Rejected By The Alpha For An Omega novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: I Accept

Imogen accepts the rejection on her feet in front of everyone, then finds Jarek waiting on her sofa in the dark, demanding she call it a joke; when she refuses, he fires her from her own clinic.

The words went into my chest.

Something under my breastbone tore.

It didn't snap.

It tore, slow.

My hand found the back of a plastic chair.

For three years I had felt him at the edge of everything.

His temper in the mornings.

The warmth up Cutbank Road at night, which I had taught myself not to think about.

Now there was a hole where all of that had been, and cold air blowing through it.

A logger with a taped-up hand stood up slowly.

Every wolf in the valley knows the old way.

When an Alpha rejects a mate in front of the pack, the pack waits for her answer.

"Imogen," June said behind me. "Sit down, honey. Sit down before you fall."

"No."

I let go of the chair.

My knees shook.

I locked them, the way I lock them at hour eleven of a long case.

Jarek was watching me.

Posy watched me over his shoulder, her mouth a little open.

"I, Imogen Bracewell," I said, "accept your rejection."

My voice cracked on the last word.

"You're free, Alpha. So am I."

The second tear was worse than the first.

Something warm ran out of my nose.

I wiped it with the back of my wrist, and it came away red.

Jarek flinched.

I saw it.

One small jerk of his shoulder.

Then Posy coughed against his neck, and he turned and carried her out into the dark.

The doors swung shut behind them.

The vending machine kept humming.

"Doc," the logger said. "Your nose."

"I know," I said. "I'm a doctor."

The front doors banged open a second time.

Cold air came in with an old woman leaning on a blackthorn cane.

Jarek's grandmother.

She had a white braid over one shoulder, a man's barn coat over her nightgown and slippers on her feet.

She had been Luna of this pack for forty years, until her husband died and her son took the seat.

She looked at the empty doorway.

Then at me.

Then at the blood on my wrist.

"I heard him," she said. "All the way up at the house. I heard him say it."

"You're late," I said. "He's gone."

She closed her eyes.

"I'm sorry, girl."

"You stood there when he put the ring on me," I said. "You could have been sorry three years ago."

Her mouth went thin.

She didn't argue.

That was the one thing I had always liked about her.

I turned to the waiting room.

"Who's next? The pup. Bring him back, he's been burning up for an hour."

June stared at me.

"You're going to work? Now?"

"I'm going to work."

I saw nine patients after that.

I broke the pup's fever and sent him home asleep on his mother's shoulder.

Nobody said the word Luna to my face.

Every one of them said thank you twice.

At two in the morning June drove me home, because she had hidden my keys in her bra.

The porch light on Larch Street was off.

I always leave it on.

I smelled him before I found the switch.

Pine and rain.

"Leave it," Jarek said from the dark.

I turned it on.

He was sitting on my father's old plaid sofa in his good black suit, elbows on his knees, my ring in his fist.

"Where's Posy?" I asked.

"Asleep. At the lodge."

"Did the more responsible doctors give her an MRI?"

His jaw moved.

"They gave her an ice pack."

"Huh," I said. "Imagine that."

He stood.

"My grandmother called me twice," he said. "The Elders called. All five. They want to know if a man who rejects his Luna in a waiting room is fit to lead."

"Are you?"

"You're going to tell them it was a joke."

I laughed.

I couldn't help it.

"You'll say you were tired after surgery," he went on. "You'll say I was angry. A fight between a man and his wife that got out of hand."

"I said I was done being your secret," I said. "You used the old words. In front of a pup with a fever of a hundred and four."

"Words can be walked back."

"I felt it tear, Jarek. So did you. I watched you feel it."

"I felt nothing."

"Then you won't miss me."

He held out the ring.

"Put it on. Stand next to me at the hall on Sunday. In a month nobody remembers."

"And Posy?"

"Posy is none of your business."

"She called me Luna," I said. "She looked right at me when she said it. Three years you wouldn't tell your own pack, and you told her."

He didn't deny it.

"Get out of my father's house," I said.

He put the ring in his pocket.

"The trust pays for that clinic," I said. "Every bandage. Every pup's antibiotics. It's in my name."

"Then keep paying," he said, "or let the pups go without. That's your choice, Doctor."

He stepped past me onto the porch.

At the top of the steps he turned.

"You're dismissed. The pack doctor serves at the Alpha's pleasure, and you were never that."

"You can't run that clinic without a surgeon."

"I won't have to," he said. "Posy's cousin is a doctor. A city one, from Billings. He starts Monday."

He went down the steps.

"Clear out your office," he called back. "She says he's very gentle."

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