Chapter 15

                                    

                                          
"No!" Austin jumped from his chair and slammed his hand over Ryleigh's mouth, cutting the phrase short just before she could conclude it. Her eyes widened and she uttered a muffled protest. The next moment he yelped and jerked his hand back. "Did you just bite me?" 
                          
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked up at him spitefully. Austin waved his hand in the air, Ryleigh's dental structure engraved into his palm. 
                          
"You're crazy," he said. He sat back down, rubbing his palm. "Don't reject me." 
                          
"Why?" she said, and he looked up in surprise. He hadn't expected her to continue talking. 
                          
"If you do, I have no reason not to send you back to Alder." 
                          
She blinked and pulled her lips into a pout. Strangely enough, she almost seemed to approve of that answer. "Fair enough." She drew her legs under her, wincing at the movement. 
                          
"Now that you have found your tongue, will you tell me your name?"
                          
"No." 
                          
"Why not?" 
                          
She shrugged one shoulder. Austin watched her a moment in silence. Her voice was slightly hoarse due to her illness, but gentle and pleasant. Or it would have been pleasant if she'd use it to say less disturbing things. 
                          
"Carry said you are aware of the, uh, circumstances that brought you here. Is that why you're so upset with me?" 
                          
She snorted a laugh, her body instantly convulsing as a result. "I don't care." 
                          
"You don't?" 
                          
Her hand fluttered through the air, making light of the very idea. "Please. I imagine I'm not quite what you expected, but you're not exactly my dream come true either." 
                          
"So it's fine by you that I have a chosen mate?"
                          
"I did try to reject you just now, didn't I? You're the one that stopped me, so perhaps you should be asking yourself that question. The only reason I'm here is because I quite literally have no choice." She raised her hands, her chains clinking against one another and fabricating a metallic sound. "Why did you, anyway?" 
                          
"Why did I what?"
                          
"Stop me. You love Julie. Fine by me. You don't want me. Fine too. I'm not what you expected and definitely not what you need. Great, right back at you. But when I tried rejecting you just now, you didn't know how fast to silence me. Why not let me?" 
                          
He opened his mouth, but no explanation found its way outside. He didn't have one. "Instinct, I guess." 
                          
"Instinct? Fine. And you holding my hand all night? Was that instinct too?" 
                          
"Ridge linked me. You were in pain. I might not like the mate bond but it exists and it helps you. What would you have had me do? Let you suffer? I know you don't think much of me, but I'm not that cruel." 
                          
She regarded him intensely. "Maybe." 
                          
"I'm not the reason you're in chains, you know. You did that yourself." 
                          
"It's not that simple."
                          
"Isn't it? Because it sounds to me like you don't even care who you put at fault for this, as long as it's not yourself. But you trespassed onto Royal Wolf territory, you attacked those guards, you refused to talk, you were violent towards the king and queen, and you escaped your cell here and fought with everyone on your path. You did all that." 
                          
A chuckle escaped her. "If you say it like that I do sound like a handful, don't I?" 
                          
He really didn't get her. She laughed when he was harsh, got quiet when he was friendly. Everything was a joke to her, and yet she was dead serious. "What other way to say it is there?"