My Fated Mate Chose My Sister, So I Left novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Withdrawn
After nineteen hours on the bus her mate booked, Nina is told at registration that her enrollment is gone, then Alexander and Giada step out filming a prank; she speaks the rejection words and Alexander falls to his knees and cannot rise.
The woman at the registration window told sixty people in line that I no longer existed.
The line for graduate check-in at the university ran out the door and down the steps.
I stood at the front with a duffel bag, a folder of paperwork and nineteen hours of bus still in my back.
Alexander had booked that bus.
He said every flight north was sold out, and that he and my little sister would fly in later to cheer me on.
His text from the station said: Take the bus. Nothing will go wrong, I promise.
Before I left, he took my hand and held it until his shoulders came down.
He always did that before a run or a big day. He said it settled his wolf.
Then my sister hugged me, tucked a granola bar into my coat pocket and squeezed my fingers for luck.
She had never once let me carry my own bag.
Now the woman at the window typed my name twice and frowned at her screen.
"Ms. Corvino, your enrollment was withdrawn yesterday afternoon. It came from your student email."
"I didn't send anything."
"The department also released your assistantship. That includes the tuition waiver and the stipend."
I did the math in my head. That was about forty thousand dollars a year.
"There has to be a mistake. I've been funded since April."
"The system says you declined it."
Behind me, the line shifted and somebody muttered.
A boy near the door had his phone up. I noticed it and didn't understand it.
I put both hands flat on the counter.
"Please look again."
"Ms. Corvino, there are fifty people waiting. I can't do anything about it today."
That was when someone laughed.
It came from behind the pillar at the end of the hall, and I knew the laugh before I knew whose it was.
Giada walked out first with her phone on a handle, pointed at my face.
Alexander walked beside her in his good grey jacket, grinning.
"Surprise!" Giada sang. "You're on camera, Nin. This is Mom's birthday video."
The woman at the window pulled off her lanyard. It said STUDENT WORKER.
"Giada's sorority sister got me the screen," she said. "Your enrollment's fine. You should see your face."
Half the line was laughing now.
I wanted to be angry, but I could not breathe right yet.
Alexander opened his arms. "Come here. It's just a joke. We had to make it look real."
I stepped toward him, because for five years I had always stepped toward him.
The mate bond in my chest was a warm line that ran straight to Alexander, and it had never once gone slack.
It went slack now.
It didn't point at him.
It pointed at Giada.
Alexander's collar smelled of her. It was not sisters' soap or borrowed perfume.
It was the scent a wolf leaves on a mate it has claimed.
Under his jaw sat a small new bite mark, pink and healing.
"How long?" I asked.
Alexander's grin slid off his face.
"Nin, I was going to tell you tonight. It happened last month. The bond turned, and you know bonds don't ask us."
"It turned toward my sister."
"It turned toward Giada," he said.
Giada lowered the phone an inch and did not turn it off.
"Don't make it weird," she said. "It's a prank video. The best part is you finding out."
"Mom said you'd cry," she added.
The hall was quiet except for the click of phones.
I looked at the bus ticket still in my hand.
I looked at my sister's smile and the bite on his neck.
For a month they had both smiled at me and said nothing.
So I stepped out of the line.
I stood in front of Alexander Murgatroyd and said the words my grandmother taught me, loud enough for every phone in that hall.
"I, Nina Corvino, refuse the bond between me and Alexander Murgatroyd. I give you back to her, and I take back what is mine."
The pain hit at once.
It tore through my ribs where the warm line had been, and I grabbed the counter to stay on my feet.
Alexander made a sound I had never heard from him.
"Nina, wait. What did you do?"
His knees hit the floor.
He braced both hands on the tile and tried to push up. His shoulders shook.
His claws never came, and he could not rise.
He tried three times, and each time he dropped lower.
Giada's smile finally went out.
"Alex?" she said. "Get up. Everyone's filming."
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