You Are Not Rejecting Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cereal Box
Seren's mate is photographed with his first love and she rejects the bond; Nia, eating cereal in her robe, says she'll do the same, packs, and Idris comes home early and takes the bag out of her hand.
I was eating cereal out of the box in my sister's kitchen when the pack group chat lit up her phone.
It buzzed against the counter once, then again, then it would not stop.
My sister picked it up before the second buzz was over.
Her shoulders went stiff before she had read a single line.
"What?" I said, around a mouthful of flakes.
She turned the screen toward me.
It was a grainy photo, shot from across a crowded bar.
Her mate sat at a back table, laughing, and a woman's hand lay flat on his arm.
Under it, the group had already started in.
His first love, home after eleven years.
The one the whole town swore he had never gotten over.
She read it standing in her robe, perfectly still, her thumb frozen over the glass.
Then she set the phone face down on the counter without a sound.
"I'm done," she said.
Her voice came out flat.
"I'm rejecting the bond. Today."
I put the cereal box down.
"What about you?" she said.
She looked right at me for the first time since the phone started to buzz.
"You reject, I reject," I said.
I did not even stop to think about it.
That is how it has always been with Seren and me.
We are twins, and she is older by eleven minutes, and she has been first through every door since.
She moves, and I move.
Her name is Seren, and she mated the Alpha of Ember Ridge, Cadell Garland, at the Moon Run twenty-six months ago.
I mated his younger brother, Idris, at the Moon Run two months after hers.
Seren was never surprised by anything I did, and she was not surprised now.
"Good," she said. "We're leaving today."
She went to the hall closet and rolled a suitcase out.
It was already zipped.
A second one stood behind it, already zipped as well.
"That one's yours," she said. "I'll help you with the rest."
Seren is always ready first.
I gave her a mock salute with my cereal spoon.
"Yes, ma'am."
She did not turn around to see it.
She went upstairs to start on her own room.
I stood in the kitchen a second longer than I needed to.
Two people could not pack two years of a life in one afternoon.
It was not happening, not even close.
I went up anyway.
My closet takes up half the guest wing of the Garland lodge, and that was Cadell's doing, not mine.
There were coats I had never asked for, hanging in a row with the tags still on.
There was a drawer of cash I had stopped counting.
There was a jewelry box that had been replaced twice, because the first two filled up.
None of it was really mine.
Cadell paid for the whole house, for Seren, for me, for Idris, for every last light bulb.
In two years I had never had to spend a dollar.
I had my own money.
I just liked it better when I did not have to touch it.
I took down the coats one at a time and folded them into a bag.
A plate sat outside my door with a dish towel over it, as one had every night for two years.
I stepped around it without picking it up.
I did not look at it, because I knew who left it.
I zipped the bag.
So I was leaving.
I stood by the window with the last coat in my hands, and I tried to feel what a woman should feel when she is leaving a mate.
My wolf did not move at all.
She lay down low and stared at the door.
I heard it then, tires on the gravel drive, much too fast.
Then a hard skid, the stones flying, just before the engine cut off right outside.
Idris was home early.
He took the stairs two at a time, and he was in my doorway before I had finished folding the coat.
His jacket was still half off one shoulder, and his chest was going up and down.
He looked at the open bag, the bare hangers, the suitcase by the bed.
"Seren told the whole pack," he said. "I got the call in the truck."
"I'm going with her," I said.
"I know you are."
He crossed the room, and he took the bag out of my hands, and he set it down on the floor.
He was close enough that I could smell pine smoke and cold air on his collar.
"Listen to me, Nia."
His voice was low and steady.
"You are not rejecting me."
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