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

by Cate C. Wells

Killian Kelly is strong, but he’s not attractive. He looks mean—which is what he’s always been. He’s only two years older than me.

Ghosts from the past pluck at the edges of my awareness. You’ve survived worse, they murmur. Just hold on.

“I yanked the mate bond out of you.” She waggles her arched eyebrows. “Didn’t touch his now, did I?”

My wolf kind of checks out what’s going on behind her, and then she sits, careful of her bad back leg. She doesn’t cower or run. The happy idiot plops down on her rump and begins to lick herself. I like her. We’re gonna die, but she does not care. She’s not gonna let Killian’s wolf see her sweat.

He said witches dance between raindrops. Any male who thinks to control one doesn’t understand nature.

“You knew this. She told you she was your mate. You rejected her. She told you I fixed it. You must have found her nest in the woods. I can scent traces of her heat on you. You know all of this. But you’re deaf to it. Because you are getting in your own way.”

I want him to die and fall in a deep hole and go flying out the other side of the world. I want someone to ruin everything he worked for. I want him to have to ask permission and sneak around and hustle for every penny because he doesn’t have a choice.

“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.”

need not to have fucked up the best thing that’s ever happened in my life before it even happened.

A smart alpha doesn’t take something shared from the heart and say, “You don’t feel what you feel. You don’t think what you think.” That’s how you teach folks to lie to your face.

“I didn’t ruin it, Una, did I? Did I break it before it started?” His voice roughens like tumbled rocks. It washes over me. “It was never what I wanted. It was never like this. Now.”

“You’re in heat.” “No, I’m not. Heat hurts.” His eyes crinkle in sadness. “No, baby. It doesn’t.” But I’m nodding. “Yes, it does. It’s the most awful pain you’ll ever feel.” My eyes brim with tears. I tug my hand from his and wander back to my nest. I don’t want to think about it. The memory of the blackberry patch pierces the muzzy languor in my brain, and I don’t want to go back to reality. I want this. Even if it’s foolish. Even if I shouldn’t. I expect Killian to follow like he has been, but he stays at the window, although his eyes track me. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he says.

She owns me, and that makes her the most powerful wolf in the five packs. And I don’t think she has a clue.