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

Chapter 5 - The Ledger Talks

TALIA VANCE

"....That's an Emberclaw wolf. That bloodline's been extinct for three generations." The man’s words echo in my mind.

Nobody in that courtyard breathes for a second. The courtyard suddenly goes silent. It’s so silent I can hear everyone’s breathing.

Then the world suddenly tilts sideways, and I realize it's me tilting, not the world. My wolf body, this crazily huge, unfamiliar thing I don't know how to control yet, folds under me and I feel myself losing the adrenaline that had been pushing me so far.

My eyes start blurring, and I hear Kael shout something I don't catch. I blink twice, trying to keep my eyes open. Before I know it, everything goes black, and I hit the ground.

***

I wake up in the same bed as before, human again, wrapped in blankets that smell like Kael. My whole body aches in a new way now, and it’s a lot deeper than bruises. It’s like every muscle got used for the first time and forgot how to relax again.

Kael is sitting in a chair pulled right up against the bed. He looks like he hasn't slept.

"You're awake," he says, and something in his voice cracks with relief he's clearly trying to hide.

"How long was I out?"

"All night." He rubs a hand over his face. "You shifted back on your own about an hour after you passed out. The healer said your body probably couldn't handle a first shift and a fight at the same time. Said it's a lot, doing both in one day."

"The trackers," I say, the memory rushing back all at once. "Damaris's trackers."

"Captured. Three of them, anyway. The rest ran once they saw what you turned into." He almost smiles, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "I had Rowan, my Beta, start digging through every old record we have on the Emberclaw line the second you went down. I didn't leave this room, though. Not once. Rowan brought the books to me."

"You stayed."

"I wasn't about to not be here when you woke up," he says.

I don't know what to say to that, so I don't say anything. My heart’s beating so fast, almost like it’s going to burst out of my chest.

For f**k’s sake Talia, not now. I mentally scold myself.

Kael’s hand coming up to my face snatches me back to reality. He brushes a piece of hair back from my face, the same careful way he checked my bruises yesterday. My heart starts doing something ridiculous again. I try not to look into his eyes, but I can’t. They’re just too captivating.

He leans in slightly, and I find myself not pulling away. And for one long second I think this is actually going to happen, that I'm actually about to kiss a man I met less than a day ago in the middle of the worst week of my life and…

The alarm horn goes off, and we both jump back like we got caught doing something wrong.

"That's the south border this time," Kael says, already on his feet, already a different person, the softness gone in an instant. “The alarm’s different.”

I heave the blanket off me and pull on a jacket I find nearby. He looks back and his eyes tell me that he wants to ask me to stay back. But I talk before he can.

“Please, don’t. I’m going,” I say, my voice low.

He pauses for a second, reading my face. Then he nods and holds the door open for me. I pull the jacket on and grab my boots.

“Thank you.”

****

Hallowmere is at the border, a lot of them.

Damaris is out front, and behind him, wolves and warriors from at least one other pack I don't recognize, drawn in by whatever reason. Apparently, word travels fast when a rejected Luna turns out to be some legendary bloodline nobody's seen in three generations.

My heart skips a bit in panic. Is he going to drag me back to Hallowmere?

I shove the thought away almost immediately. He can’t. My mate won’t let him. Then I panic again. My mate that I don’t even know that well yet?

Before I can fathom this whole thing, Damaris walks a little closer and almost immediately, Kael steps in front of me.

"You don't have to see him," he says.

"I want to. I'm done standing quietly while everyone else decides what happens to me.”

“Okay,” he says quietly and steps back, still really close.

Damaris takes that as a cue. And like he’s acting in a film, he drops to his knees in the dirt fully, face down, almost, forehead nearly touching the ground.

What the f**k?

"Talia, please." His voice breaks apart. "I'm begging you. I made the worst mistake of my life. I'll do anything. I'll give you anything. Just come home."

What the hell is this guy saying? Is he already tired of Rosalind? Within how many house? Or is it because I have a wolf now?

Someone from the crowd behind him laughs loudly and my ears snap up. "Look at him. Groveling in the mud for a reject."

"Don't lose your dignity over her, Alpha," another voice calls out. "She's not even worth the mud on your knees."

I feel my whole body want to fold in on itself, the old urge to make myself smaller, and less of a target. My hands are shaking. I don't actually know what I'm supposed to say right now, or what I even want to happen. Part of me still wants, stupidly, for this to be some huge misunderstanding I can fix.

Kael steps up beside me before I can figure any of that out, close enough that his presence alone makes the crowd go quieter.

"She doesn't owe you an answer," he says, and his voice carries across the whole border without him raising it at all. "But she's going to give you one anyway, because unlike you, she doesn't need to hide behind anyone."

That's not entirely true. I do feel like I'm hiding behind him a little. But hearing him say it out loud helps me stand up straighter anyway.

"Get up," I tell Damaris. My voice shakes, but I keep going. "I'm not doing this with you on your knees. It's embarrassing, for both of us."

He gets up, slowly.

I reach into my boot and pull out the pages I tore loose two nights ago, the ones the guards never found because they only ever got the rest of the book. My hands are still shaking as I unfold them.

"You should probably hear this," I say.

I read the payment line out loud, the one about R.V. and the bonding timeline and the territorial transfer date. Then I find the second page, the one that made my stomach drop when I was reading it while I was ripping it from the whole ledger body, a handwritten note describing a "resonance binding, indistinguishable from natural pull," applied successfully.

The whole border goes silent.

"There was never a bond," I say. "Not a real one. Someone paid a witch to fake it, timed to the exact week my family's land rights would've transferred to me for good. I was never the problem in this marriage, Damaris. I was the target. You just never bothered to ask why the timing was so convenient."

Damaris's face goes white. "That's not…. I need to see that. Let me see it."

"No," I say. My voice is still shaking. I don't feel brave. I just don't want to look pathetic in front of two hundred people who are already waiting for me to fall apart, so I don't let myself.

Kael steps forward, past me, in front of every single wolf on both sides of that border, and the ground itself seems to go still under the weight of it.

"She's not going back with you," he says. "Not now. Not ever."

"She's not yours to claim," Damaris says, but there's no strength left in it.

Kael doesn't answer him with words.

He turns to me instead, and for one second his eyes ask me something I don't have time to answer before he says it anyway, before he says the words that change absolutely everything, right there in front of two packs, before I've even said yes.

"I claim Talia Vance as my mate. Before witnesses. Before both our packs. She is under my protection, starting now."

Every wolf on the Ravenswood side drops to a knee at once. On the Hallowmere side, Damaris just stands there, mouth open, like the ground moved and he still hasn't caught up to it.

I stare up at Kael, heart slamming, and think one panicked thought.

He didn't even ask me.