𝐑𝐞𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 & 𝐒𝐚𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐝: 𝐒𝐋𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐍

Chapter 5: A Thing About Bonds

Stone Ravencroft: Age 16|

"The moon's favor shines upon you, my love. The wolf does not want you and that is good news." My mother concluded with a confident delight in her voice. 

An instinctive discomfort sat on my throat. My father had abandoned me, everyone in the court knew this. Would they all regard Tyler's dismissal to be abandonment too? With a sharp intake of breath, I looked around and noted how the remaining drudges lingered about. Pretending to be busy and unaware of my turmoil. Shame blanketed me to the point where I could feel my own pulse. I took my fingers to round up in a tight fist and a cold jerk suddenly sped up my veins, causing me to spasm. White pain blasted my head, it was as if my wolf was twisting from the inside. Wanting to shift but not being able to, I'd never been able to shift. Was Tyler able to scent my shortcoming? Had this played a role in him...

Thump!

Breathing became impossible once again that night. I'd never felt my magic in the manner in which I was feeling it that day. Currents of it were transmuting straight from my veins to my brain, right to the epicentre of my heart. I could feel my pulse, heavy and speeding. I swear I could almost hear it, and the knowledge that I had not been accepted by my mate threatened to snap that pulse. Was mom right? Had I been rejected?

Thump!!

Almost as though my emotions willed it to happen, all snow-frosted windows and glass in the room crashed. Shards of it clattered to the floor and into the skin of some drudges in a mess of everything noisy, untidy, and bloody. In the blink of an eye, my mother was affectionately by my side. She elegantly slashed her right palm with a small knife she kept in the garter of her thigh-length stockings. Approaching from behind, her best friend swished out a sachet of Oleander Flower ashes from her cleavage, exacting an immediate ache to pound my head. I cried and my head maid hurried to kneel at my mother's feet with a small-sized cauldron. Then I watched them chant an antediluvian spell. After the incantation was over, the cauldron held a liquid version of the burnt blood and ash concoction. Mom took it from the maid's hands and poured its contents onto the top of my head with an explanation. "His rejection has amplified your symptoms, but no worries once the magic sets into your wolf's heart it will numb most of it."

The magic set in and pain began to fade away in bits and pieces.

"Better now?" She squeezed my gloved hand.

I nodded, calm but breathless from the internal unrest. "Mom," I spoke, in need of her empathy. "He's known about me since he was sixteen."

She kissed the top of my head. "Do not worry about any of that. All you need to be is grateful he has not taken to the allure the gods oblige."

"I am grateful. Grateful the moon goddess gifted me a mate." 

"A mate who rejected you."

"He was neutral, he neither rejected me nor accepted me." I could hear the coming tremble in my own voice.

"A mate bond is accepted by a kiss." Mrs Baudouin looked down at me as though I was suddenly six and back in her spell-writing class. "He did not kiss you, never even came close to."

"It was our first time meeting and considering the ambush you unleashed on them it makes perfect sense he didn't. But who knows what will happen when we meet again."

Mom sighed. "Tyler is not slow. He is next in line to be the commanding Beta to the largest and strongest wolf pack in the world after all. He knows better than to reject a mate explicitly. Therefore, he knows exactly what he did."

And what he did was reject you, the words were left unsaid in the air. Humbled and frightened, I had to check. "Don't werewolves die if rejected?"