The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs, #3)

by Cate C. Wells

My mate is strong. His wolf is vicious. No one will dare attack us, and if they do, he’ll rip out their neck. In the very far reaches of my mind, the words “he doesn’t even eat the meat” echo. My wolf purrs her approval.

Darragh hovers by the door, watchful, tension radiating from him. Good mate. Guarding the entrance. I yip my approval. His broad chest swells.

He reaches for me with shaking hands, running the calloused pads of his fingers down my side, over my ribs, along the crease of my hip, his touch exquisitely gentle.

He’s upright on his knees, his face contorted in pain, his hand clamped around the knot engorging the base of his red dick, shiny with my juices. He didn’t knot me? He has to. Males can’t stop themselves. It’s shifter biology.

His face is drawn in harsh lines. He’s clearly in pain, but he tightens his punishing grip, squeezing until his knuckles blanch white. Despite his stranglehold, milky stuff spurts from its bulging mushroom head, splattering warm and sticky on my butt cheek and pooling in the small of my back. His seed is hot, and there’s so much of it. It feels wrong on my cooling skin. My wolf doesn’t like it either. She whines.

I’ve been oblivious to her, but as my heartbeat and breathing slows, pieces of reality filter back, and she’s there, on her feet, frozen in shock, horrified. The last drop of cum splats on ...

Darragh’s right hand drops from his still swollen, half-erect cock, and for a second, his dull brown eyes look—tired. Lost. He frowns, and as if he can’t help himself, he reaches out with a trembling hand and smooths my hair. With exquisite care, he winds one of my curls around his finger. His touch tugs ever so sligh...

He still won’t look at me.

A minute ago, it had felt so natural and perfect, and now it feels like I’ve done something bad. Have I? Did I not do it right? “Did I screw it up?” I ask because I don’t have pride right now.

Something happens to his face. He seems to register something, and his cheeks darken under his bristly beard. His eyes harden. His spine goes ramrod straight. “You’ve misunderstood,” he says. “This is a guest cabin.” My stomach sinks. “We’re going to live at your place?” It doesn’t seem physically possible, but he stiffens even more and backs up another step until he’s almost out of the bedroom and into the hall. A heavy blanket of dread descends over me.

My shoulders slump and curl forward, as if I can protect myself from what’s to come, but I’ve never been able to keep myself safe. I’ve never been strong enough to stop awful things from happening, to make anyone stay. This isn’t going to be okay. It isn’t going to work itself out.

“No. This—” He gestures between himself, with one foot out the door, and me, huddled in a ball on the bed. “This isn’t happening. It can’t— It isn’t—” He hacks a cough, shaking his head back and forth like he’s denying some terrible accusation. A life sentence. “I’...

This was supposed to be the beginning. How did it go wrong? What did I do? My eyes burn. I’m going to cry. No, correction, I already am crying. A hot tear dribbles down my cheek. Darragh bares his teeth at me, and I’m not sure if it’s disgust or contempt or impatience, but it’s bad, and it hurts.

“Just when you go into heat next time—tell Killian. He’ll come find me. Okay?” He waits, teeth clenched, expectant, like I’m supposed to say something. Am I supposed to say okay? It’s not okay. This isn’t right. You don’t just reject a mate for no reason. You don’t just nail and bail your fated fucking mate.

“Why?” The word is torn from my throat, jagged and raw, and I sound so damn young. So stupid. He stares harder at the wall. “It’s not you. It’s just— You’re so— It won’t—” He kind of waves at me like that’s an explanation. What am I? What’s wrong with me?

“We’re not going to be mates. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.

My wolf shivers in a dark corner, but that’s okay, I’m going to take care of us.

Like I’d been waiting to be home safe, I burst into instant hot tears again. Kennedy’s wolf rattles in her chest. “Where is he? I’ll kill him,” she says, her voice dropping, her wolf coming through.

No one can know about this. Ever. I’m already a tragic tale in this pack. I don’t need them to think I’m straight up cursed, and I must be, right?

I don’t want anyone to ever know what a stupid, naïve, oblivious little girl I was. How did I not see it coming? What did he do or say to make me think he actually wanted me? That we were going to be a family and live happily ever after?

Is that why Darragh doesn’t want me? Is that what he was going to say when he said “you’re so—” I’m so what?

