The Rejected Mate novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Stormvale

Willa woke in a narrow bed with a patchwork quilt up to her chin and sunlight on the floor.

For one breath she did not remember where she was.

Then the thread behind her ribs gave a dull, steady tug, and she remembered everything.

"Don't sit up fast," said a voice from the corner.

An old woman in a cardigan sat on a stool with a mug between her hands.

She had a wide, lined face and a pair of reading glasses pushed up into her white hair.

"I'm the healer here. Kirk said you'd had a night."

"I refused the rejection," Willa said. Her voice was hoarse. "Is something wrong with me?"

"Nothing is wrong with you, child. Drink this."

The mug was hot and tasted like honey and bark.

"I've seen one refusal in sixty years," the healer said. "A she-wolf in the north, long before you were born. I'll tell you what I told her."

"When a mate rejects and the other won't accept, the bond stays whole. It doesn't tear."

"It lands on the one who spoke the words."

Willa stared at her.

"He's in pain?"

"Fever, likely. Aching bones, a head like a hammer. The farther he is from you, the worse it gets. You'll feel it as a pull, no more. It will dull as you settle."

"And if I accepted it now?"

"Then it would break, and you'd both lose a part of yourselves you wouldn't get back."

"No," Willa said. "I don't want that for me."

She drank the rest of the tea.

Then she added, because it was true, and because it surprised her: "I don't want it for him either."

The healer only nodded and took the empty mug.

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