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

by Cate C. Wells

Fate has to be playing a joke. My aesthetic is delicate, sweet, romantic, cottagecore. His aesthetic is—the pants I wore all last week are fine. No shirt, no shoes, no problem. Haircuts are for the weak. I kill things with my bare hands in human form. I’ve been through hell and seen the other side.

“Because if this—” He stops, draws in a breath, and begins again. “If I don’t make it, I want you to know—” He coughs, and in a jagged, deep voice that scrapes softly across my skin, he says, “I want you to know that you are the most beautiful thing in the world, and even if I couldn’t have you, and even though I fucked it up, you were the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“You want me,” I whisper. “Yes.” “A lot.” “Like air,” he says. My lips curve, sad and rueful and bittersweet. “Nobody wants air.” “They need it.” “You don’t need me.” He walked away. He stayed away. “Like air,” he says again with a note of finality.