You Are Not Rejecting Me novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Night Before the Moon

My sister walked out of the pines that night with the whole pack watching, and nobody stopped her.

She did not look at me, and she did not look at the phone.

Half the lawn turned its back on her, and the other half just stared.

By morning the line down the lawn had moved, and most of Owain's forty were standing on the far side of it.

So the night before the moon, we slept in the carriage barn.

The lodge stank of wet ash, and the roof over the main wing had a hole in it.

Idris dragged two mattresses between my half-stripped chairs and made up a bed with the cleanest sheets he had.

Cadell slept at Marigold's.

Nobody said that was strange.

I sat on the edge of the bed in my robe and watched Idris check the barn door twice.

"It locks," I said.

"I know it locks."

"You've checked it twice."

"I'll check it a third time."

I laughed, and he turned around and looked at me.

The lamp was low, and the stripped chairs threw long shadows up the walls.

"Tell me something," I said.

"What?"

"The Run. The Pinewood wolf. You told me you turned her down because I came out of the woods."

"That's true."

"Is it all of it?"

He came and sat on the mattress, and he rubbed the back of his neck.

"No."

I waited.

"I used to stand in that doorway," he said.

He pointed at the barn door with his chin.

"Every evening, the year before the Run. You were stripping the old church pews that winter."

"I remember the pews."

"I never came in. I stood there and watched you work, and you never looked up."

"I didn't know."

"I know you didn't."

His voice was low.

"I told myself I'd ask you to run with me at the Moon Run."

He shook his head.

"Then your sister found her mate, and you went to the Run beside her."

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