The Tyrant Alpha's Rejected Mate (Five Packs, #1)

by Cate C. Wells

“You’re in big trouble,” he says. “You know that.” There is nothing he can do to me worse than losing the market. Also, fuck him. He sighs, blowing out his cheeks. “What the hell were you doing? I could have killed that man.”

I didn’t barge into a situation I had no idea about and assault a human. That was him. I’m not taking the blame for his unhinged behavior. I was trying to sell some mushrooms. And I’m not sorry. I’m mad. Furious. His huge hands tighten on the steering wheel. “You just gonna sit there and ignore me?” Why shouldn’t I? He’s ignored me his whole life. And I’m grateful for it. He should go back to ignoring me. It’s the best I can hope for in this shitty, backwards pack.

“You’re acting like a child,” he says. And it erupts, bursts out of me so hot it scorches my throat. “You followed me. You ruined my mushrooms. You ruined everything. You’re a—you’re an asshole.” There’s a beat of stunned silence. And then he laughs. From his belly. Like I’m genuinely funny. If I had a knife, I’d plunge it i...

When he’s done laughing at me, he wipes his eyes and asks, “What mushrooms?” My wolf surges at the same time I drop the reins. Our switches flip simultaneously, and we go off. She barrels through my skin, embodying me, and I welcome her, let her wiry strength join the fury seething in my veins. My spine snaps. My limbs realign. The sizzle of ozone fills the cab. I can taste his face already. Killian startles, eyes widening in alarm. “What the fuck? No. Shift back. We’re in a fucking vehicle.” But I’m the wolf, and she doesn’t recognize his authority.

He throws open his door, and as fur sprouts on his exposed skin, he uses his claw to cut me free of the seatbelt, wrestling my writhing body out of the cab and then pitching me through the air. I land wonky, my bad back leg immediately giving out. My wolf shrieks with pain. His wolf howls. Shit. I crawl away, front legs dragging the back, as quick as I can, so when he bounds out of the truck, six hundred pounds of fur and fangs, he doesn’t land on top of me.

There are squirrel tracks. A groundhog hole. Crows pecking in the distance. The pain in my bad leg fades as my limbs warm. The world is alive. It’s bright and satisfying and soothes my bitter disappointment, tempers my rage. There’s a hawk circling high above, and a stream babbles ahead, the wet mossy slickness of it fizzing in my snout like soda pop bubbles. We’ve been the wolf, but we’ve never run free before. And it’s amazing.

Killian’s wolf skitters to a halt, standing still and tall, and then he lowers his head, baring his neck the slightest bit, a sly, unrepentant look in his bright golden eyes. She better not fall for it. He’s a jerk, and he does what he wants. She pads forward and nips his exposed neck. He rumbles. She licks the fur where she pricked him with her delicate fangs. He nuzzles her, licking, nipping in return. She squirms, tongue lolling. She likes it. She wants more. She fell for it.

Sharp teeth scrape our fur, and then they sink into our hide, piercing fur and flesh, deep, ripping muscle, clamping down and holding on. She howls. It hurts like hell, but we love it. We go limp. Pliant. He slowly extricates his fangs, licking the wound gently and methodically with his raspy tongue, soothing the hurt. I stretch my neck to test the tendon. It works. Everything is still attached. There’s no pain. Something thumps in my chest. And then there’s hot skin on my back. “Shift, baby.” Killian’s human voice is gravel. My wolf whines. He’s above us, pushed up on his arms, shielding us. “Come on, baby. Shift back.”

Killian strokes my bare back. I’m lying on my naked stomach. My neck throbs, and my muscles are limp. Wrung out. He’s on top of me, braced on his forearms, nuzzling and lapping at the bite wound. He bit us. Claimed us. No, he didn’t. His wolf did.

His licks slow and then stop. “You’re not bleeding anymore. It’s okay.” It’s not okay. Nothing is. His lips brush the wound. It’s pulsing now. Hot. It makes me squirmy inside. Unmoored. The place where the bond was feels different. More raw. And prickly.

“You can relax,” he says. “You’re safe. I’m not angry. I’m not gonna hurt you.” I snort in the dirt. He chuckles. “There’s my grumpy mate.” Mate? Oh, fuck him. “I’m not your mate.” “I talked to the crone. She says you are.” “I reject you.” He chuckles. “You can’t reject me. My bite mark is on your neck.”