She’s baffled by the fact that Darragh left us, but she’s sure he has a good reason. She thinks that we’re supposed to stay where we were put and wait for him to come back. I think she expects him to return with food, maybe a haunch of venison.

It hurts that I could care at all that he’s cool with the witch after what he did. He hates me. He wants me to die. He’s not the first male to try to end me.

If I were a doll, I’d tear my own stuffing out.

I don’t know how a male can reject his fated mate and how his wolf can try to kill her.

But I don’t need to understand. I learned a long time ago that people do things that are incomprehensible, and in the end, there is nothing you can do but rely on yourself.

Darragh’s throat bobs. “Abertha says you’re okay.” She left here and went to him. They talked about me. He talked to her. The cold black pit inside me yawns wider.

“Are you okay?” he asks. The wound in my side is hot, and I guess it hurts, but I don’t even register it as pain. I can’t feel anymore. I won’t.

“You’re safe. He can’t—I won’t let him near you. I swear.” His voice is gritty and raw, his face bloodied, his golden eyes wild and tortured, and I don’t care. The black pit is overflowing li...

He is not your mate. The black spreads until it doesn’t exist inside me anymore. It is my insides. This is reality. I don’t have a mate.

And I really am a stupid, naïve child because despite the fact that I know there is no explanation that will fix this, no explanation that will make it okay, no explanation that would make him a different person, a male who didn’t nut on my back and bail—a very small flame of hope still flickers in my chest all the same.

I hold my breath until my lungs burn because the part of you that wants to be loved is so very, very fucking hard to kill.

When Darragh finally leaves, I don’t know. And if there’s a mournful howl in the wee hours, just before daybreak, I don’t hear it. Not at all.

I hear her murmur in low tones to someone out back. No, not just someone. It’s Darragh Ryan. The mate who wasn’t, but who won’t quite go away.

For years, he was content to drop off his gifts of obligation with Killian or Old Noreen and disappear again for weeks, or once, months, but early this summer, he started showing up at the kitchen door when I’m doing meal prep with fresh meat or firewood or tanned skins and furs. I’ve managed to avoid him every time.

It’s not the bond that gives me the heads up—I’ve become a master at ignoring it—but his scent precedes him and gives me fair warning to make myself scarce.

How much longer am I going to luck out? Four years between heats isn’t unheard of, but it’s definitely on the long side. Does Darragh sense something I don’t yet?

I’ve learned next to nothing about him these past few years, but I’ve learned a hell of a lot about myself. I’m not that sweet girl with her head in the clouds anymore. I’m never going to stroll blithely into a trap again, I don’t care who sets it—Fate, biology, a grizzled loner with a guilty conscience.

She still shit-talks him to my face, but I’ve seen her from a distance, giving him a chin dip when he deigns to come to camp. That’s fine. I don’t need anyone else to hate him. I’m holding onto this grudge hard enough to make sure he’s never in a position to hurt me again.

“He’s not going anywhere.” He will if I keep ignoring him and chopping carrots. He’s only ever passing through. He’ll never just stay gone, but he’s never around for very long, either.

It’s like he picked the perfect way to make sure I can never get over what happened—he won’t stay gone, and he won’t stay around long ...

I’ve never asked that male for anything. He got his way—no one besides a handful of people even know we're mates. And I’m finally getting on with life—with what life’s supposed to be.

Fuck Darragh Ryan and his guilt meat. He needs to get the message.

I hate that his scent never fails to deceive me. My muscles always relax when it hits my nose, and then I remember that night, and I tense up. It’s jarring. He should smell like spilled blood. My body wouldn’t mistake him then.

I force myself to look at his face even though I can’t meet his eye.

He looks surprised that I came out. It makes sense. I haven’t willingly been within yards of him since the night his wolf attacked me. When I catch sight or scent of him, I head the other way.

I feel like I’ve changed into a whole new person, and here he is, like four years ago was yesterday.

I raise an eyebrow and tilt my head, as if he’s any male, and this is a minor inconvenience. I feel like I’m hovering above the scene, in awe of my own composure. Yeah, fuck Darragh Ryan. He is any male, the most minor of inconveniences.

Darragh’s brown eyes darken, the golden rings around the irises glowing brighter, and his chest rises and falls like he ran here and hasn’t quite caught his breath yet.

I hate what his proximity does to me. Thank goodness my wolf is still drowsing off one of her fugues. I couldn’t deal with her reactions on top of this—trauma response. Yeah. That’s what it is.