REJECTED, NOT RELEASED

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Wren point of view

I didn't sleep. I sat on the edge of the guest bed with a wad of tissue pressed against a cut that made no sense, watching it seal itself closed sometime around three in the morning, faster than any wound had ever healed on me before, and I understood in a distant, exhausted way that whatever I was now, it wasn't only human.

By sunrise the skin across my ribs was smooth again, nothing left but a thin pink line that would probably be gone by noon, and I told myself that was the end of it. A strange first night. A body adjusting to whatever my mother had been keeping from me. Nothing more.

I believed that for exactly as long as it took to walk downstairs.

Delia found me in the kitchen staring at a mug of coffee I hadn't touched, and she didn't ask about the rejection, which I was grateful for, but she did ask if I was hurt, and something about the careful way she said it made my stomach drop.

Why would you ask that, I said.

She hesitated long enough that I knew the answer mattered before she gave it to me. Because the Alpha spent the night in the pack infirmary with an injury nobody can explain, she said. Same side. Same shape. Doc's been staring at it for an hour like it's going to start talking.

I set the coffee down before my hand could shake enough to spill it.

I need to see him, I said, and I heard how strange that sounded even as it left my mouth, given that the man had rejected me in front of two hundred witnesses less than twelve hours earlier. Delia didn't argue. She just looked at me with an expression I was starting to recognize, pity mixed with something that might have been worry, and told me the infirmary was down the east hall, past the training room, and that I should knock first because Roan wasn't exactly known for patience on a good day, and this was not a good day.

I found the infirmary without needing directions. Something in my chest pulled me there the same way it had pulled me across the gathering hall the night before, a compass I hadn't asked for and couldn't turn off. The door was half open. I heard voices inside, low and tense, and I stopped just outside to listen before I could stop myself.

That's not possible, a man's voice was saying, older, rough at the edges. Rejections sever clean. Always have. Two hundred years of pack history and I've never once seen a wound cross the bond after a rejection was spoken.

Then explain it, Roan said, and his voice did something to me even through a closed door, low and strained in a way that made the ache in my ribs flare hot again like it recognized him too. Explain why I've got a line across my chest that matches hers exactly, in the exact place, healing at the exact same rate the doc says hers is.

I pushed the door open before I could think better of it.

Three men turned toward me at once. An older wolf I didn't recognize, gray at the temples, clearly the doctor Delia had mentioned. A second man standing near the window with his arms crossed, watching me with an expression I couldn't read. And Roan, shirtless on the edge of an exam table, a line of stitched skin across his ribs in the same place mine had been, already faded to pink the same way mine had.

He looked at me and something crossed his face, too fast to name, gone before I could decide if it had been guilt or fear or something else entirely.

You shouldn't be here, he said.

I didn't come here for you, I said, which was a lie and we both knew it. I came because apparently whatever's happening to my body is happening to yours too, and I'd like an explanation, since you're the one who decided last night that we're nothing to each other.

The doctor cleared his throat like he wanted to disappear into the wall. The man by the window, Roan's second from the look of the deference in his posture, glanced between us with the particular caution of someone standing too close to something about to catch fire.

Roan stood, wincing slightly at the movement, and for a moment neither of us said anything, just stood there with the space between us feeling smaller than the actual distance should have allowed, that same pull from last night humming under my skin even now, even after everything.

I rejected the bond, he said finally, low, like he was trying to convince himself as much as me. It should have ended there. Rejections don't leave a mark. They don't do this.

Then why does mine look exactly like yours, I said.

I don't know, he said, and for the first time since I'd walked into that gathering hall, he sounded less like an Alpha and more like a man who was genuinely, badly afraid. I don't know, and until I do, I need you to stay away from me.

That should have been easy. God knows he'd made it clear enough, twice now, that distance was what he wanted. But something in my chest twisted hard at the words, sharp enough that I actually pressed a hand to my ribs, and across the room I watched him do the exact same thing, wincing like he'd felt an echo of whatever had just moved through me.

The doctor was watching both of us now with an expression that had shifted from confusion into something closer to alarm.

That's the third time, he said quietly, almost to himself. Every time one of you reacts, the other one does too. Immediately. Not delayed. Not sympathetic. Simultaneous.

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

I need to run some tests, the doctor said eventually, looking between us like we were a problem he didn't have the tools to solve. And I need to pull the old records, the founding-era ones, the ones nobody's touched since before my time here. Something about this isn't behaving like any bond I've ever studied.

Roan's second finally spoke, quiet, careful. Founding era records are sealed, Doc. You know that. Voss family only.

Then I'll need the Alpha's permission, the doctor said, and everyone in the room looked at Roan, who was still looking at me, his jaw tight, that same fear still sitting behind his eyes even as he tried to bury it under authority.

Pull them, he said finally, not breaking eye contact with me. All of them. I want to know what my father knew that he never told me, and I want to know it before whatever this is gets worse.

I should have felt relief at that, some acknowledgment that he was taking this seriously, that we were on the same side of a mystery neither of us had asked for. Instead a cold feeling settled low in my stomach, because of the way he'd said it. Before it gets worse. Like he already suspected, on some level, exactly how much worse it was capable of getting.

The doctor left to gather the records. Roan's second followed him out, throwing one last unreadable glance back at me before the door shut, leaving me alone with the man who'd rejected me twelve hours ago and was now standing close enough that I could feel the pull between us like a physical weight in the room.

I have to tell you something, he said quietly, and something in his voice made every hair on my arms rise. It's about why I rejected you last night. It wasn't because I didn't want the bond.

Then why, I said.

He looked at me for a long moment, like he was weighing exactly how much truth I could survive hearing.

Because the second the bond formed, he said, my wolf didn't feel relief. It felt something wake up underneath us. And it's been getting louder ever since.