The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(5)

I tell her that her disdain for girly shit is internalized misogyny, and she says she’d rather shave her head bald than wear a butterfly in it, so we’re at an impasse. No skin off my teeth. She’s the one shooting wide and losing out to some foul-mouthed thirteen-year-old.

“So are we going to talk about earlier?” Kennedy says as she taps and jiggles the buttons on her controller. Her eyes remain riveted on the screen. If Killian Kelly and his lieutenants knew we have a game system, they’d lose their minds. I’m not sure how it’s a corrupting influence, but the older males have really messed up ideas about lone females.

If you have a father or a brother, you can basically wear what you want, do what you want, sit at an actual table at meals. If you’re on your own like we are, you can’t show any skin—including, like, ankles or elbows—you can’t leave pack territory because no one will escort you, and you have to stay hidden in the kitchen or the laundry shack.

So, yeah, maybe I get it. I bet the males think Call of Duty will give us ideas. Maybe they’re right. Lord knows I’ve wanted to shoot my way out of here a few times.

“Well?” Kennedy elbows me without missing a tippity-tap.

I look up from my phone, drop my head back to the sofa cushion, and sigh gustily as I stare at the ceiling. “He’s my mate.”

“Shut the fuck up.” That freezes her fingers for a second. On screen, blood and brain matter splash across the screen.

“Yup,” I say.

“Darragh Ryan?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit, girl, I heard he doesn’t even eat the meat.” Kennedy looks at me, wide-eyed. I look at her. We hold it together for exactly one second before we both explode in hysterical guffaws.

“Shut up, shut up.” I smoosh my hand over her mouth.

“You shut up,” she mumbles and licks my palm. I squeal, snatching my hand back and wiping it on my pink silk pajama shorts. “Damn, girl. He’s old as shit.”

“He’s only, like, thirty-five. Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, max.”

“Where does he even live?”

“In the woods?” That’s what they say, anyway.

“You can’t live in the woods.” There’s not an ounce of uncertainty in her voice, and she’s right. I like stuff too much. Fashion. Accessories. Décor.

“He’ll probably move down here into camp.” That’s how it goes. The mated male finagles a cabin somehow, and the female builds her nest there.

Males are super intense about territory. They like to keep all the females, even the ones with the protection of male family, in the buildings clustered at the center of the acreage that used to be a human wilderness education camp for kids but is now home to the illustrious Quarry Pack, legends in their own minds.

“I don’t want you to move out,” Kennedy says, her face falling.

“Me neither.”

We’re quiet and sad for a moment, and then Kennedy yips like she’s just remembered something. “Oh, shit! Your wolf! Does this mean that she’s ready to come out?”

Kennedy hops onto her knees and faces me, peering into my eyes like I’m an aquarium, and my wolf is swimming around in there.

“Let’s go for a run!” She bounces up and down, swaying the couch cushions, and my ringlet curls swing into my eyes. “We can hunt!”

My wolf perks her ears. She’s listening. I poke around, trying to feel whether there’s some kind of psychic tear in the barrier that’s kept her inside me all these years. I have no idea how this part works.

Everyone knows that once you recognize your mate, your wolf comes out. That’s the order of things, but it’s not like the older packmates give us a timeline or explicit directions or anything. Una would have told us if she knew, but her wolf hasn’t come yet, so she doesn’t know either. Your mate is supposed to be there and see you through it.

My heart twinges a little. Did Darragh really have to bail like that? I get that it came out of nowhere, and I needed to process, too, but aren’t males supposed to take charge in these situations, especially older males?

Kennedy’s wolf rumbles in her chest with anticipation, cutting off my train of thought. “Is she ready to come out?”

“I don’t know. I think she’s interested, but she’s not making any moves.” I prod at my breastbone as if that’ll nudge her forward.

Kennedy’s been shifting since she was thirteen. She was actually born in Salt Mountain. When she shifted one random full moon, no mate in sight, and her wolf turned out to be a big-ass male, her parents freaked and traded her to Quarry Pack. We’re not sure for what. She jokes that her parents gave Quarry Pack a carton of cigarettes and a slab of venison to take her off their hands.

That’s why Kennedy and I are so tight. Annie and Una know what losing your parents feels like, too, but at the end of the day, they were loved. Kennedy and I—not so much. We were both lucky to make it away from our fathers alive.

“The moon is almost full.” Kennedy bends over the back of the couch and peeks out the curtains. “Let’s go outside.”

We’re not supposed to, not alone after curfew. “What if we get caught?”

“We won’t. I can smell them coming a mile away.”

“I don’t know—” Isn’t shifting something I’m supposed to do with my mate for the first time?