My Husband Rejected Me to Save His True Mate

My husband spoke the rejection to me in the emergency room to save his graduate student.

In my pocket were the positive pregnancy test results I'd gotten that morning.

When the rejection tore through our mate mark, I started to bleed.

He lifted her into his arms and ran for the treatment room without looking back.

...

Ten minutes earlier, the doctor had pulled off her gloves and stared at Owen.

"Her wolf is fading," she said. "Her pulse is dropping every minute. A partial bond won't hold her. It has to be complete. Blood, mark, and claim."

Owen's hand tightened on the bed rail. "How long?"

"Minutes. Maybe less."

Iris Pell, twenty-three years old, his newest research student, was barely breathing. Her lips had gone gray. Her fingers stayed hooked in the front of his shirt.

"Professor," she whispered. "Don't leave."

"I'm here." Owen bent closer. "I'm not going anywhere."

I stood three feet behind him, my palm pressed flat over the envelope in my coat pocket.

"Owen," I said. "Can we talk? Just for one minute."

He didn't turn around. "Not now, Maris."

"It's important."

"So is this." His voice cracked. "She's dying."

I knew that. Everyone in the room knew that. Still, I could only think of the night before our wedding, when he'd held me on the floor of our tiny apartment and pressed his lips against my hair.

"I have half a mark," he had told me then, tracing the faded silver lines on his ribs. "I've had it my whole life. If she ever shows up, I'm choosing you. You're the one who stayed. You're the one who made it worth it."

I had believed him.

I believed him so much that I gave up my job blending scents for the Larkin perfume house. I sorted his lecture notes until two in the morning. I cooked for his students. I kept track of his grant deadlines.

And six weeks ago, when he walked into our kitchen white-faced and told me the other half of his mark belonged to a sickly girl in his seminar, I believed him again.

"She's too weak for a rejection right now," he'd said. "It could kill her wolf. Give me time. The second she's stable, I'll end it. I swear."

Now he was turning toward me, and his eyes were already somewhere else.

"Maris." He swallowed. "I'm sorry."

Something cold slid down my spine. "Sorry for what?"

"The doctor said a complete bond. I can't do a complete bond with her while I'm bound to you." He wet his lips. "There's no time to do this gently."

"Owen. Wait." My voice came out too thin. "Please. I need to tell you something first."

"Tell me after."

"There won't be an after if you—"

"She'll die!" He shouted it. The nurses froze. Then his voice dropped, raw and quiet. "I promised to save her. Don't make me choose between a life and a conversation."

A conversation.

I pulled the envelope halfway from my pocket. "Owen, I'm—"

He closed his eyes.

"I, Owen Marlow, reject you, Maris Marlow, as my chosen mate."

Pain didn't arrive slowly. It hit like a blade dragged straight through the mark on my neck. I heard a sound, sharp and animal. It took me a second to understand it came from me.

The envelope fell to the floor.

Owen was already moving. He scooped Iris off the bed, her head lolling against his shoulder, and shouted at the nurses.

"Treatment room! Now!"

"Owen." I grabbed the doorframe. My knees shook. "Owen, stop."

He ran.

The double doors swung shut behind him.

Warmth spread between my thighs. I glanced down and saw red soaking through my pale jeans.

No.

No, no, no.

I folded at the waist. My knees struck the tile hard enough to rattle my teeth.

"Owen!" I screamed it at the doors. "Owen, the baby!"

Through the narrow glass window, I could see him. He had pressed his wrist against Iris's mouth. His blood ran down her chin. He bent his head to her throat, his teeth bared, his eyes burning gold.

He was marking her.

He didn't look up.

"Owen!" My fist pounded the bottom of the door. "Please! I'm pregnant! Please, look at me!"

Inside the room, a monitor started beeping faster. Someone cheered. Iris's back arched off the bed, and the faint shape of a wolf rippled under her skin.

Owen laughed. Actually laughed, breathless and shaky, and touched her cheek.

I started laughing too.

I didn't know why. I knelt in a puddle of my own blood, laughing so hard my ribs ached, because the man I had loved for nine years was crying with joy twenty feet away, and he had no idea I was dying on the other side of the door.

"Ma'am?" A nurse in blue scrubs dropped down beside me. Her badge said TESSA. "Ma'am, look at me. How far along are you?"

"Seven weeks." The words tasted like copper. "I found out this morning."

Tessa's face changed. She twisted toward the hall. "I need a gurney! Bleeding pregnancy, possible bond trauma!"

"Get him," I whispered. "Please. Get my husband."

She glanced at the treatment room. Then back at me. Her mouth went tight.

"Honey," she said softly, "he's busy."

Two orderlies lifted me onto a gurney. The ceiling lights blurred overhead, white, white, white. My hand slid down to my stomach and pressed there, as if I could hold the baby in by force.

"Stay with me," Tessa kept saying. "Stay with me, Maris."

I don't remember the next hour. Only pieces. A cold gel. A screen turned away from me. A doctor with gray eyebrows speaking in a low voice to Tessa.

"There's no heartbeat."

"The rejection did this?"

"Severed bond, early pregnancy. The shock was too much." A pause. "I'm sorry."

He turned to me then. "Mrs. Marlow, you lost the baby."

I stared at the ceiling tiles. I counted the holes in one of them. Forty-two.

"Mrs. Marlow? Do you understand?"

"Yes."

My voice sounded calm. Too calm. Tessa squeezed my hand, and I let her.

Later, when the room emptied, a woman in a long gray coat stepped in. Her collar pin marked her as a bond witness from the Silver Hollow council.

"Mrs. Marlow." She sat on the edge of the chair. "Your mate spoke the rejection. For the separation to be complete, you need to accept it. Say the words, and the pain will stop."

I touched the mark on my neck. It was torn, ragged, hot under my fingers. But a thread still ran through it. Thin as hair. Pulled tight, all the way down the hall.

"And if I don't?" I asked.

She blinked. "Then the bond stays broken but unsevered. It will hurt. Both of you."

"Both of us?"

"Yes."

I closed my eyes.

Somewhere on the other side of the building, Owen was holding Iris. I could feel his relief through that thin, burning thread. Warm and bright and full.

"Mrs. Marlow," the witness said again. "Do you accept the rejection?"

I didn't answer.

Then, very faintly, the thread trembled.

Down the hall, for the first time all night, my husband felt it.