Page 21 of Rejected Hollow

“You’re saying I’m Kaelen’s mate?”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

“But I don’t have a beast.”

Tamsin glanced toward the doors Kaelen had disappeared through. When she looked back at me, she seemed even more worried than before.

“Exactly. Which means either the Beastglass was wrong, or there’s something about this that nobody has explained.”

I pressed my palm against the ache beneath my breastbone. “What does rejection actually do?”

She reached for the packet she had shoved into her bag that morning and flipped through several pages before finding the section she wanted.

“It says rejection closes an unclaimed bond. An unclaimed bond means the connection already exists, but the beast hasn’t sealed it yet. Claiming is something else.”

“And rejection gets rid of the bond?”

“The Pull is supposed to fade afterward, until neither person can feel the other anymore.”

I looked down at my hand, still pressed against my chest. “What’s Claiming?”

“Apparently something they teach later.” Tamsin frowned at the page. “Very useful packet.”

“Can either of us have another mate after this?”

She scanned farther down. “It doesn’t say. It has several paragraphs describing exactly how painful rejection is and almost nothing about what happens afterward.”

Another slow pulse of pain moved beneath my palm.

“Then why can I still feel it?”

Tamsin’s arm tightened around me.

“I don’t know,” she said. “According to this, you shouldn’t.”

For a moment, I could only stare at her.

“So the most frightening man on this island is apparently my soulmate, or whatever the magical-animal version of a soulmate is, and he decided to tell me by publicly throwing me away.”

Tamsin winced. “That sounds especially bad when you say it like that.”

She went quiet for a moment, chewing on her lip.

“Everyone saw what happened at the table last night, though,” she said eventually. “I’m sure by breakfast half the island had already decided the Fenhall heir had found his mate, and his father is the head of the entire Council.” She looked toward the doorway Kaelen had gone through. “Maybe that’s why he did it in front of everyone. Maybe he wanted people to see him end it. It could be about his family, or his reputation.” Then something occurred to her. “Or Delphine.”

“Who’s Delphine?”

“He’s already promised to her. Their fathers arranged it.”

Ah, so that pretty girl…

There was always someone like her. Beautiful, acceptable, already standing comfortably in the place beside him that somebody like me had been foolish enough to imagine might be empty.

Except Kaelen hadn’t looked like a man choosing between two women. He had looked at me as though rejecting me hurt him too, and then he had done it anyway.

Maybe Tamsin was right about the politics. Maybe there were family obligations and Council expectations and a dozen rules I didn’t understand. None of that changed what my body had heard when he said the word reject, though.

It had heard that I was unwanted.