The Rejected Mate novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Wardrobe

The Luna had been gone four minutes when Willa laid down her rules.

She stood in the middle of the east room in her torn slip with her arms crossed.

She told him exactly how it would be.

"You stay in this room until I say otherwise. You do not touch me unless I say you can."

"Understood."

"Nobody uses that word. Not you, not me, not in front of your mother. It's not a word I'm using right now."

Caelen sat on the edge of the bed with the strip of cloth tied around his forehead.

"What word?"

"You know the word."

His mouth twitched, the first almost-smile she'd seen since the party.

"Mate," he said.

"I said not that one."

"You said nobody uses it. I wanted to see what you'd do."

"I'd throw this shoe at you, if it wouldn't wake the house."

He held up both hands in surrender.

"No touching," he said. "No word. I'll be a perfect gentleman until I'm told otherwise."

"You'll be quiet."

"I'll be quiet."

A heavy boot struck the door.

"Search party," called a bored voice. "By order of the Alpha. Every room."

Willa went rigid.

"The Luna said the guest rooms were exempt."

"The Luna isn't the Alpha."

There were more boots now, a dozen men starting at the far end of the hall.

They worked inward, door by door.

Caelen looked at the window, then at the wardrobe, then at her.

"There's a tracker in that crowd," he said in an undertone. "He can smell a man across a field."

"Then he'll smell you in this room."

"Not if I'm not alone."

She stared at him.

Every girl in Ironwood grew up on the same fireside nonsense, and this part of it had never struck her as nonsense.

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