The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(8)

She nuzzles her snout into the crook of his arm. Impossibly, she’s even more blissed out than when she was getting scratches. She breathes him in, loving how she can feel his steady heartbeat against her flank. It’s such a weird feeling—like we’ve been at sea our whole life, and we’re feeling firm ground underneath our feet for the very first time.

My brain is still catching up when he opens the door and gently sets my wolf down on her dainty paws just inside. She turns to go after him, but before she can even lift a paw, he says, “No. Stay.”

Then he shuts the door and his feet sound on the steps.

My wolf blinks at the closed door and pads over to scratch the wood. She whines, confused. She doesn’t understand why he left, so she waits for him.

Minutes tick by, but he doesn’t come back. Eventually, she kind of gives up, lays down, and retreats, relinquishing our body. After another wave of exquisite pain and cracking bone, I’m lying naked on the rag rug in the living room.

Kennedy pads down the hallway, toothbrush in her mouth, and tosses me a white T-shirt. “The key is don’t forget your clothes,” she mumbles around the handle of the brush. “Or if you do, remember where you left them.”

If she smells Darragh, she doesn’t say anything. She’s really good about privacy.

I tug on the T-shirt, stagger to my aching legs, say goodnight, and go lie down for the hour or two before we have to be at the lodge to start prepping breakfast.

As I lie under the pale-pink canopy that hangs from a hoop above my bed, I admire the fairy lights I’ve strung across the ceiling and let my mind wander.

How should I feel? Abandoned? Rejected? Protected? Insulted to be treated like a pup?

Mates aren’t supposed to leave each other once they find each other, not until the female’s knocked up. Darragh’s walked away from me twice.

But then again, mates are supposed to do a lot of things. They’re supposed to back each other up come hell or high water, but look at my parents. In the most likely scenario, Declan Kelly raped my mother while she was pregnant with me, and my father decided that she was a dirty cheater because that was easier than confronting his alpha. Then, to hide the shame of it all, he tried to kill me. Not Declan Kelly. Me, the baby.

Mates are supposed to be together forever, soulmates, right? But I can list at least a half dozen people off the top of my head who are either stepping out on each other or strictly-for-heat. Liam. Rowan. Haisley. Dermot. Rían. Dierdre.

I’m not going to panic because Darragh Ryan, the pack hermit, isn’t doing things the way you’re supposed to. He gives a good belly rub, and somehow, his presence helped my wolf come out. That’s two points in his favor. Plus, he’s hot, he smells good, and I’m kind of into the older male thing. Shifters aren’t like humans. We get stronger as we age until we hit late, late life, so Darragh actually has more bulk than most males in the pack.

And apparently, I’m into muscle. Biology must be changing my tastes. All the guys I have pinned on my vision board are more shy and soulful types.

I’m okay with taking it slow for now. My skin’s definitely a little sensitive, and my nipples are hard and achy like it’s mid-winter, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. Maybe the joke will be on Fate for once. Maybe if I give it time and don’t panic, everything will turn out all right.





2





MARI





I give it a whole two days of radio silence—not a single hide nor hair of Darragh Ryan around camp—before I decide to take matters into my own hands.

“Do you think he’s in there?” I whisper to Kennedy’s wolf, nodding toward the rickety structure in the clearing below.

He snorts an affirmative.

“It looks abandoned.” The shelter tilts slightly starboard, and the branches woven into a roof have grown a lush blanket of moss. A cluster of mushrooms sprout from the peak. It’s picturesque in an ominous fairy-tale-witch-with-an-oven kind of way.

Kennedy’s wolf paws the dirt. He’s anxious to bail. He doesn’t like being around other males, especially those higher up in the hierarchy. Darragh might not quite be pack, but he still ranks. You can smell it on him.

“You can go,” I tell the wolf. Before we set out, we decided I would talk to Darragh alone. Even though I’m quaking on the inside, I know I’ll be safe with him. Mates can’t hurt each other.

Kennedy’s wolf growls low in his throat. I stop myself from giving him a reassuring pat. He’s got too much dignity to accept it.

“I’ll be fine. Go catch rabbits. Darragh will bring me home.”

Or maybe he’ll want me to stay. My cheeks, already flushed from the trek up here, blaze. Excitement stirs in my belly, even though I don’t really want to go inside the shack. It looks like a strong wind would blow it over, but then again, those roof mushrooms look very healthy. To get so big, they must’ve weathered more than a few storms.

“It’s cool.” I smooth what’s left of my periwinkle tulle skirt after the pricker bushes got to it and begin to pick my way down the slight incline to the mossy clearing. “He’s my mate. It’ll be fine.”

I bet he doesn’t have indoor plumbing in a shack like that, but I hope to hell he has water. I emptied my bottle a way back. Darragh’s place was a lot further than I’d thought.