The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(45)

“I like your hat,” I say. Oh, lord. That sounded so loud and random. A blush creeps up my neck, across my face, to the tip of my ears.

“Yeah? Thanks.” He smiles. He has a nice smile. Good, even teeth. That’s not a given with shifters from Salt Mountain. They don’t do as well on the shifter circuit as our males do, and they aren’t into human business like Moon Lake.

Lenox takes the hat and reaches across the table to set it on my head. “Looks better on you.”

“Yeah?” I tilt it to a jaunty angle even though it’s unsettling to have something touching me that was just on his head. “You think it suits me?”

“Anything would suit you.” For a second, he leans in, and without meaning to, I jerk back, pressing my spine into the wrought iron chair.

He smiles wryly and shifts back in his chair. “You’re jumpy.”

I lift a shoulder. No sense in denying it. “It’s just jitters. I’ve never, uh, done this before.”

“This is your first cup of tea? Seriously?” He’s teasing, and it’s silly, but I appreciate it. The tightness in my chest loosens a little.

“First human date,” I say.

“Should I have waited for a full moon run and cut you off from the pack?”

That’s how it’s usually done between shifters who get with people besides their mates. It always reminded me of a lion picking off the weakest gazelle in the herd, but I guess when you do it that way, there’s the fiction that your animal is calling the shots. Maybe that’s easier than making the decision yourself. Maybe then there isn’t the gross taste of wrongness in your mouth that the taste of tea can’t begin to cover.

“No, this is nice.” I force a smile. It isn’t Lenox’s fault that I’m ambivalent about it all.

A man bumps the back of Lenox’s chair, and he deftly lifts his cup so nothing spills. “It’s crowded here,” he says.

“Yeah.” The scent of human is thick. My wolf’s head must be stuck deep in a hole somewhere because it should be driving her nuts.

“How would you like to go for your first human walk?”

“How’s it different from a shifter walk?” I say with a little glow of accomplishment. It was a rough start, but I’m totally holding up my end of the conversation now.

“Slower,” he says, his smile creasing the corner of his cool gray eyes. “Definitely slower.”

I told Kennedy and Annie that I’d be at the coffee shop, but I don’t see the harm in a stroll, as the humans say. I’ve got my phone, and I’m sure we won’t go that far.

“Okay,” I say.

Lenox stands and offers me his elbow like in a movie. I take it, and he leads me down the sidewalk. He points to the green. “Is that where the farmers’ market is?”

“Yeah. On weekends.”

“And you sell your candles there?”

“Yeah. Along with other stuff. Mushrooms, honey, herbs.”

“Sweet,” he says. “Your alpha must be really liberated. Even Moon Lake doesn’t do business in human territory.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it liberated. More the opposite, really.” I grin to myself. Killian will do basically anything Una wants. It’s enough to make anyone jealous, but no one deserves a male who lives and breathes for her more than Una. Una risked her life for me when I was a baby, and she’s worked her fingers to the bone to make a better life for us than she had coming up.

Sometimes, when I’m fighting the insomnia hard, and I can’t beat back the black thoughts, I wonder if I have the right to feel so wronged by Darragh Ryan. What have I done to deserve a happily ever after, after all? Fate is capricious. I got what I got. What right do I have to feel all tragic about it?

I need to take a page out of Una’s book and make my own way.

I firm my tentative grip on Lenox’s arm. We stroll past storefronts, sipping our drinks, pointing out things in the windows. The blue sky is high above and crystal clear, and a brisk breeze is nipping at my cheeks. I’m still wearing Lenox’s hat, and for a second, I feel my steps grow lighter.

I could be any human girl on a date with a handsome boy, nervous about whether he’ll kiss her at the end of the evening, nothing lodged in her chest, intrusive and inseverable, withered like a mangled limb.

No. I’m not thinking about that. I force myself to smile up at Lenox, and he grins down at me. His eyes are a smooth, light gray. They’re really hard to read, but his face is wide open. He’s the opposite of tormented and hostile.

"Can we turn here?" he asks when we get to the intersection with the Chapel Mews. There’s nothing down the cobblestoned alley, just the back of the buildings on High Street, but it’s a cut through to the park.

“Okay.”

We turn, and my stomach churns. No. It’s not churning, it’s fluttering. This is anticipation.

The mews are only a block long, but it’s private. It’s cool enough outside that none of the windows are open.

Lenox straightens the elbow I was holding onto so my arm falls to my side. He grabs my hand. My heart jerks. No, it flips.

Is he going to kiss me?

My heartrate kicks up a notch, and my stomach knots. I curl my free hand into a ball. I’m not freaking out. I’m excited.