when Caelen was grieving and I was only trying to help."
"I didn't know he would come home and find Willa."
"Neither did I," Caelen said, very quietly.
It was the first thing he had said, and every head turned.
Willa stepped out of the line.
Her mother made a small sound and caught at her sleeve, and Willa pulled free.
"Caelen," she said. "Look at me."
He lifted his eyes.
They were bloodshot, and the pupils were wide.
"Is it yours?" she said.
The hall went quiet.
His throat moved.
Rufus's fingers tightened on his shoulder.
"It may be," Caelen said.
The words fell into the room.
Someone near the back whispered, oh no, and a mother pulled her daughter's face into her skirt.
Willa nodded slowly.
"May be," she said. "You didn't know last night, when you took me to your bed and asked if I'd saved myself."
"Willa..."
"And this morning you sat there and let her say it. In your own bed, with me barely out of it."
He flinched, his jaw tightening.
He opened his mouth, and his father's hand turned him half an inch.
"I will do what's right," Caelen said, and the voice that came out of him was flat and strange, like a recording.
"Of course you will, son," said Rufus, warm as bread. "The rite will be tomorrow night at the Moon Stone, with the whole pack to witness it."
"The bond between you and Willa Ashdown cannot stand beside a heir's duty to his child."
The hall gasped.
A rite meant a rejection.
Everybody knew it, and nobody had said the word.
Willa looked at the Alpha, then at the heir with his father's hand on him, then at her sister's wet, lovely face.
"Tomorrow night," she said. "Fine. I'll be there."
"Willa," her mother whispered, close and frantic. "Please. Say nothing more. Dinah is carrying, and the Alpha's goodwill is everything to this family."
"Mom."
"For your sister's sake. Just be quiet and let it pass."
Willa looked at her father.
He studied the floor.
Neither of them had said a word to her in the whole hour, and neither of them would.
She went back to the small house behind the bakery where she had lived since she was nineteen, and she sat on the edge of her bed with her shoes still on.
Her wolf lay curled up inside her, whining softly.
The bond was still there.
She could feel it under her breastbone, a warm thread going back up the hill toward the pack house.
She put both hands over it.
It was almost midnight when the knock came.
She knew who it was before she opened the door.
Caelen stood on her step with his hair wet and his jacket buttoned wrong.
He looked like something that had been dragged through a river.
"You shouldn't be here," she said.
"I know."
"Say what you came to say."
He held the doorframe with one hand, and she saw that his knuckles were white.
"Don't come to the rite tomorrow," he said. "Please. I'll have to say it, Willa, and I don't want you standing there when I do."
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