The Rejected True Heiress (Liora) novel Chapter 99

Liora

I didn’t stop walking until the hedges closed around me, the green walls swallowing everything behind me. The path wound and twisted like a maze, white gravel crunching under my shoes in a rhythm that was faster than I meant it to be. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling, part fury, part something I refused to name.

Love.

That stupid word rang in my head like a cracked bell, sour and hollow with every step.

As if that’s all it would take.

There had never been love to begin with in my wolf. Not in my life. Not in the bonds that had been chosen for me, or in the duties that had been forced on me. So how could something that empty, something that weak, be the key to fixing my wolf?

I dragged my sleeve across my forehead, my breath hot against the cool fabric. One deep breath, then another. Steady. I needed distance, distance from Zane’s smug grin, from that cursed book he pulled from no where, from the absurd idea that my wolf—my wolf, who had always been the roar of battle, the terror in my enemies’ eyes—could be summoned or banished with a soft little feeling like love.

No.

She had been wild and fire and ferocity. She was mine. She had nothing to do with love.

My jaw clenched so tight it hurt as I rounded the bend. I almost let myself believe I was free of the garden and its nonsense when the sound hit me, a sharp rustling.

I froze mid-step, ducking automatically into the shadows of the hedge.

The path here looped back on itself, doubling around in a full U-shape without my realizing it. Through the leaves I could still barely see the table in the distance, just beyond another thick wall of hedges. Zane hadn’t moved, lazy as a cat sunning himself.

The sound came again. Leaves shifting, branches snapping quietly under weight. Then a heavier sound: footsteps. Slow. Controlled.

I narrowed my eyes and crouched low, peering through a gap in the greenery just in time to see him step out from the opposite side of the hedges.

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