Filed To Story: Chasing the Rejected Luna's Heart (Clara & Liam) Book PDF Free
I’ll be gentle.
Of course he would.
He wasn’t the one I was worried about.
Damon took my hand, his touch surprisingly soft as well. My breath hitched as he raised my wrist to his lips, but he wasted no time sinking his fangs into my flesh. It was a relief, really. I didn’t have to worry about anticipating it forever. It hurt, of course. More than I had imagined, even though I knew he was being gentle, too. The growl that tore from his throat seemed more instinctive than threatening, but it made me shiver for a different reason all the same.
Liam leaned in, and I felt the whisper of his lips against the side of my throat right above my shoulder before he bit in. I gasped because the pain was starting to give way to a strange sense of euphoria I wasn’t prepared for. No one had mentioned that.
The pleasure was short-lived, though. Jax leaned in, his face so close to mine I had no choice but to meet his eyes. What I wasn’t expecting was what I found in them. Not the anger or impatience of before, but it unsettled me far more. It was lust. Maybe not the kind I wished I was capable of stirring within him, but bloodlust at the very least. I honestly wasn’t sure there was a clear distinction between them where male wolf shifters were concerned.
He leaned in and sank his fangs into my throat on the other side, growling just as Damon had, even though there was something even more possessive and dangerous laced within the sound. A primal claim that left me feeling more like an object to be possessed rather than a “beloved” mate, as the priestess had said.
This time, I was unable to fight the cry of pain that escaped my lips. The other two released me, but Jax remained with his fangs buried in my flesh, drinking more than he probably needed to for the ritual. Just as I was wondering if he was a shifter or a vampire, he pulled away, his eyes dark with a hunger that made me feel even more like prey.
The three wounds were already beginning to heal, even though Jax’s took a bit longer since it was deeper. Liam’ tongue swept up along the lines of blood his fangs had drawn on my flesh, soothing where he had bitten. It was an unexpectedly intimate gesture that left me thinking of the final stage of the mark ahead. For tonight, though, the ritual was finished.”Before your pack and the divine, the mark has begun,” the priestess announced, raising her hands and triumph. “Let us feast!”
That was an unsettling little line, considering what I had just been through, but I was more than relieved when the servants came into the room with trays to be placed on the tables before the guests. That meant the attention was no longer on me.”Are you alright?” Liam asked, offering his hand to help me up.”Fine,” I said in a voice a little thinner than I had hoped.”You taste good,” Damon remarked, dabbing a droplet of blood off his lips and sucking his fingertip into his mouth.
My face turned red hot. What the hell was I supposed to say to that? It was rare he actually spoke, but when he did, he always had a way of leaving me at a loss for words.”He’s not wrong,” Liam said with a bemused chuckle.
I was only distracted from my embarrassment by the realization that Jax was gone. I caught sight of him walking toward the exit in the back of the room the servants used to come and go.
Liam noticed me looking after him and placed a hand on my bare shoulder. He was so warm to the touch. Warm and strong and reassuring. He and Damon both were, in their own ways. It was the third member of the triad who left me doubting everything.”He’ll come around,” he said softly.
I gave as much of a smile as I could muster, but it didn’t feel convincing. I knew he was just saying that. Of course he was. In reality, Jax was the only one who was actually being honest about how he felt.
Somehow, I very much doubted that was going to change with the rise of the next full moon.
* * *
The days to the second part of the mating ceremony passed quickly. It was a relief in one sense, but with each moonrise growing fuller than the last, my life was closer to changing forever. To no longer being my own.
Not that it ever really had been, if I was being honest with myself. It certainly wouldn’t be when I was a Luna, but at least that position might afford me some more freedom, once my mates took the throne from my father.
If there was one benefit to Jax’s cruelty, at least it was that he didn’t give enough of a shit about me to care when or where I came and went. It would be a breath of fresh air in comparison to my father’s controlling tactics. Ever since my mother’s death, he had been more focused on me, and not in the way I had always longed for as a child.
The weirdest part was the gradually increasing effect of the marks in progress. My wounds had mostly healed, leaving only faint white scars shaped like crescent moons where the guys had each bitten me, but each spot still tingled in a strange way that wasn’t quite pain. It was equally unnerving, but it was the psychological effect rather than the physical that had me in a state of confusion. I didn’t know whether it was real or psychosomatic, but either way, I couldn’t deny that I felt different. Bonded.
Missing the guys was nothing new. I had been a tomboy as a kid, and they were the ones who’d struggled to keep up with me on our adventures in the woods within the sanctuary of the pack’s territory. Back then, my mother had been the reason I had to sneak around, since she seemed to think the woods were some portal to hell that would swallow me up if I ventured in too far. With the guys at my side, though, I felt invincible. All that came to an end, of course, when I hit puberty and was expected to “behave like a lady.”