"I don't accept you" — he shouted it in front of everyone novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Lot
Jasper rejects Imogen in front of the school, she rejects him back and he drops to his knees. Her father slaps her, and a stranger Alpha says "Mine."
"No," Jasper said. "No. You can't be my mate. I don't accept you."
He shouted it across the school parking lot.
Half of Ridge Academy was still climbing out of cars.
Every one of them stopped to look.
Thirty seconds earlier the wind had shifted and carried his scent straight to me.
I knew him in one breath.
Pine smoke, cold rain and something warm under it that made my knees go soft.
That is how it works for us.
One wolf in the world, chosen by the Moon Goddess, and you know them by scent the first time you are near them after you turn eighteen.
I had turned eighteen at midnight.
My mate was Jasper Penhallow.
He was the Beta's second son and my older sister's boyfriend for the last two years.
He had spent four of the years before that nodding along when my father said my black hair and olive skin were a stain on the Harwick name.
Inside me, my wolf, Tilda, had been bouncing since dawn.
She told me my mate would finally be someone who loved us the way we are.
Now she curled up small in the back of my chest and stopped talking.
Celia had been standing at his car door a minute before.
She kissed my cheek and handed me a cupcake with a candle in it.
"Happy birthday, Mimi," she said. "Whatever happens today, I'm on your side."
Then she put his silver travel flask in his hand, the way she did every morning.
He drank from it and walked toward me.
Now he stood three steps away with his fists shut and his jaw working.
"Say something," he said. "Say you know it's a mistake."
Clover had been two cars over, waiting to walk in with me.
I heard her phone come up.
She was my best friend, and she filmed everything.
I did not look at her.
I looked at Jasper.
Every person in that lot was waiting for me to cry.
I felt the cupcake crush in my hand, frosting going through my fingers.
I wiped it on my jeans.
"I know exactly what it is," I said.
My voice came out steady and loud.
"You said it in front of everyone. So I'll answer in front of everyone."
Somebody near the buses said, "Oh my God."
I put my shoulders back.
The old pack words came up in me, the ones every child learns and prays never to use.
"Jasper Penhallow, I, Imogen Harwick, daughter of the Redwood Pack, reject you as my mate."
A sound went through the crowd.
"I refuse the bond. I give back the scent. I will not be chosen by a man who wouldn't choose me."
The air in the lot snapped.
Pain tore through my chest where the bond had sat for a minute.
Then it was gone, and I could breathe.
Tilda howled once, very low, and went silent.
Jasper made a noise I had never heard from a person.
His legs went out from under him.
He dropped to both knees on the asphalt with his hands flat on the ground.
"Wait," he said. His voice cracked. "Wait, no, that's not, I didn't mean..."
"You meant every word," I said. "You've meant them for four years."
His eyes came up to mine.
They were not cold anymore.
They were wide and wet and scared.
"It hurts," he said. "Imogen, it hurts. Something is wrong."
A girl behind me laughed, one short laugh, and stopped herself.
Nobody laughed after that.
Cars had pulled in behind us and the whole lot had gone quiet.
I turned to leave.
A hand caught my arm.
It was hard and cold, and it spun me around.
My father stood there in his gray suit, face tight, with the Beta behind him.
Dunstan Harwick had come to the school for a meeting.
He had arrived in time to hear every word.
"What did you just do?" he said.
His voice was low so the crowd would not hear, and the crowd heard.
"I answered him."
He slapped me.
The sound cracked across the lot.
My cheek burned and my ears rang.
Clover said, "Hey!" from somewhere behind me, loud and furious.
"You will take it back," my father said. "Now. Say it was a mistake. Say you spoke in anger."
"No."
"You will not drag a Penhallow into the dirt in front of the whole school over some girlish whim."
"He dragged himself," I said.
"You are a stain on this family," he said. "You have been since you were born, and today you proved it."
"Then I'll stop standing in your light."
His hand lifted again.
Then something in the air changed.
A new scent crossed the lot.
Cedar and river stone and warm skin, and it hit so hard that my wolf lifted her head.
Tilda stood up inside me and said her first word of the day.
*Him.*
I turned.
A black truck had stopped at the edge of the lot, engine still running.
The man getting out of it was tall, with dark hair and a black jacket.
Every wolf in the lot felt him come.
I knew his face from the pack newsletters: Ezra Duncannon, Alpha of Black Fork, the pack across the river.
I saw the Beta step back.
He walked straight across the asphalt without looking at my father.
His gray eyes were fixed on my face.
He stopped one pace from me.
He breathed in once, slowly, and his whole body went still.
"Mine," he said.
My father went white.
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