Caelan didn't wait for an answer.

He crossed the room in a blur and tore Merrick off me by the back of his neck. The rogue flew. He hit the fireplace stones with a crack I felt in my teeth.

"Alpha, wait! She told me to..."

Caelan's boot drove into his side. Ribs snapped like dry branches. Merrick curled around the pain, wheezing.

"You put your hands on my Luna." Caelan hauled him up by the collar. "In my house."

"The girl paid me! Ask her!"

"Out."

Caelan dragged him to the splintered doorway and threw him at two warriors charging up the stairs. "Break his legs."

Merrick's howls faded down the stairwell.

Then Caelan turned to Sabine.

She had flattened herself against the bookshelf, both hands over her mouth. Gold still burned in his eyes.

"I only wanted to scare her!" Tears spilled down her face. "I swear on Mother's grave, Caelan. She kept threatening me. He was supposed to *talk* to her, that's all. Then he went crazy. It was him. Not me!"

"You watched."

"I froze! I was terrified!" She stumbled forward and caught his sleeve. "Caelan, you know me. Would I ever..."

I lay on the floor in the shreds of my shirt and waited for him to see it.

His shoulders dropped an inch.

Only an inch. That was all it took for me to know.

"Go to your room," he said. "We'll deal with this tomorrow."

Tomorrow. She'd brought a rogue in to rape me, and she got *tomorrow*.

Something in my chest simply stopped trying.

Sabine slipped past him with her eyes lowered. At the doorway she glanced back at me, just once. Then she was gone.

Caelan dropped to his knees beside me. He stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders, tugging it closed over my bare skin. Then he gathered me into his lap and held on.

"I'm sorry." His mouth pressed against my hair. "Talia, I'm so sorry. I felt you screaming. I felt it and I ran. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

I said nothing.

His palm stroked down my back, and I smelled her on it. Vanilla. Sweat. Heat. Every pass of his hand dragged me back to those gray sheets, to his fingers sliding under black lace.

"Say something," he begged. "Please. Yell at me. Hit me."

I fixed my eyes on the broken door.

"I was wrong." His voice cracked down the middle. Something wet landed on my temple. Caelan Ashford, who hadn't shed a tear at his own father's funeral, was crying. "I was so fucking wrong. I'll never touch her again. Never. I swear it on my wolf."

"I want to leave," I said.

His hand stilled on my spine.

"I won't tell the council," I went on. My voice sounded calm. Almost polite. "I won't tell anyone. Sabine keeps her name. You keep your alliances. I just want to walk out of Blackridge and never come back."

"No."

"Caelan."

"*No.*" His arms locked tighter. "I love you. You're my mate. The Moon Goddess tied us together. The bond proves it. We belong to each other."

I pulled back far enough to look at him.

"The bond," I repeated. "You want to know what the bond did tonight?"

He went still.

"It let me feel you want her." I held his stare. "All of it. Your heartbeat. The heat in your stomach. How badly you wanted to be inside her. I felt it like it was happening to *me*. So don't tell me what the bond proves."

His face emptied, like I'd slapped every bit of color out of it.

I slid off his lap. The jacket fell away. I knelt on the rug in front of him, torn shirt hanging open, and bowed my head.

"Reject me."

"Talia, get up."

"Reject me. Formally. Say the words."

"Don't do this." He grabbed my arms. "Don't kneel to me. Not like this."

"Please reject me."

"You're in shock. In a week, you'll..."

"Please."

"Talia..."

"Please. Please." It stopped sounding like begging. It just sounded like a word I'd forgotten how to stop saying. "I don't want to feel you anymore. I don't want my body to know when you touch her. Please. Please. Please."

He cupped my face, thumbs pressing hard against my cheekbones, like he could hold the request inside me.

"Look at me."

I looked through him.

"Please," I said.

His jaw worked. His throat moved twice. For a long moment the only sound in the room was the rain starting against the window.

Then his hands slid away.

"Fine," he whispered. "If that's what you need. Go. Take some time." He swallowed. "You'll come back. And when you do, I'll earn you back. Every day. I swear it."

I didn't argue. Let him believe whatever helped him say the words.

He drew a ragged breath.

"I, Caelan Ashford, Alpha of Blackridge, reject you, Talia Corwin, as my mate and my Luna."

The bond tore.

It didn't snap. It *ripped*, like a hand had reached through my ribs, closed around my heart, and pulled it out by the roots. I folded forward. Hot copper flooded my mouth and spilled over my lips, dripping onto the rug in dark red spots.

Deep inside me, my wolf lifted her head for the first time all night.

She let out one thin, long cry.

Then she was quiet.

I wiped my chin with the back of my hand and smeared blood across my wrist.

"I, Talia Corwin," I said, "accept your rejection."

Caelan pitched forward onto his hands. A choked sound tore out of him. His shirt fell open, and across his chest, right over his heart, a red line seared itself into his skin, jagged as a claw mark, smoking faintly.

He stared down at it like he'd never seen his own body before.

I got to my feet. My legs shook, but they held.

I left his jacket on the floor.

"Talia." He reached for my wrist. "Wait. Talia, please."

I stepped aside.

His fingers closed on empty air.

I didn't look back. I walked down the stairs in my ruined shirt and my unbuttoned jeans, past the warriors who wouldn't meet my eyes, out the front door and into the rain.

It came down hard, cold enough to sting. It soaked me in seconds. Every step sent a fresh spike of pain through the hollow place in my chest, where something warm had lived for three years.

The tree line blurred. The old stone marker of the Blackridge border rose out of the dark.

I passed it.

Two steps. Three.

Then the ground rushed up to meet me.

Mud filled my mouth with the taste of iron. Rain hammered my back. I reached inward one last time, searching for her.

*Are you there?*

No answer.

Only the storm, and far behind me, a howl rising from the packhouse.

It no longer belonged to me.