The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(27)

“I want to make him tell me why,” I say. “I want to look him in the eye, and I want him to say it to my face.”

Back in the nest, I was naked and exposed, and my body was awash in a chemical bath that short-circuited my brain. I didn’t have the wherewithal to press him, but I deserve to know what’s wrong with me.

Males may outrank females, but mates are outside the hierarchy, at least in some ways. He owes me an explanation. Besides, like Kennedy says, there’s such a thing as common decency.

“We should go as our wolves,” Kennedy says, already kicking off her shorts.

“Yeah. That’ll be faster.” I shrug her oversized T-shirt off and lay it flat on the porch. She tosses her clothes into it, and I make quick work of tying it into a bindle. “He owes me an explanation.”

“Hell, yeah, he does.”

“I’m not some side chick he can do on the DL.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I’m his mate. I deserve a freaking word or two before he kicks me to the curb.”

“Heck yeah, you do.” Kennedy is cracking her neck, more than ready to go and fight Darragh.

There’s more than a little bluster in my words, and my wolf is less than stoked to come out—she wants to huddle under a bed somewhere until our mate comes back with his tail between his legs—but now that the first wave of shock and despair has worn off, I can’t let it go.

I can’t wash him off my skin and lie in bed, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, praying the melatonin works even though it never does. I can’t wake up tomorrow like it’s any other day, like my mate didn’t fuck me ’cause he had to and then left me behind like a used condom.

That can’t be my life.

I can’t go about my daily work with my head hanging and just accept that Fate has it out for me, and everything is just going to be eating shit until the day I die.

“You hang back, okay?” I say, dragging my wolf out of her corner by her back legs with sheer force of will. “I need to do this myself.”

Kennedy’s obviously disappointed, but she nods, and in a move as smooth as CGI, her human body flows into a big black wolf that lopes down the stairs and up the path.

My wolf’s claws scrabble as she fights me, but I’m stronger. I want it more. She takes our skin in a spiteful cracking of bones and rending of flesh, and it hurts, but it’s layered on top of so much other pain that it’s a drop in the ocean.

As soon as she’s out, my wolf snaps up the bindle with her teeth and takes off after Kennedy’s. She doesn’t want to be alone in the dark so late at night. Kennedy’s wolf slows his pace so that we can keep up, and our wolves run side by side, as mismatched as two animals can be, following the trail we made the other day.

If there’s a moon, it’s covered by clouds. The air is cool and damp in our lungs, and the undergrowth slapping our forelegs is wet with gathering dew. We’re silent except for our jagged panting as we scramble up banks and around thick trunks of trees choked with ivy black in the darkness.

My wolf is scared. She wants to turn around and bolt for home, but she doesn’t dare leave the protection of Kennedy’s wolf.

It takes a quarter of the time to get to Darragh’s shack as it did when we hiked on two legs. Kennedy’s wolf is careful to approach from the north so that the wind hides our arrival. He’s giving me time in case I want to change my mind.

My wolf would be happy to turn around right now. She wants no part of this. When I call for our skin, she doesn’t hesitate to relinquish it.

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.

I don’t really want to confront him either. I hate conflict. I’m a head down, fingers crossed kind of female, but I’m terrified that if I turn back now, this brave Mari will disappear. I’ll become the female that everyone sees as a human doll with an empty head and bad luck, and I’ll never be anything else in my own eyes.

Brave Mari, scared shitless with teeth chattering in a borrowed T-shirt with no panties and no shoes, is still better than the stupid, na?ve doll that no one really cares about, doomed by Fate to misery and loneliness.

I suck down a deep breath and comb my fingers once through Kennedy’s silky coat to calm my nerves. Even amped up with aggression, he tolerates it because he’s got my back. I can’t be that much of a loser if I have a friend like Kennedy. That’s just facts.

I’m not the problem. He is.

I square my shoulders and trip down the incline to the shack, my blood pounding in my ears. I don’t knock or call out. I stride straight through the door, wearing my righteous indignation like a suit of armor.

The fire is blazing in the hearth.

A huge wolf is splayed on his side in front of it, the flames glinting off his bronze coat as his flank rises and falls with the rhythm of deep sleep. I hold my breath. His wolf is freaking huge. His body spans almost the entire breadth of the shelter.

My wolf squeaks out the barest, terrified whine.

His wolf rouses, and there is a second frozen in time when his sleep-muddled golden eyes clock me, and I think, “That’s my mate. He’s beautiful.”