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

by Cate C. Wells

I’m not going an inch closer unless I have to. It took months for me to learn how to block out the bond and train my brain not to think about him, and I’m not undoing that work.

I firm my wobbly mouth and stare over his shoulder at the woods. I don’t think about how the last time we were here together, he led me down the trail to a guest cabin, and I thought I was on my way to a new life. I stomp the memory as it tries to form. Kill it before it can grow.

My waiting hand trembles. What is this? Why won’t he finish this, hand me the sack, and bail? I shouldn’t have come out. I should’ve hidden in the freezer until he left. I’ve done it before. He hacks a sharp cough, and my gaze flies to his face. His brow’s furrowed.

“I don’t know how to talk to you,” he says, frustration gleaming in his hooded eyes. “I don’t—” He glares at the wall behind me, slashes of color darkening his cheekbones. “You know, I’m here.” What the fuck is that supposed to mean? “I don’t give a shit.” I reach out and snatch the sack from his hand.

For a second, we both stand frozen, glaring at each other, and I don’t know why he’s pissed at me, but I’m happy he is. I h...

If I want a good life, it’s up to me. No looking back. No wondering why.

“I’m a modest dude. Think about it, Mari. You could be having reliably average sex. In a world of uncertainty, you shouldn’t dismiss that kind of offer out of hand.” He cocks his head.

I eventually summoned up the balls to tell Killian I didn’t want it, and he told me that I should tell Darragh myself.

So like today’s pheasant, I get a lot of meat. I throw it in with the rest of our stores. It doesn’t even hurt much, anymore, that he doesn’t want me, but I guess since he sees me as a responsibility, he’ll go ahead and throw me a few chops now and then.

I don’t know why he needed to give it to me personally tod...

It’s going to be the first time I’ve worn a dress in forever. After Darragh, I switched to long skirts, and then after the coup, when Una made Killian ditch the dumbest of the rules, I switched to pants. But for my first real date, I’ve decided to go super feminine. Which is good. It’s progress. Getting back to the me I was before.

It’s nice being excited about things again. Even if Lenox turns out to be a dud, it feels good to look forward to things. To like things again.

My finger skims along my scar, and as my eyes grow impossibly heavy, the scent of sunshine at midnight drifts into my bedroom on a breeze, teasing my nose and unfurling the ball of nerves in my belly. My wolf calms, her twitching limbs still, and we both fall fast asleep.

I’m not some wise old fucker who lives in the woods. He’s rolling the dice. Except when it comes to her, the control I have over the wolf is always touch-and-go.

For her, I’d kill the wolf, no matter that it’d be the end of me as well, and he knows it. The wolf’s too smart to test me. For every other living thing, he’ll take his chances.

Another threat down. She’s safer.

This is all I can have. I accept it. It’s on me. It’s my burden. I shouldn’t have insisted on talking to her yesterday. It made her unhappy. It was selfish.

She didn’t seem interested when I mentioned the elk. She just wanted me gone, which is fair.

“He works in the kitchen with Mari.” Every muscle in my body tenses. Obviously, I know that. And obviously, Killian can say her name. That’s fine. There’s no reason I need to kill him because he said her name. But the urge to do it is hard to tamp down. I grit my teeth and shake out my arms, twist a few times at the waist.

Not that I need to warm up. The wolf is always ready.

“You put our females at risk. My female. Annie. Mari.” He draws out her name and watches my reaction from the corner of his eye. He’s fucking with me.

The wolf rattles my chest as my nails dig into the flesh of my palms. “Enough,” I tell Killian, my voice so distorted by my wolf that the word is nearly incomprehensible.

It takes a few seconds to pull myself back from the edge. Killian’s an asshole. He’s riling me up to get a better show. I don’t dance for him. He’s not my alpha. He’s the male that leads the pack I don’t quite belong to, and I can never bring myself to leave.

He makes a beeline straight back here—to her—and he holds nothing back so he’s dead on his feet by the time he limps his way over the border to Quarry Pack, and I wrestle him back inside.

this bond that hurts worse than any wound, but that I wouldn’t sever for anything in the world.

It changes everything, but for me, it’s fixed nothing.

And, most importantly, if she gets it in her head to come up here again, she won’t be able to catch us unaware.

After what I did to her, I slept chained for years until I was sure I wasn’t going to shift in the middle of the night.

“Your wolf knows we’re just sparring, right?” the kid asks me as he squares up. “Not at all.” My wolf wants to kill everyone. He has no concept of “sparring.” The kid grins like I made a joke. When I don’t blink, it fades into a look of dawning horror.

