After My Fiancé Rejected Me, I Became His Uncle's Fated Mate novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Fever

Lachlan stops the pack from touching her, and the separation fever puts her on her kitchen floor; the Alpha's wolf howls and the council is called.

The Alpha walked back into the firelight, and the pack moved out of his way.

Nobody spoke. Even the fire seemed to burn lower.

Lachlan Brannigan was a big man, and he walked like one who had never had to hurry.

He stopped between me and his nephew.

"Step away from her, Cade."

Cade let out a short laugh. "Uncle, she's nothing to you. I just rejected her. It's done."

"I heard you," Lachlan said.

"Then you know she's free."

"I know she's free," the Alpha said. "So I'm telling you, in front of the pack, that nobody touches her tonight."

He turned his head slowly and looked at the elders.

"Not you. Not your mother. Not any of you."

Cade's mother stepped forward with her face tight. "Lachlan, you can't make a ruling on a girl nobody wants."

"I just did."

She opened her mouth. He looked at her, and she shut it again.

I stood there with my arms wrapped around my ribs, and I could not stop shaking.

There were two heartbeats in my chest, and one of them was his.

I could feel him from ten feet away.

I hated it.

I hated that after three years of silence, my body had decided to lean toward him.

"I don't need you to rule on me," I said.

His eyes came to mine for the first time in three years.

They were gold all the way through, and I looked away first.

"I can walk home myself," I said.

"June," Pearl called. She had pulled free of the elders, and her braid had come loose. "Wait, I'll come with you."

"I'm all right, Pearl."

I wasn't, and everyone in the clearing could see I wasn't.

I walked out with my chin up.

The pack parted for me, two hundred people with their mouths closed.

Mirabel's laugh did not follow me. Nobody's did.

That was the only thing I took with me from that clearing.

By the time I reached my cottage by the mill, I was sweating through the white dress.

I tore it off in the bedroom and left it in a heap on the floor.

I pulled on a T-shirt and sat down on the kitchen tiles because I couldn't stand up anymore.

The fever started at midnight.

It began under my ribs and spread.

My skin was too tight, my teeth ached, and something inside me clawed at my chest and howled for a name.

I didn't say the name.

I pressed my forehead against the cold cupboard and said, "No, no, no," over and over.

The kitchen door opened.

I knew who it was before I looked up, because the fever backed off a little the moment he stepped inside.

Lachlan stood in my doorway in his black coat with snow on his shoulders.

The cottage was warm, but he brought the cold in with him, and it felt like water on a burn.

"You left the door unlocked," he said.

"Get out."

"In a minute."

He crossed the kitchen in two strides and crouched down in front of me.

He didn't touch me.

His hands hung open between us, and I saw the knuckles of his right hand were split and bleeding.

"What happened to your hand?"

"A tree," he said.

"Trees don't bleed on you."

His mouth almost moved. It was not a smile.

"The fever won't break until the bond settles," he said. "Give me your wrist."

"Why?"

"It'll cool you."

I held it out, because I would have held out anything.

His fingers closed around my wrist.

It was stepping into a river.

The heat ran out of my arm and into his hand, and I heard myself make a sound I had never made in front of anyone.

His eyes shut.

His hand shook on my skin, just once.

Then he let go.

He got to his feet so fast the chair scraped.

"Drink water," he said, without looking at me. "A lot of it. Pearl will come at dawn."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"You stood in the dark for three years and never said hello," I said. "And now you've got a rule for my wrist."

He stopped with his back to me.

His shoulders went rigid, and for a second I thought he would answer.

He opened the door instead and walked out into the snow.

The door shut behind him.

I sat there with my wrist cooling, and I told myself I knew what that was.

That was a man who couldn't stand to be near me.

It was the same look he'd worn for three years.

The fever came back an inch at a time.

Then, from the ridge above the house, a howl rolled down through the pines, long and cracked and full of something that was not anger.

I put my hand over my mouth.

Boots hit my porch steps, and Pearl's voice came through the door, thin and out of breath.

"June, child, open up. The council meets in three days." She stopped to breathe. "And you're the only thing on the agenda."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend