What Maud is saying is treason. I’d be scared to hear it normally as it’s punishable by exile but I’m already banished so what more can they really do?
I lean forward, elbows on the table, I’m eager to hear more. “His role to play? Not fit to be Alpha? What are you talking about? Have you told anyone else this” My head is spinning from the last few hours. I cup my hands around the warm tea mug in front of me and breathe in the familiar scent while I wait on Maud. She has a way of pausing and drawing things out when she’s thinking on her answer. I squeeze my mug so tight that the ceramic starts to burn my palms. I let go when Maud opens her mouth to speak.
“We all have our roles, or jobs to do, if you will. Wayne’s is to be a piece of shit liar willing to skin his own kin for a morsel of power. Yours is to leave this place and find better.”
I frown. “You make it sound like a game.”
Maud shrugs and leans back in her chair. “Because that’s what life is, isn’t it? A game.”
“I suck at the game then,” I mutter.
She chuckles. “No, you’ve just been trying to play with the wrong set of rules. But that’s over. I promise. You leave here and you’re free, do you hear me? You’ll be able to be anyone you want in a place that you want to be. All of this was set in motion the minute they took you from your pack. They can’t take your choice away from you, Cordelia. Hear me now and understand that.”
Your pack.
My eyes water. Frostclaw has never been my pack. Not even when I tried my best to make it that way. Maud is the only one I felt like I belonged with…well, her and Keiran. I look down at my mug and a tear slides down my cheek and into my tea with a pathetic little plop.Luna.How could I have been so stupid about Keiran? I thought he was my friend. I hoped that in his ownspecial way he cared for me. That eventually, somehow, he might come to love me. I was lying to myself.
“I reject you, Cordelia.”
There’s no way any of that had a prayer of coming true with the way he threw me away tonight.
I sniffle and swipe at my eyes with the cuff of my night dress. “What’s going to happen to me? I mean after this? I-I’ve never met anyone that was rejected. I heard about Bondrot but I’ve never seen it.”
Bondrot.
I’ve read all about it in the dusty tomes and papers Maud keeps on the bookshelf beside her work table. It’s what happens to wolves rejected by their mates. No one understands where it comes from or why it happens but wolves waste away, their ability to shift and strength sapped right out of them the longer they go on with a severed bond. The drawings of weak wolves and even weaker shifters in their human form makes me shudder. Some of them looked like they were melting right off their bones. The worst part of it isn’t even that they die, it’s that theydon’tdie. They become the Unliving. Wraiths trapped in their bodies. From the writings I’ve read it seems most packs take them out to the woods where the forest reclaims them. I don’t know what it reclaims them as or how. I don’t think it does to be honest. I think the packs just do it so they don’t have to look at the afflicted.
“That isn’t going to happen to me, right?” I whisper.
I say me because Keiran is fine. Because wouldn’t you know it? The surefire cure for bondrot is a new bond with a chosen mate. Just like everything else in Frostclaw Pack, it plays right into making sure Keiran has the best life has to offer. He rejected me and I’m the one that has to pay.
Maud hesitates in her answer again but this time it’s just a second. “No, I mean, it won’t. Not if you go home. It’ll…be betterthere for you. You could choose a mate there. That would fix the bondrot easily enough.”
She’s right. A new mate would be the perfect fix but I’m not ready to open that can of worms so I ignore her suggestion.
“You know something about me going home, don’t you?” I ask. “Just like you knew something about tonight. What aren’t you telling me?”
A pained look crosses Maud’s face and she shakes her head. “I can’t,” she says.
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t tell you, Cordelia. I’ve already influenced you more than I should but it’s a fair enough price with what happened tonight. I’ll pay the price for that when it comes time. I won’t have you staying here a single minute more than you need to. Not with Wayne sniffing after you now.”
My skin crawls at the mention of Alpha Ashford. “I don’t want any part of him.”
“That’s because you’re smart,” she says.
“And you’re a witch,” I say, bringing up the fact that Maud is a genuine witch. “Why did you never tell me? I mean, you were like seven feet tall back there when the Alpha tried what he did. And at the moon run? I’ve never seen you like that before.”
She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “You never asked me.”
She’s right, I didn’t.
“I was trying to be polite,” I tell her. “People bring up magic and witches like they’re bad.” It’s true. Shifters get twitchy around magic. They say it’s not natural in the village but I think it’s because they don’t understand it.
Maud grins at me. “That’s because I raised you right. You have manners. And anyhow, even if you did ask, I wouldn’t have told you because my being a witch would have influenced you in your choices. Your destiny is bigger than this pack, it’s bigger than me. Hells, it's bigger than any dream you can think of. Doyou want to know what I knew?” she asks. I nod my head yes because of course I do. Maud continues, “What I knew is that Keiran would choose his mate tonight and that choice would set your destiny in motion.”
“You knew he wouldn’t choose me.”
