The Rejected Beast Bride's New Mate novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Off-Cycle

The gavel came down, and the reporters surged at the rail.

"Miss Saxby, will you go home?"

"Miss Saxby, is the gargoyle your lover?"

"Miss Saxby, do you have a message for Bettany?"

Leander was already on the Registry steps with his arm around his mother, telling a microphone that he was "relieved the Council protected our privacy."

Bettany stood one step behind them, being photographed being sad.

The brides walked me out the side door in a tight knot, Wilda in front with the bun box.

The bear-kin woman hugged me in the alley.

"We're not done," she said into my hair. "We just haven't found the door yet."

By the time we got back to Pell Street, I was sweating.

By six I was shaking.

By eight I knew.

It wasn't my Heat.

My Heat wasn't due till May.

It was the bond itself, pulling hard after a day.

My whole body was throwing a fever because it had been told it belonged to someone who didn't want it.

The healers call it an off-cycle flare.

It doesn't last like a Heat.

It just feels like one.

Wilda put me to bed with ice and the bucket.

Then she went to sleep upstairs, because she had to open at six and I said I'd throw a shoe at her if she didn't.

Orrin came at midnight, like always.

I heard his boots on the stairs, heavy and careful.

He knocked once.

"It's me."

"Don't come in," I said.

My voice came out wrecked.

"Okay."

"I mean it. I'm disgusting. I'm soaked. I smell like a Heat. My hair's doing something."

"Your scent doesn't do anything to me, Clover."

"That's not the point." I pulled the blanket over my face. "I don't want you to see me like this. Not the way he saw me."

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