The Rejected Mate

Chapter 9

The pain didn’t stop.

Bonds were supposed to fray with distance, not explode. This felt like someone had shoved a red‑hot blade through Amara’s chest and twisted.

Her knees were on the porch boards, though she didn’t remember falling. Her wolf thrashed, slamming against bone, clawing for the other end of a thread that was just—gone.

“Amara!”

Hands grabbed her shoulders. She bared her teeth on instinct.

“Hey. It’s me.” Nira’s voice, low and sharp. “Look at me.”

Lantern light blurred, then steadied around Nira’s face—pale, eyes wide, healer’s bag thumping against her hip as she knelt.

“Can’t,” Amara rasped. “It—”

The word wouldn’t come.

Nira’s gaze flicked to her sternum; her scent sharpened with understanding. “Okay. Deep breaths. In. Out. You’re not dying. It just feels like it.”

Another wave hit. The bond screamed in her nerves, then went horribly, cleanly silent.

Amara choked on a breath that did nothing.

“He—” She swallowed glass. “He can’t just—”

“Apparently he can,” Nira said grimly. She slid an arm behind Amara’s back, solid and warm. “Listen. Your heart’s still beating. Your lungs still work. The rest we sort out after you’re not on the floor.”

Boots thudded. Jace burst through the door, eyes huge. “Frost? What happened? You just—”

“Get out,” Amara snapped. Her voice cracked. “Please.”

He flinched. “I was just trying to—”

“Out,” she bit.

Nira jerked her chin at him. “Tell Elias she’s down, not dead. Then give us space.”

Jace hesitated, then disappeared back inside.

Amara sagged against the wall. The cold bit her skin; the heat under it didn’t fade. Her wolf had gone from thrashing to stunned—the awful, small stillness of an animal that’s realized the trap has already closed.

“I can’t feel him,” she whispered.

Nira’s jaw clenched. “Sometimes one side can… force it quiet,” she said carefully. “It doesn’t erase what’s in you. But it can cut the channel.”

“He ripped it.” Saying it out loud made her stomach lurch. “He stood there, called it wishful, and then—”

Her throat shut.

Nira didn’t say I told you he was an i***t. She just squeezed tighter.

“You’re not crazy,” Nira said. “You didn’t imagine this. He did something brutal because he thinks it keeps everyone safer. That’s on him.”

The door creaked. Elias’s scent hit a moment before his voice.

“Amara.” Rougher than she’d ever heard it. “Are you—”

“Don’t,” she said, not looking up. “If you’re here as Beta, save it. If you’re here as my father…” Her voice shook. “Close the door and stop staring at me like I’m a problem to manage.”

Silence. Then the door clicked shut.

He moved into her peripheral vision, crouching awkwardly. “I didn’t know he would do that,” he said hoarsely. “The speech, yes. Not… this.”

“You knew enough.” Each word scraped. “You knew you were backing him while he made me a liar in my own pack.”

“I was backing the treaty,” he said.

“Congrats,” she said. “You got it.”

Something flickered over his face—shame, anger, both.

“You should come to the infirmary,” he tried. “If people see you like this—”

“Let them,” she said. “They already think I’m pathetic. Might as well give them a picture.”

Before he could answer, the night changed.

Every hair on Amara’s arms lifted. Under the taste of her own pain came a different sound—a distant shout, cut off too fast. Then another. Then a roar she knew: a border guard’s warning bellow.

Nira’s head snapped up. Elias went still.

From the trees beyond the yard, something howled—rough, wild, wrong.

Rogues.

More shouts erupted inside the hall. Chairs crashed, boots hammered.

Elias surged to his feet. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Do not shift. Do not—”

Something hit the far side of the house hard enough to make the porch shudder. The lantern over the door swung, throwing their shadows into a wild, jerking dance.

Amara pushed herself up, chest screaming, legs shaking.

Her wolf, stunned seconds ago, snapped toward the trees with a single, burning thought:

Mine.