“Y-You stepped on my mushrooms. You ruined my deal.” “I—” I can hear his bafflement. “You’re gonna need to explain that last one to me.” I clench my teeth. “Una.” It isn’t a reprimand. It’s—tentative. A hesitant prompting. “Didn’t you see them? You made me drop my morels, and then you crushed them, and you scared off my buyer, and you made a scene, so I’m never going to be able to go back to the farmer’s market, and everything I’ve worked for is gone.” I snap. “Like that.” When he speaks, his voice is very deliberately calm. “You were selling mushrooms?” “Yes.” “Like magic mushrooms?” “No. Morels. They’re a delicacy.” “Have I had them before?” How the hell would I know?

“Come on, now, Una. Don’t be like that. Look at me again.” His voice is coaxing. “Why did you have to come to town? You don’t care what I do. How does selling some mushrooms hurt you or the pack? Why can’t you just leave well enough alone.” “How long have you been doing this?” I shrug. I’m busted. What does it hurt to tell him? “Almost ten years.” “You’ve been sneaking off pack territory for a decade?” “I’ve been driving a truck five miles to a farmer’s market to sell honey and jam.” I snort. “I’m a criminal mastermind.” “You could have asked for an escort.” “You would have said no.” “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. You don’t get it.” My gaze flies to his face, and I know there’s hurt in my eyes, and I wish there wasn’t. I wish I was unrepentant and bold and I didn’t give a shit, but I can’t help it. I care. More than I should. “You can live a few yards away and never really notice I exist, but you’re the alpha. We all know you backwards and forwards. We have to for our survival. And no, you wouldn’t have given me an escort to go to the farmer’s market. You wouldn’t have let a fighter miss training. Never.” “Yeah? You can read my mind?” “Yeah. I can.” I hike my chin.

“I’m thinking that I have a mate,” he says softly. “And she’s cold and angry and sitting in the dirt. I’m thinking I’m an asshole.” I sniff the tears back. It is chilly in the shade. It hadn’t really registered until now, but there are goosebumps on my arms. “I’m thinking about how I’m gonna convince her to get back in the truck. And into my cabin. And my bed.” More blood rushes to my head, and now I’m dizzy. My wolf has gotten quiet, and her ears are perked straight up. “I’m not getting into your bed. If you talked to the crone, you know she severed the bond.” “No, she didn’t. Not all the way. I can feel it.”

“Here,” he says, laying his palm on a sculpted pec. A vein runs diagonally, past his pale brown nipple. It pulses with his heartbeat. “What does it feel like?” I ask quietly. I can’t remember anything but pain. His lips turn down and a crease appears on the bridge of his nose. “Like I have another heart, and I didn’t know I had it, and now I do.” “I don’t feel anything.” He offers me a sad smile. “Yet.” “Ever.” “Come back to camp with me, Una.” “I hate you.” “I’ll buy you more mushrooms.” Tears fill my eyes again, and he stiffens, his blue eyes darkening. “I don’t want your mushrooms. I want mine back.”

I feel small and stupid, naked and huddled on the ground. There’s dirt on my butt. I’ve ruined another outfit and pair of shoes. And it’s all his fault. “You can’t stay here.” He says it very reasonably. There’s even a hint of compassion in his voice. I want to choke him to death with his patronizing bull crap. “You’re not my mate,” I say. He can hear it as many times as I’ve had to. He winces, and my mean streak is happy.

“High rank can do whatever they like. Low rank has to toe the line.” The rules you can get away with openly breaking kind of reflects your rank, in a way. “That’s bullshit.” “Sure.” “It’s not that way.” “Okay.” “Don’t fuckin’ do that.” He’s irritated. Good. So am I. I just twisted my ankle again, and we’re getting close to the road. I don’t want to be here, buck naked when someone I know from town could drive past. “Do what?” I pick up my pace. “’Okay’ me.” “Yes, Alpha.”

“Giving me the silent treatment now?” Killian jerks the truck into gear. It starts again on his first try. It’s got to be luck. “What did you want me to say, Alpha? You know everything.”

I stare at the spiderweb crack on the window. My eyes blur. For a little while there, I forgot, but now it hits me again. It’s all over. I’m not going to be able to casually go into town again. Not after Killian assaulted a human.

