Rejected

♥ AZALEA'S POV ♥

Dario cheers first.

"Finally!" He throws both fists in the air like Elias just won something. "About damn time, man!"

The sound of it hits me before the words even land — blood draining out of my face so fast the room tilts sideways. I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. There's nothing left in me to say.

Elias leans in close, close enough that I can smell the alcohol and someone else's perfume on his skin.

"Accept it," he says, low, only for me. "Stop clinging to a bond you can't even feel anymore. We both know it's dead."

I can't answer him. My throat has closed around every word I own.

Around us, the rooftop erupts — cheers, murmurs, someone whistling long and low like this is a show worth applauding. Elias's smile stretches wider with every sound of it, feeding on the crowd the way he's always fed on attention.

Then my sister's voice cuts through all of it.

"Took him long enough," Zinnia says, loud enough to carry, phone still raised. "Guess even fate has limits on how much weight it can carry."

The pun lands, approved by the crowd as laughter ripples.

Laughter ripples outward. My own sister, standing there with her phone pointed at my humiliation, has just turned my body into the punchline. She has always been a bit mean but never this way.

The words hit somewhere colder than my chest — somewhere underneath it, some place I didn't know could still freeze.

I turn back to Elias.

And for the first time in eleven years, I actually see him. Not the boy the bond told me to love. Not the future I begged his father to grant me. Just him — glassy-eyed, lipstick-stained, laughing at my expense in front of a hundred people, and I understand, with a clarity that feels almost peaceful, that he never cared for me. Not once. Not for a single day of it.

"Elias, man, that's enough—" Tobias's voice, somewhere to the side, tight with something like embarrassment.

Elias doesn't even look at him.

I don't wait to hear the rest.

"I accept your rejection," I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel, steadier than I have any right to sound. "You're free.”

I turn and walk before the tears can catch up to my face.

Behind me, Elias whoops, arms thrown wide. "Drinks!" he shouts, to no one and everyone. "Round on me! Freedom party, let's go!"

The crowd cheers with him like I've already stopped existing.

I don't remember crossing the rest of the rooftop. I don't remember the elevator doors opening. I only come back to myself standing inside it, watching the numbers count down, my reflection warped and small in the brushed steel doors, vision starting to swim at the edges.

‘Goddess, please.’ The thought comes on its own, small and frightened. ‘Don't forsake me tonight. Not like this.’

A rejection can kill the weaker mate. I've heard the stories my whole life — mates who withered within days of being cast off, hearts that simply stopped remembering how to beat without the bond feeding them. I don't know which one I am yet. I don't know if I'm about to find out in a hotel elevator with broth still drying on my shoes.

The doors open on the lobby and the cold marble floor doesn't help the spinning at all.

I feel eyes before I see them — a cluster of wolves near the front desk, phones already in hand, already watching something on their screens. One of them looks up at me, then back down, then nudges the woman beside her. Someone snickers. Someone else doesn't even bother hiding it.

It's already everywhere. Of course it is.

I keep walking. One foot, then the other, chin up out of pure muscle memory. 

The revolving door spits me out into the night air, and for a second the cold almost helps — sharpens the edges of the spinning, gives me something to hold onto besides my own pulse roaring in my ears.

I don't make it more than a few steps.

My legs go first, some fundamental agreement between my body and the ground simply dissolves, and I pitch forward into a fall I don't have the strength left to catch.

Arms close around me before I hit the pavement.

"Hey — whoa. Hey." A deep voice, closer than I expect, steadying me upright with a grip that doesn't waver. "Are you okay?"

I try to answer. 

I want to answer. My mouth opens and nothing comes out but a breath, and the last thing I register is the stranger's face swimming above me, worried, before the night folds in on itself and everything goes dark.