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Chapter 5 - Mylah

The commotion is immediate and terrifying. I worry that the man holding me in his hands—the one who has just finished promising me as a sacrifice to the Moon Goddesses—might decide that it’s not worth it to cross them and just toss me straight into the frigid water anyway.

If I hit the water, the weights tied around my wrists and ankles will keep me from being able to fight or swim. I’ll go into shock instantly. I’ll sink straight to the bottom like a stone.

But the voice that rings out is not just a voice. It’s a strong alpha, using his power to compel everyone here. Even the man holding me, an alpha himself, twitches involuntarily, and I can feel his body reacting without his conscious decision, taking a step back, retreating from the water.

Someone is stopping this after all.

Maybe they just want to take me down, strip me naked before tossing me in to drown. Make my humiliation complete. Tie more weights around my wrists and ankles, just in case I am a strong swimmer.

Of course, I’m not.

Maybe the rich people around here have indoor, heated swimming pools, but the only pond on our property barely thaws out enough during the “summer” for fishing. Get in the water and become hypothermic in seconds. Maybe I should have done that instead—better to drown on my own property than to do it here, in front of everyone else.

“Your Majesty,” the man holding me says, his voice a deep rumble through his chest and into mine. Vaguely, even staring up at the cool night sky, I can make out the motion of him bowing. So, he’s addressing his king. One of the alpha kings is stopping my sacrifice. I have no idea what to make of that.

I try to take a deep breath, to scent the man holding me, get a clue about what pack he’s from, but my nose is still aching and plugged from the blow to the face earlier. Plus, it’s cold enough out here that it’s harder to catch a scent.

And then the man sets me down, gently, reverently, a full reversal from the man a second ago who was going to drop me into freezing cold water and let me sink all the way to the bottom. Now, at the command of this alpha, he treats me like I am something delicate. Something valuable.

I sit up, wincing as the ties around my wrist rub painfully. Squinting at the bright light of the fire, I finally make out the man in front of me. The one who has just, somehow, spared my life.

And then, all at once, I am hit with everything.

“It’s you.” I say the words without meaning to, whispering them with the drama of a teenager trying out for the school play. My body doesn’t belong to me for the briefest of moments as I’m infected with every single part of him.

His scent. His silhouette.

The shape of a body that I would recognize in any life, like a familiar mountain range you’ve grown up seeing in the distance. His eyes, a particular shade of deep brown. His smooth skin, the stubble on his jaw. The large fur coat he wears, though I’m sure he has enough body heat to stay warm in the cold.

That crushed orange peel, candied citrus smell of him, sinking around me like the smoke from a recently snuffed candle. Tendrils of it inching over my skin, probing at me like a cartoon wisp. A physical thing all its own, designed to torture me.

My mouth waters. Something in my stomach clenches. I stare up at him with a wanting so intense I feel it in my throat, like a thing that could climb right out of me and take action of its own volition.

Stupidly, the fear and adrenaline present just a moment ago are gone. I realize with a latent, distant horror that I can feel a heat coming on, just like I did that day in the club. That day he left me sitting on the floor, slick leaking through my underwear and down my legs, watching him walk away.

Except right now is somehow worse than that day, because he doesn’t even seem to really look at me. Instead, he looks through me, around me, like I’m no more than an ugly throw pillow on a chair in the corner.

Like I’m nothing.

He doesn’t seem to recognize me at all.

I sit in the shame, the private embarrassment of knowing this man has been in all my dreams for years, and he can look right at me and have not even a flicker of recognition. Staring down at me, the fire climbing behind him, sending sparks and embers up into the sky, he tears his gaze away and to the others involved in this scene.

The passage in the library book comes back to me.

Although the existence of the false mate hasn’t been studied extensively, there are enough reported instances that this author finds it relevant to comment. It’s entirely possible that these reported instances are simply erroneous, or a case of rejected mate (see chapter four for more information). However, there are several cases compelling enough to make the argument for a false mate.

What is false mate syndrome? It is an occurrence in which one shifter—typically an omega—has a full fated mate response, all biological markers indicating they are in the presence of a mate. However, the other side of the mate equation, typically the alpha, does not show markers or reciprocation. This can cause extreme pain for the shifter suffering the syndrome, and often ends with that shifter harming themselves, others, or both.

That must be what’s happened to me.

If my false mate is the king of the Northern Kault Pack, I should probably try to roll my way into that lunar pool, pray that the goddesses might take some mercy on me in the afterlife. There’s no chance that he’s going to take mercy on me.

And if he’s trying to do a nice thing and save me from being the sacrifice, he surely doesn’t realize that being near him is certainly going to be worse than just freezing to death.

“She is not to be sacrificed. That is final.”