So we went back to the drawing board. Diversified. Mari learned to craft. Kennedy tried to make a still, but after two of them blew up, Abertha put the kibosh on that. Then I found the morels. And now they’re smeared on a sidewalk, my buyer is a grade A creep and traumatized to boot, and Killian Kelly wants to lecture me like I’m a child. I don’t have any energy left to be angry.

Finally, he huffs, frustrated, “Can you stop? I’m getting pissed.” “Stop what?” And he’s already pissed. So am I. “You smell sad. It’s stinking up the cab. And it’s fucking with my wolf.” Un-freakin’-believable. “Yes, Alpha.” I close my eyes and picture the mushrooms smeared on the sidewalk. I picture the girls’ faces when I tell them. I don’t even try to fight the tears. I set them free to flow, but of course, now they won’t. He growls. “You’re doing it on purpose.” My lips twitch, and I fight it with all my might. “Yes, Alpha.”

“I should pull over and make you walk,” he grumbles. “Fine by me, Alpha.” “No male wants a female with a smart mouth.” “Don’t want you either.” I stare straight ahead. “And you said you liked a female with a mouth on her. Earlier.” He barks a laugh. “So I did.” His smile is slow to fade. “So I did.” We fall quiet. He doesn’t speak again until we turn off Rural Route 10 onto pack territory. “I like how you smell now. It’s better.” He glances over at me and catches my gaze. “Better than better. Good.”

She chooses to walk. She won’t let me help her up the stairs. I’m gonna have to get the maintenance crew out here to make a ramp. She’s been hopping up and down stairs this whole time. In the rain. In the dark. One wrong step, and she could fall and break her neck. Her wolf’s not saving her. Not with how tortuously slow she shifts. It’s like watching a baby chick fight its way out of an egg every time. And there are stairs to every single cabin in camp. And the lodge. The commissary. Shit. Maintenance crew is gonna have to build a lot of ramps. How did so much escape me all this time?

Right now, my mate is finally in my den. The rightness settles in my bones, and the bond pulses. It’s growing stronger by the hour. It’s more than a vague sensation now. It has a physicality, a location. The end anchored in my chest throbs with life, and then it dwindles into a cold nothing except for the slightest thread drifting toward her in the dark space between us. I scrub my pecs. I’ll fix this. My mate is here. That’s all that matters.

I can’t handle her rough. She’s—I don’t know the word. Delicate doesn’t seem right. But instinct tells me I gotta be gentle. Tread carefully. Unfortunately, that’s not my forte. Nor my wolf’s.

“We can talk,” I say instead. “I can’t sit on that thing.” A bright red flush has crept up her neck and stained her cheeks. She re-braided her hair in the truck, but a strand’s come loose, and she’s winding it tight around her finger. “Why not?” I try to smile. Let her know I mean no harm. I’m not really a smiler, though. She kind of grimaces in response. “Can’t we have a conversation?” Her blush darkens. “I can’t. It stinks.” It’s leather. It smells good. I draw in a deep breath. All I smell is her—her warm deliciousness and her tart displeasure. I almost like her scent better with an edge.

“Like what?” I ask. Her gaze skitters wildly around the room. I hope she notices how big it is. I renovated it myself when I became alpha. Doubled the square feet. Added the loft. It’s got Energy Star appliances. “You gonna keep me in suspense, shy girl?” She glares mutinously at the rug halfway between us. “Females.” “Nah.” I give the cushion a good sniff. I mean, yes, I’ve gotten my knob polished plenty on this sofa, but I have the cabin cleaned on the regular. It’s immaculate. “I don’t smell it.” She closes her eyes. She’s got her hands jammed in the hoodie pockets. “Haisley. Rowan.” She scrunches her nose. “Maeve. Shalene. Finley. Siobhan. Tierney. Iona.” I, uh. Damn, she’s accurate. “It wasn’t, uh—” I don’t know how to tell her that it was only oral. Does that even matter? She grimaces. “Their smell is everywhere.”

“It bothers you?” I kind of perk up. She minds. She cares. She crosses her arms. “It’s not my business. You can do what you want.” “Then sit down next to me.” She’s shaking her head vehementl...

“You can’t stand in the doorway forever.” She casts me a dark look. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m going out on the porch. If I...