The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(17)

We’re animals. Also, I didn’t see or smell any carnivores at all, only your garden-variety big vermin—raccoons, possums, and groundhogs.

He knits his brow. “You might not smell them, but a predator can and will encroach on our territory at any time.”

I just keep walking. We’re almost to the hill leading to home. So freaking close.

“People have disappeared,” he says.

I know. We’ve been warned about the dangers of venturing away from camp unescorted for our entire lives.

“I’m serious.” He stops in his tracks and grabs my forearm. I whimper and snatch it back. Apparently, when he dragged Ivo off me earlier, Ivo didn’t let go right away, and I got bruised. I hadn’t realized.

Darragh looks like I slapped him in the face.

“What’s wrong with your arm?” He’s staring at it like it’s a snake I’m cradling.

“Nothing. It’s just a little sore from earlier.”

“Show me.”

I rotate my forearm, hold it out toward him with my elbow still tucked tight to my side. There are faint bruises shaped like fingertips. With shifter healing, they’ll be gone in a few minutes.

He stares at them with the greatest look of baffled horror I’ve ever seen on a male.

“There’s nothing you can really do for bruises,” he says, like he’s Liam the pack mechanic telling Una that the truck we borrow to drive to town is going to need a new transmission. “You need to ice it.”

“They’ll be gone by the time I get home.” I eye the path toward the cabin meaningfully.

He frowns at my arm. I tuck it back against my belly.

“You shouldn’t have left camp,” he says. “You don’t understand what kind of threats there are outside the territory. You aren’t prepared.”

I know I’m not. I’ve never been in a fight in my life, and except for when my father tried to kill me, I’ve never been in danger, either. I feel like I should resent him talking to me like this. I’m not a pup, and I’m not dumb.

I’m not resentful, though. He’s fussing, and for some reason I cannot fathom, I kind of like it.

I stop eyeing the path, and all of a sudden, I’m not so desperate for a drink and a shower even though my skin is still so hot it heats wherever it touches—my belly where my arm is pressed, my thighs where they clench together. My breath quickens.

“I can take care of myself,” I say even though I don’t believe for a second that I can, not against whatever kind of animal he’s talking about. I just want—I want to know what he’ll say. I want him to keep fussing at me.

He growls in the back of his throat. Him. Not his wolf.

“You don’t know what’s out there,” he says, the gold ring around his eyes darkening to a burnished bronze.

“What’s out there?” I ask, breathless.

He takes a step to close the distance between us. He smells so good. It makes me inhale deeper, clearing my head and fuzzing it up at the same time.

“You don’t need to worry about that. It’s handled.” He’s breathing deeply, too. His broad chest rises and falls and his biceps twitch.

I want to rest my palm between his pecs, in the cleft where the bond disappears. I want to know what his chest hair feels like. It looks like it’d be soft to the touch, not crinkly like the fur Dermot and Eamon and the other older males sport. Darragh’s not as old as that crew, anyway. Even if he lived with the pack, he’d be on his own. There are not many males his age.

For the first time, it occurs to me that it must be because of Declan Kelly. When he took over the pack, he killed any male who could be a challenge to him. Darragh would’ve been an older boy when that happened, just young enough to escape the slaughter.

My blood chills. That time always seems like ancient history, but it isn’t. Just because I don’t remember much doesn’t mean those days aren’t alive in other people’s memories.

I want to ask him what it was like. I want to know what he was like when he was a pup and when he was my age.

I want to know if the bond feels the same to him right now, like sluggish honey, warm and trickly. I want to know if he wants to touch me, too. If the bruises on my arm really bother him.

I lick my dry lips. His gaze drops to follow my tongue. I’m not thirsty anymore. My mouth has grown wet. I swallow. He tracks the gulp down my throat.

“Mari,” he says. It’s the first time he’s said my name. It comes out like a request. Like he wants something.

I do, too.

“Mari, you don’t know what’s out there,” he says again, gruff desperation edging his words.

“I’m not out there. I’m here.” The need to soothe him is deep. Instinctual.

He growls low in his throat. He’s not soothed. He thinks I don’t get it. “Folks disappear, Mari. They just—” He snaps his finger. “Not our people. Not often. We’re careful. But Moon Lake. Salt Mountain—” He grimaces. “There’s something out there.”

I’ve heard this my whole life. Don’t wander off. Follow the rules. Danger lurks everywhere outside our territory.

Funny because all the bad shit that’s happened to me has happened here.

I nod, though. He’s working himself up, and it unsettles me.