Rejected for My Sister: The Plus-Size Luna's Revenge

Chapter 3 - Left for Dead

TALIA VANCE

"Where is it," she says again, stepping into the room.

I don't answer her. I don't trust my own voice not to shake, and I'm not giving her the satisfaction of hearing it. Instead I do the only thing I can think of, I shove past her, and run.

She grabs for my arm and misses, and I hear her shout something behind me, but I'm already down the hallway, the ledger jammed against my ribs under my jacket, my bag half-packed and forgotten on the bed. I don't stop to grab it. I don't stop for anything.

I make it out the back servants' door and into the trees before the alarm bell even starts ringing.

***

I run until my lungs burn and my legs shake, following the old trail toward the border, the one Nessa showed me years ago when we used to sneak out just to get away from the house for an hour. I've never had to run it for real before. I've never had to run for my life before.

Somewhere in the middle of running, some instinct I don't even remember choosing kicks in. If they catch me, they'll take the whole ledger. So I don't let there be a whole ledger to take. I tear out a fistful of pages blind, not even looking at which ones, and shove them down into my boot before I lose my nerve. My hands are shaking so bad half of them almost slip out of my grip.

I almost make it.

I can already see the border markers, pale stones lined up at the edge of the trees, when three guards step out of the dark in front of me.

"Look who thought she could just walk out," one of them says.

"Give us the ledger," says another, "and maybe we'll go easy on you."

I don't believe that for a second, but I try anyway. "I don't have it."

The first one backhands me before I even finish the sentence. I hit the ground hard, dirt and leaves in my mouth, my whole face on fire.

"Check her," he says.

Their rough hands grab my jacket and tear it open. I don’t even know how many. They find the ledger tucked against my ribs and rip it away. One of them flips through it fast, then laughs.

"The Luna Dowager's gonna love this."

"Please," I say, and I hate how small my voice sounds. "Just let me go. I'm already banished. I'm already leaving."

"You don't get to just leave," the first one says, crouching down so his face is right in front of mine. "You embarrassed the Alpha tonight. In front of the whole pack. You think we're gonna let a fat little nobody walk out of here after that?"

He hits me again. This time I don't get back up on my own because the punches just keep coming. I don't

know how long it lasts. I know there's more than one pair of boots. I know somewhere in the middle of it somebody spits on me and calls it a mercy, says it's more attention than someone like me deserves anyway. I know at some point I stop trying to shield my face because my arms won't listen to me anymore.

The last thing I remember clearly is one of them saying, "Leave her. The woods'll finish the job," and the sound of their boots walking away like I'm nothing worth another glance.

Then it's just me, and the dark, and the cold coming up through the ground, and I think, distantly, in a voice that doesn't even sound scared anymore, so this is how it ends.

***

I don't know how long I lie there before I hear something moving through the trees. The whole forest goes still around it. I don't just mean quiet, I mean really still, like every bird and every bug and every rustling leaf just decided, all at once, not to make a sound. I've lived around wolves my whole life. I've never felt anything make the air go this heavy just by walking through it.

I turning my head to look around. But even that is too much effort because every muscle in my body is groaning in pain. Suddenly, a shape crouches down next to me, really big. I can't see much through the one eye that still opens all the way, but I can see enough to know this isn't one of Selene's guards.

"Hey." The person, or whatever it is says, their voice deep and thick. "Hey, stay with me."

I try to say something but nothing comes out except a cracked, useless sound.

He shakes his head slightly and suddenly stretches an arm under me carefully. Hard, excruciating pain goes through my whole body at once as he lifts me off the ground. And a low painful grunt escapes me.

He goes still immediately, like he's checking if he hurt me worse.

"I've got you," he says. "You're safe."

Safe? Somehow, I manage to chuckle. There’s no way in hell my half conscious mind can ever believe him. Even though he literally just saved my life. Safe? Nobody's told me I was safe in three years and meant it. This is probably all a delusion. Maybe I’m even dead already.

He starts walking, fast, cutting through the trees like he knows exactly where every root and rock is even in the dark. My half-open eye catches pieces of him in the moonlight. Tight jaws, broad shoulders. And his arms… damn. His arms are so huge they make those guards from ten minutes ago look like children.

He leans down at some point to check the worst of the damage on my face, and that's when something suddenly slams into my chest from the inside. It’s like a pull so sudden and enormous, dragging every nerve in my body toward him at once. I gasp, and the sound isn't pain this time.

Then he goes rigid too, like I just short-circuited something in him.

"No," he says quietly. "That's not… I don't have a mate. I've never had a mate."

I don't have the strength to explain that I've never had one either. Not once, not in twenty-six years, not even with Damaris, not even a flicker. And now, lying in his arms, with a bruised face and a stolen ledger somewhere back there in the hands of the people who tried to kill me, it finds me anyway.

He stares down at me for a long second, like he's trying to figure out if I'm actually feeling this too or if it's just him losing his mind.

"Who are you?" he asks.

"Talia," I manage. "Talia Vance."

He doesn't say anything else for a moment. Then he seems to decide something.

"You need a healer. Now." He starts moving again, faster this time. "You're not going back to whatever did this to you. I won't allow it."

"Who are you?" I ask, the question scraping out of my throat.

He looks down at me one more time before he answers, and something about the way he says it makes even the pain in my body go quiet for a second.

"Kael Thorne."

What the hell? Kael Thorne?

I don't know much left in the world right now. I don't have a home, a husband, a sister I can trust, or even the ledger that might have saved me. But I know that name. Every pack for three territories knows that name. It's the name mothers use to scare their pups into behaving. Even Selene herself used to say it like a curse word. He’s the last Alpha anyone in Hallowmere would ever want finding their secrets. And he's the one carrying me right now.

And weirdly, underneath the fear, underneath the pain radiating through every inch of me right now, there's something else. Something I don't even want to look at directly because it feels so stupid, and feels like the worst possible timing in the entire world.

I have a mate.

I’m bleeding, homeless, and possibly dying, and some small, stupid, humiliating part of my brain is still busy noticing the way his arms feel around me.

Maybe I really do need a hospital.