The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(62)

His wolf rumbles, but softly.

Tentatively, he smooths the heel of his palm up my spine, avoiding the taser burns, until his fingers tangle into my hair. He strokes the pulse point under my ear with his calloused thumb. I squirm backward until I’m closer, tucked fully into the V of his legs.

He stretches a leg straight. With great effort, I lift my head to rest it on his thigh. The denim is cool under my cheek.

The pain in my body is all mixed up with the cramping in my lower belly and the terrible heat cresting in waves. I whimper. Darragh places his other hand on the small of my back and begins to make small circles.

“My mother used to do that when I was sick,” I say, letting my eyes drift shut.

“Mine, too.” He rubs gently, slowly.

“I didn’t know you had a mother.” It’s a dumb thing to say, but I’m well past making consistent sense.

“She passed away when I was little. Wasting sickness.”

“I’m sorry.”

He grunts in acknowledgement. “My sister took over when she was gone. She was a lot older than me.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.” It’s strange that I wouldn’t have ever heard of her.

“She lives with North Border pack now.”

“Do you see her?”

“Not in years.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” I say against his worn jeans. “We’re in the same pack, and we’re technically mates, but we don’t know each other at all.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and then he says, low and gruff and careful, “I want to know you, Mari.”

“Yeah?” It makes me want to smile—it seems so silly. We’re probably going to die tomorrow, disappear like all those folks in Moon Lake who “went for a walk” and didn’t come back. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.” He says it so seriously. A warmth—not the prickly urgency of heat, but something airier, softer—unfurls in my stomach.

“There’s not much to know about me.”

“Me neither,” he says, both wry and sincere, and strokes my hip and massages my neck with exquisite tenderness, as if he’s scared that he’ll spook me, and I’ll pull myself away and stop him.

“You like books,” I say.

“You do, too.”

I hum a yes.

“What do you like?”

“Anything that has a happy ending.”

“Me, too,” he says, so quietly that if there was anyone else in this box, they wouldn’t be able to hear him.

“Those men got out of the center of the earth, right?” I peek up at him.

His lips curve. “They did.”

“And the story with knights? The good guy wins and marries the lady, right?”

His brown eyes grow somehow browner, and the creases in the corner of his eyes deepen. “Ivanhoe wins,” he says, and oddly, I feel like he’s not quite telling me the truth, like he’s telling me what I want to hear.

It makes the warmth in my chest glow.

I haven’t lived a life where anyone’s tried very hard to protect me from hard truths. I know “it’s going to be all right” is a fantasy—I know the danger is real and close and ugly—but for this moment, I let myself give in to it.

I’m curled close to my strong mate, and I hurt, but he’s stroking me with his careful hands, telling me everything is going to be okay, everything is going to turn out all right.

The heat washes over me, and I wriggle closer until my knees are tucked flush against his hard inner thigh. The pain in my wrist is slowly easing into a dull throb.

His steady breathing coaxes mine into the same calm rhythm. I nuzzle his jeans. The denim smells like him—fresh air, dew, home.

I don’t want this to end here.

I force my brain to focus, searching out his eyes. They’re on me. On my face. And even if I don’t quite trust it, I see it—longing. Bitter, tender, hopeless longing. It stirs me, touches my raw and bruised heart.

I swallow to clear the lump in my throat and say what needs saying. “We need to mate. Before they come back.”

His hand pauses mid-stroke. My wolf whines. He keeps going.

“We don’t have to,” he says, grim and certain.

“Yes, we do.”

“I won’t make you.” His voice drops so deep, it rumbles.

“I know you wouldn’t.”

“We can wait.” His mouth flattens.

“No, we can’t.” I didn’t do this for nothing. I turn to gaze up at him. Pain and remorse and rage are etched on his rugged, beautiful face.

“I can’t make a nest,” I say, low and broken, like a confession, like a shared grief.

“I’m sorry.” The hand on my neck wanders to my hair. I can hardly feel it, but I know what he’s doing. He’s touching my curls.

“I don’t want to do this here.” It’s another confession. “Like this.”

“We don’t have to,” he says, and I know in my bones that he means it as much as he also knows that we do.

“I want it to be my choice.”

“It is,” he says.

Everything is such a mess. I can’t ignore the bond at all anymore. Maybe we’ve been too close for too long, or I’m too tired, or it’s just gotten too strong. I can feel his fury, his shame, the conflict tearing him apart, and underneath it all, his desire.