The second before I recede entirely, Killian calls down from his branch, smug, eyes sparkling, “Can you smell Mari on the kid? I can. I can smell her all over him.”

My roar is submerged in my wolf’s.

A bared neck does nothing to appease my wolf. To him, it’s an instigation.

She bared her neck that night. Not intentionally. I’d touched one of her curls, and I guess I’d tugged her head to the side. My wolf saw the pale skin, the pulse flickering under her ear, and he wanted to rip out her throat. He threw the image into my mind, rendered in perfect detail complete with the scent of copper and the sound of blood gushing from a gaping wound.

Killian’s smirk widens and his eyes gleam. “I bet if you killed this kid, little Mari would cry. So I bet when I set you free—I bet that you’re not gonna kill him. What do you think?” I roar, but it’s nothing against my wolf’s raging howls. “Let’s find out, shall we?” Killian winks and feints left in human form.

Mari will cry. It isn’t a plea. I’m not trying to reason with him. I gave up on that decades ago. It’s a passing thought. Nothing more. But, for the first time since he was dragged out of me at age nine, he doesn’t launch himself into action.

He kicks the last loop of chain from his foreleg. He’s free, but he doesn’t race for the kid’s wolf. He stalks toward him, unhurried, until he’s looming above the quaking mound of fur.

My wolf sniffs at the piss-scented ball. The fear is as thick as soup, and for a second, I can feel the rage threaten to overtake him again, but for the first time, he shakes himself off. What i...

He snaps his teeth one last time at the kid, and as if he’s lost interest, he strolls away, plops his ass down, and thwaps his tail against the ground. I don’t waste a...

I hop to my feet, striding towards Killian, adrenaline pumping. “Come down here so I can beat your ass,” I holler up at him. His expression is stuck between smug and boggled. “I told you,” he says as he swings himself down. “You couldn’t have known.” My blood is roaring in my ears. He barks a ...

Lucan’s checking out the package, a strange expression on his still-blanched face. “You’re the one who gives Mari meat?” I tense, but I nod.

“I can put it in the freezer for you,” the kid offers. “Killian can give it to her.” I can hear my wolf in my voice. I guess I might not want the kid dead, but I don’t have to like the fact that he spends part of his days with her.

I stalk forward, closing the space between us in seconds. The kid freezes, fear blowing out his pupils. “What is she doing in town?” I ask, the question barely audible above my wolf’s growling.

“W-well, I mean, she’s got a d-date, right?” Every fight instinct inside me triggers. My chest swells. Blood rushes to my extremities. My wolf’s growls rattle my voice box. I dig my sprung claws into the meat of my palms.

I’ve gone over this with myself a thousand times. If she wants another male, I have no right to do shit about it. She deserves to be happy. I have no claim. My gut plummets, and in this inst...

My restraint explodes like a grenade. As I bolt for my four-wheeler, my wolf’s howls echo mine, and for once, we’re both calling for the same blood. We’re both tearing in the same direction, and I don’t have the bandwidth to consider whether the greater danger to Mari is this male or my wolf. I can only pray and shout down the bond— Hold on. I’m coming.

My wolf trots closer to the border between us. Closer to him. He’s older, stronger, fierce. He’ll protect us. She’s certain. Her blind faith tricks my pounding heart into calming.

He clears his throat. “I don’t know, but they’re going to try to hurt us.”

“You can shift,” I say. “You can squeeze loose.” Why didn’t he already? He tenses. When he glances up at me from under his thick lashes, that strange not-quite-fear feeling swirls in my belly again. “I can’t,” he says, his expression suddenly guarded. “Why not?” I ask, but the second I do, I realize why. His wolf hates me. He’d kill me. I’d be a sitting duck. “He doesn’t hate you. He—he’s just not right in the head.”

“He had to come before his time. It fucked up the way he sees things.” His body’s tense, his face hard as he explains. He looks like he’s been called on the carpet in front of the elders. “What made him come too soon?” “You don’t need to know that,” he growls. I duck my head, instinct driving me to appease the stronger male I’ve angered. I make myself lift my chin. No. I deserve to know. I tell him so. “Yes, I do,” I say, willing my voice to be strong, not wounded, knowing as the first words tremble out that I’m failing. “I-I should know why I can’t have a mate.”

“I don’t want you to know,” he finally says, meeting my eyes again. “I don’t want it in your head.” His voice doesn’t falter.