The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(4)

Darragh’s beautiful, brown and gold, albeit bloodshot, eyes drill into mine, and I’m struck with a bolt as sudden and shocking as the late summer lightning that burns the air and sears black spots across your field of vision. My lungs seize mid-inhale. I stop breathing oxygen, my body continuing to pump blood on sheer adrenaline.

My wolf howls with excitement and launches herself at the border between us. I stumble. The front door of Abertha’s cottage creaks.

Annie and Kennedy suck in breaths in unison.

The screen door hits the wall with a sharp crack, and the witch emerges.

Her thin form is draped in a flowing turquoise kaftan, her long silver hair matted to the side of her head, an oversized coffee mug in her hand that reads hocus pocus, this witch needs coffee to focus. A cigarette dangles from her mouth.

She squints over at me.

She glances back at Darragh.

Her eyebrows rise to her hairline.

“Shi-it,” she drawls. “Didn’t see that one coming.” Her cigarette bobs, but it doesn’t fall from her lips.

My wolf surges forward, snarling, saliva flying as she slams herself against the barrier that separates us, claws scrabbling, teeth gnashing. I squeeze every muscle in my body, clutch my arms against my chest, trying with all my might to hold her in, to stop myself from combusting into a wolf gone completely mad with jealousy.

Girlfriend does not care that there’s no sex in the air. She wants witch’s blood.

While I’m literally holding myself together, Darragh Ryan raises his eyes to the distance again, furrows his brow, grunts unintelligibly, and without a backwards glance, strides off across the clearing, past the bee yard, and disappears into the woods.

My heart drops like a stone, and my wolf freezes mid-frenzy.

Kennedy’s hoe hits the ground again with a thud. A crow caws high in an oak tree.

For a long moment, the witch, my wolf, and I size each other up. Magic crackles in the air. I sniff the breeze. Darragh’s scent is fading. From the direction of the witch’s cottage, I smell coffee. Beer. Whiskey. Pot. No sex, I point out to my wolf. Grudgingly, she shakes out her bristled fur and stalks back to her corner.

Kennedy, Annie, and I exhale in unison.

The witch raises her hand in an awkward wave. “Planting rhubarb, eh, girls?” she says.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kennedy answers her.

Annie ducks her head and hunches her shoulders. The familiar stench of Annie’s chronic fear mixes with the odor of stale liquor and smoke. I sneeze.

“Where’s Una?” Abertha asks.

“In the greenhouse.” Kennedy and I work it out so Una gets the standing-in-place jobs ’cause of her leg. Una wouldn’t go along with it if she knew what we were doing, but Kennedy and I can be pretty slick when we want to be.

Una’s our leader, but she’s that Declan Kelly generation, too. She’s tough and brave, but still, she’s obviously traumatized and has to work at not being scared of her own shadow.

“Anything you need from me?” Abertha says. She’s looking straight at me now, one elegantly arched eyebrow raised. I drop my gaze, and my face burns.

Kennedy waits for me to answer, but when I don’t, she says on our behalf, “No, ma’am.”

“Well, uh, keep it down out here.” Abertha takes a drag of her cigarette, and without exhaling, chases it with a big gulp of coffee. She considers us for another minute as smoke curls from her nostrils like a dragon, and then she shuffles back inside. The screen door thuds shut.

Kennedy widens her eyes at me as she sweeps her hoe up. I snatch a rhubarb plant from the wheelbarrow. “Ready for another one?” I ask Annie, my voice squeaking, weirdly bright and pitchy.

Annie holds out a trembling hand. I slap a rhubarb in it. Annie has hair trigger nerves, and she has a fear response to basically anyone who outranks us. It’ll take her at least an hour to chill out. Until then, it’s best to keep her busy.

Kennedy’s still staring at me. She catches my eyes and tilts her head in a question. I give her a quick shake of the head. She shrugs a shoulder and lifts her hoe high overhead, swinging it into the overturned dirt with bloodthirsty zest.

We’re all back to work when Annie stammers, apropos of nothing, “Th-they s-say Darragh Ryan’s wolf will rip out your throat and then tear your limbs from your body and leave them stacked in a pile like f-firewood.”

Kennedy and I freeze mid-motion.

“He doesn’t even eat the m-meat,” she whispers, and then once more, so low it’s almost inaudible. “He doesn’t even eat the meat.”





Kennedy and I don’t get the chance to talk alone until past midnight when the light goes off under Una’s door, and Annie’s bedframe finally stops creaking from her nightly tossing and turning.

We’re sitting in the dark living room, side-by-side on the sofa, doing our usual thing. Kennedy is playing some shoot-’em-up game with human teenagers online. I’m scrolling on my phone, putting things into shopping carts and taking other stuff out.

Kennedy’s cross-legged in baggy athletic shorts, a generic white T-shirt, and the retro red-and-blue striped tube socks I bought her. Her chin-length, silky straight hair keeps falling in her face, causing her to miss shots, and every time, she cusses and blows the strands out of her eyes. God forbid she get a barrette and clip it back. If I offer her one of mine, she acts like I want to hand her a snake.