"I don't accept you" — he shouted it in front of everyone novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Begging

Imogen's POV

They gave us the back corner of the mill, behind a fallen beam, where nobody could hear.

Jasper lay on the door with a blanket to his chin and his mother's coat folded under his head.

I stood over him with my arms crossed.

I would not sit.

"Five minutes," I said.

"I won't need that many."

His voice was a rasp, but it was his own.

The thick, sneering note was gone from it, the one he had used on me for four years, and I realized I had been hearing it so long I had stopped noticing.

"I said it all," he said. "Every word. I said you were a stain. I laughed when Celia said it, and I said worse when she wasn't there."

"I know. You said it again at the gate."

"I know. I'm not asking you to excuse it."

"Good."

"I want a chance."

I laughed.

It came out sharp.

"A chance," I said.

"To be what I should have been." His eyes were wet. "The Moon picked me for you. I felt it in the lot. It was the first clear thing I had felt in two years, and I screamed at it, because she told me to scream and I did not know why I obeyed."

"You said you didn't accept me in front of two hundred people."

"I know."

"With Celia's flask still wet on your lip."

"Imogen..."

"You'd have let that stand," I said. "If the bond hadn't torn, you'd have gone home to her, and I'd have been the stain for the rest of my life."

He closed his eyes.

"Yes," he said.

I had not expected him to say it.

I stood there with my fists tight and found I was not angry anymore.

I was tired.

"I'm not taking it back," I said. "Not for your wolf, not for your mother, not for you. You're alive because a healer knows willow bark. You don't get me because of it."

"I don't deserve you."

"You don't."

He swallowed.

"Is it him?" he said. "The Alpha?"

"Yes."

"Does he treat you well?"

"He gave away a river for you," I said. "Ask me again when you've done anything like it."

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