The Tide Assembly is over and the hall is emptying out, but Trudie's hand is still on my shoulder, shoving me toward the crates at the back wall.
Trudie: Stack every one of them, then sweep. Don't come home till that floor's clean enough to eat off.
Trudie: And keep your mouth off the Alpha's boy. Folk will say you're angling for something you've got no right to.
Coburn: She's not angling, Ma. She's just dumb enough to think wiping a brat's hands makes her somebody.
Trudie: You're a useless little bitch, that's all. If the Alpha wants a mop, I'll sell him one.
Some of them laugh. My face burns so hot I feel it in my ears, and then the door shuts and I'm alone with the crates and a lip that still throbs.
I'm dragging the last crate across the boards when a pair of boots stops on the other side of it.
Kester: Leave it. I'll take that one.
The crate slips, and his hand comes down over mine to catch it.
Everything in me goes quiet and then it goes loud. His skin is warm and rough, and the whole hall smells like the river at low tide.
My wolf slams up against the inside of my skin, howling the one word I've waited my whole life to hear.
Mate. Mate. Mate.
Kester's side.
It goes through Kester like a hook under the ribs, and his wolf surges up so hard his hands shake.
He thinks of a blue dress by the river and lilies going brown in the rain, and his chest shuts like a door.
He doesn't let go of my hand. His fingers slide down and lock around my wrist instead, and he wrenches it up between us so hard my shoulder pops.
Kester: No.
Fenna: You're hurting me. Alpha, please. You're hurting me.
His grip is grinding. The little bones shift under his fingers and a hot wire of pain runs all the way up to my jaw.
Kester: This isn't happening. Not Trudie's girl. Not fucking ever.
Kester: This bond is a curse, and I won't be buried by it twice.
He drops my wrist like it burned him. The skin is already going dark, four red bars and the shape of his thumb, and it will be purple by morning.
Kester: Say one word about this to anyone, and I'll make you wish you'd kept it in your fucking mouth.
I believe him. That's the worst of it. I believe every single word he says, and then the door bangs and the crates rattle and he is gone.
I sit down on the cold boards because my legs have gone stupid. My wolf is crying in my chest like a pup, and I have nothing kind left to say to her.
He felt it too. I know he did. And he still looked at me like I was shit on his boot.
I came into that hall a burden. I'm walking out of it a rejected mate, and by sunrise the whole pack will know it before I've even had breakfast.
So why is there still a small stupid part of me that keeps saying his name?