The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(81)

“Don’t be scared,” he murmurs in his deep, gruff voice. “It’s safe. Killian has doubled patrols, and we’ll take the pups with us.” He means Lucan and Fallon.

I watched this male decimate a half dozen trained, armed men in a matter of minutes. I’m not scared of any humans, but it’s not because of the “pups” and their guns.

We must be leaving camp, though. I’m grateful. The pack’s attention—and the studious distance of the males—is fraying my nerves.

Darragh goes to speak to Liam, and in short order, Liam rustles up keys to three of the ATVs that the pack keeps in an outbuilding behind the garage. Lucan hops on his first and guns his engine, shooting off to the north like he knows where he’s heading.

Darragh mounts a four-wheeler and offers me a hand, helping me climb on behind him.

“I haven’t ridden one of these before.” I laugh, nervous.

My thighs are cradling his hips, and unless I suck in my stomach, which I can’t with all the aches and pains, I can’t help but press my front to his back. He smells like soap and dust motes floating in a lazy ray of sunshine. I have no idea how that scent is stored as a memory in my mind, but it is, and it’s the perfect description.

I rest my cheek against his shoulder blade. He revs the engine, but he doesn’t tear off like Lucan. He drives carefully, zigzagging to avoid ditches, making the path as smooth as he can. Fallon follows us at a distance. He zigzags, too, but he does it so he can hit more jumps.

It’s a long ride, but I don’t mind. Pretty soon, I realize that we’re heading toward his shack. I’m not super excited about going back there, but we’re almost alone again, and that soothes the unsettled feeling I’ve had since we came back to Quarry Pack territory, and he left me at the infirmary.

As we approach his clearing, the trees are thick, so I don’t see what he’s done until we’re there, and he’s cutting the engine. I stare up and up, squinting, shading my eyes as I half slide, half push myself off the wide seat. My jaw drops.

I gape, and Darragh comes to stand beside me.

“You built a treehouse,” I mutter, gobsmacked.

He grunts, strides forward, and looks up at what he’s done.

It’s amazing. The shack is still there, leaning starboard, mushrooms sprouting from the moss on the roof, but in the tall oaks in the tree line beyond it, a freaking treehouse rises from the stout branches. And it’s not the sort of thing a male would make for a pup or like you’d see in a picture book, nothing like that.

It has levels. It has architectural details.

I saw a movie once at the Moon Lake school when the teacher was sick, and they’d wrangled a random elder to watch us. The movie was about a family who was shipwrecked on a deserted island, and they built a treehouse with a skylight and running water and a parlor with a piano.

This is like that if it’d been made by a lone wolf shifter and not a set design crew.

Like the shack, the steep-pitched roofs tilt a little to starboard. The eaves are hung with white gingerbread trim. On the lower levels, the design is a simple scallop, uneven in places, but at the very top, the design is as delicate and as elaborate as snowflakes.

It’s like a nursery rhyme treehouse. The shutters and siding are a motley mix of bright red, yellow, and green, and at the top, there is a round turret with a big window and a flower box filled with gold mums.

Darragh turns to face me, his expression battened down, his shoulders squared, his spine ramrod straight.

The incongruity strikes me, searing the image into my mind. This male with his gray-threaded hair and bristly beard, rugged in his worn jeans and scuffed boots, strong and proud despite the obvious toll of the years, standing tall, almost defiant, in front of this fairy tale cottage he’s built with his own hands.

The hands that tore apart the men who hurt me.

“You built it for me,” I say, my voice strangely soft.

“I got the idea the first time I noticed you,” he says.

I remember what he said earlier. “Not the morning at Abertha’s?”

He shakes his head. “No. Way before that. Down in camp. I was heading out from dropping off a kill. You were up in a tree with a book.”

Oh, I remember. “You gave me a dirty look.”

“You were hiding up a tree to sneak something on your phone. You were so fucking young.”

“You knew then?”

His jaw clenches. “I stayed away.”

I crane my neck to check out the top of the treehouse. It’s mostly hidden by leaves, but the very tip top clears the canopy, and above a white cupola, there’s a copper weathervane, tarnished green, and where there should be a rooster, there’s a mermaid, her tail pointing east.

It’s everything I would have loved back then. Before.

I don’t know what to say if I don’t want to cry.

I approach the hanging rope ladder. Darragh holds it taut so it’s easier to climb, but I’m still short of breath by the time I reach the first platform. I sit on the edge, dangling my legs over, to catch my breath. Darragh lowers himself beside me.

We’re silent for a while. Up this high, I can pick out the lodge’s roof and some of the more exposed cabins in camp from the fall foliage. In the far distance, the steeples of the churches in Chapel Bell rise into the washed out blue sky.