The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(69)

Has his wolf changed? Or is it my human form that he hates?

Very distantly, I’m aware that it’s bullshit that I don’t know the answers, but I’m still too out of it for normal feelings to hit with any kind of impact.

And also—

Yeah, Darragh’s never talked to me about what happened, but I never talked to him, either, did I?

Because it was his fault.

Yeah—

And isn’t it more than possible that he never talked to me because of his crippling guilt and his fear that he’d hurt me again?

I can’t pretend not to know he doesn’t feel that anymore, not when the bond is there, pumping in my chest like a second heart.

But for the past four years, I’ve been angry. I was doing what I had to do to hold myself together. I was being strong. I was young, alone, powerless.

I squint up at his grim, ashen face, his clenched jaw, his tired eyes, the brown dull, the gold gone. He seems every year of his age.

He’s alone. More alone than I’ve ever been.

I squirm. He rests a heavy palm on my side. We run a few more miles when we come to a dark gas station. There aren’t any cars in the gravel lot. It’s very early, but they must be opening soon. Anxiety courses through my veins again, but I don’t perk up. I’m too wrung out.

Darragh lifts the sling from his neck and rests me behind an air machine.

“Stay here,” he says, already trotting toward the gas station’s front door. He bends, grabs the metal grate, and rips it from the frame, padlock and all. Then he drives his knee into the glass. It shatters.

He steps through, barefooted, and I wince in my fur. My wolf whines low in her throat. We don’t like him out of our sight.

Minutes later, he emerges. He’s wearing black sweatpants with a red maple leaf on the thigh. The pockets are bulging. He’s ripping a plastic package open with his teeth. It’s a prepaid phone.

“Good girl,” he says like an afterthought when he sees I haven’t moved. He scoops me up, slips the sling over his head, and resettles me against his chest. My heart rate slows.

He takes off again, running alongside the road. He puts a good three or four miles between us and the gas station before he stops, picking his way up a steep bank and down into a wooded gulch before he collapses to his butt and rests his back against a thick oak.

He tips his head and stares at the sky for a minute before he unties the sling from around his neck and sets me on the ground between his bent legs.

My wolf wriggles loose from the fabric and stretches her forelegs, arching her spine until it cracks and thrusting her rump in the air. She wags her tail a few times to get the kinks out before she settles on her butt, propping her paws on Darragh’s thigh. She gazes up at him expectantly.

His grim mouth tilts up at the corners. “Hungry?”

She yips.

I didn’t even realize our stomach was growling, but now that I’m tuning in, I hear her belly gurgling and smell the meat in his pants. My wolf noses the bulge. He chuckles, gruff and creaky.

“Water first.” He takes out a bottle and pours it carefully into her mouth as my wolf laps it up. It’s cold and so freaking good. Her tail whaps the hard earth. When she’s had enough, he finishes it off and digs a bag of sausage sticks out of his pocket. The preservatives stink, but I can ignore it. I’m starving.

He opens the bag and before he can hold up a stick, my wolf snatches it from his fingers. Darragh barks a laugh. It’s a rusty sound.

“How about you help yourself?” he says and peels the plastic open, laying it in front of me like a plate. My wolf goes to town.

He focuses on the phone, puzzling out the directions, fiddling with the buttons. He doesn’t seem very familiar with how it works.

I could help, but I’d need my human skin, and nothing inside me wants to shift back yet. I feel safer with claws and fangs, even if I’m smaller in my fur.

And it’s easier like this—with Darragh. I don’t want to think about what we did, about the bite mark still throbbing on my neck. I need the comfort of not dealing with it. It’s become crystal clear to me that I am very good at blocking stuff out. I always thought it was a personal strength. Maybe my only one.

Is it?

I don’t want to search my soul as I snarf down meat bites on the run in the middle of nowhere, bone weary and beaten up, fur matted into knots with dried blood.

But it isn’t strength to close your eyes and plug your ears, is it?

My wolf turns away from the remaining sausages and tucks her snout to her chest. Darragh reaches past me and snags a bite as he mutters under his breath, “Left soft key press to access notifications.”

He’s baffled.

I can help, but I’m scared. I don’t want to be naked in front of him again. Like when we did—what we did in that box.

“Your phone already has a Nano SIM card installed,” he reads. “Okay. That’s good. What do I do with the SIM card?”

He’s lost.

Oh, I don’t want to do this. I stagger to my four feet. Darragh idly trails his fingers down my spine. My wolf shakes out her fur, wanders a few feet away, and I try to summon the energy to shift, but my every atom is wrung out.

In the end, I kind of ask my wolf to hand over our skin, and she’s so exhausted, she sort of drops it like a heavy laundry basket on a bed.