The Rejected Queen

Chapter Four

JACI

“The bond didn’t break,” I told Rina one morning after I was tired of feeling Blaze's emotions.

She went completely still.

“When Alpha Blaze rejected me,” I continued, staring up at the cracked ceiling, “it was supposed to end everything. That’s how mate rejection works.”

“Except it didn’t,” Rina whispered.

I nodded weakly, squeezing my eyes shut. “I can’t live like this, Rina. I can’t spend the rest of my life trapped inside the head of the man who threw me away.”

Rina sighed. “There might be someone who can help.”

I lowered my hands slowly. “Who?”

“A shaman.” She hesitated. “She lives deep in the woods, maybe half a day from here. She deals with bonds.”

My heart jumped painfully. “You think she can break it?”

Rina didn’t answer immediately.

“Jaci… breaking a fated bond isn’t like breaking a normal one.” She paused. “People don’t walk away from it the same.”

“I don’t care.”

And I meant it. Rina studied my face for a long moment before finally nodding.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “We’ll leave in the morning. I know the…”

“You’re going nowhere.”

The door slammed open so hard I jumped.

Knox filled the doorway completely, his massive shoulders blocking the light from the hallway.

His dreadlocks hung loosely around his scarred face, and for the first time since meeting him, he looked genuinely angry.

“Rina,” he murmured. “Leave us.”

Rina scrambled off the bed immediately. She shot me an apologetic look before slipping past him.

The door shut behind her. Now it was just me and him.

I folded my arms. “Do you listen to all your guests’ conversations, or am I special?”

Knox ignored the question completely.

He crossed the room in a few long steps before sitting on the wooden crate near the wall. Then those golden eyes locked onto mine again.

“You want to see the shaman.”

“I want this bond gone.”

“Same thing.” He leaned forward slightly. “Do you know what happens to wolves who go looking for her?”

Something about the way he said it made my stomach twist.

“I don’t care.”

“You should.” His voice dropped lower. “The shaman doesn’t simply break bonds, Jaci. She cuts through them.”

I swallowed.

“The mating bond is connected to everything,” he continued. “Your wolf. Your emotions. Your heart. Tear it out wrong, and it destroys pieces of you permanently.”

“She can take all of it then,” I shrugged. “I don’t want it anymore.”

Knox’s jaw tightened. He stood up and sat beside me on the bed.

“I had a mate once,” he whispered.

I blinked in surprise.

“She died during a rogue attack years ago.” His fingers brushed absentmindedly against the scar over his eye. “Afterward, I found the shaman too. I begged her to remove the bond because I couldn’t stand feeling her absence every day.”

I held my breath.

“She refused.” His voice sounded rougher now. “Said some bonds aren’t meant to be erased. Said the pain was proof that the love existed.”

He looked up at me slowly. “I hated her for saying that.”

The room went quiet again.

“But she was right,” Knox admitted, with a smile that didn't quite reach his ears. “That bond… even after death… reminds me I loved someone once.”

“This isn’t love,” I snapped. “Blaze rejected me. He humiliated me in front of everyone.”

“You don’t know the full story.”

“I know enough.”

Knox stared at me for a long moment before finally standing. “I can’t stop you from going,” he said. “But I won’t help either.”

He moved toward the door before pausing. “Rina stays out of it. She’s too young to understand what this could cost.”

Then he left.

The second Rina saw me approaching, she shook her head quickly.

“No. Jaci, no. Knox already said…”

“Knox isn’t the one waking up every night feeling another woman touch his mate,” I cut in, glaring at her. “I need this, Rina. Please.”

She stomped her feet left and right.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “The shaman is strange. People say she takes things from you.”

“I don’t care.”

“You keep saying that.”Rina searched my face quietly, her shoulders dropped. “If Knox finds out, he’s going to kill me.”

“He won’t.”

“And if the shaman asks for something impossible?”

I thought about Blaze. About Nyra. About the bond that refused to die no matter how badly I wanted it to.

“We’ll figure it out.”

*****

The shaman’s hut sat in the middle of a clearing. The deeper we walked into the woods, the quieter everything became. No birds. No wind. Nothing.

The hut itself looked ancient, covered in vines and twisted roots. Smoke curled from the roof even though I couldn’t smell fire.

The shaman looked older than anyone I had ever seen before. Wrinkles covered every inch of her face, and her thin hands looked like twisted branches.

But her eyes frightened me the most. Completely white.

“The omega,” she rasped before I even spoke. “I wondered when you would come.”

Cold crept down my spine.

“You know why I’m here?” I said.

“The bond.” Her head tilted strangely. “Twisted thing, isn’t it?”

I swallowed hard. “Can you sever it?”

The shaman laughed softly. It wasn’t a nice sound. “I can do many things, little wolf.” She slowly stood to her feet. “The better question is whether you can afford the price.”

“Name it.”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

She moved toward me slowly, strangely graceful despite her age.“First,” she murmured, “we see what exactly lives inside you.”

My stomach turned.

“Sit.”

I obeyed immediately. Rina stayed frozen beside the door. The shaman stopped in front of me and lifted her hands over my chest without touching me.

Heat poured from her palms instantly. It seeped through my skin and ribs and straight into my wolf.

“Hm,” she said, circling me. “Interesting.”

“I don’t need interesting,” I muttered nervously. “I need this thing gone.”

“We’ll see.”

Then suddenly, she pressed her palm flat against my chest.

I screamed. Not because of pain, but because of what I saw.

The bond appeared in my mind instantly, golden threads stretching from my chest into darkness. I could see Blaze at the other end. I could feel him.

But there was something else too.Something small. The shaman pulled her hand away sharply.

I gasped for breath. “What? What did you see?”

Those pale white eyes lifted toward me slowly.

“The severing,” she muttered, “cannot happen.”

My chest dropped. “What? No. No, you have to do it.”

“I can’t.” Her voice sharpened suddenly. “You came here asking me to tear apart your bond without telling me what grows inside it.”

I froze. “What are you talking about?”

The shaman stared at me for one long horrible second. Then she laughed again. This time, there was no humor in it at all.

“Foolish girl,” she whispered. “You were so desperate to destroy yourself that you never noticed what fate left behind.”

“I don’t understand…”

The shaman’s voice softened almost into pity. “You carry life inside you, Jaci.”

“No…”

“Two lives,” she continued quietly.

“Twins.”

The room spun around me.

“No…”

“The bond cannot be severed now,” the shaman finished. “Doing so would kill them before they ever had the chance to breathe.”