The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(85)

Just do what this pack did. What Darragh himself did to survive.

What I did instead of fighting for us—turn away, cling to the pain, and throw up a wall so high that nothing can ever be resolved or healed, only forgotten, but never for long.

It’s not good enough.

Not for me.

And not for this beautiful male smiling lazily up at me as if I’m as lovely and liable to fly away as the dried petals lying beside us on the floor.

As I gaze down into his eyes, my palms propped on his pecs, I see a flash of pure gold.

It’s the wolf.

He’s watching me, peering out from wherever he’s been banished.

There’s no rage or bloodlust in his gleaming gaze, not like the night I fled from him. He’s calm. Interested.

He wants this, too. To be close. Held. Trusted.

I don’t know how I can tell. The bond? Wishful thinking?

I smile into Darragh’s face and curl my fingers, lightly pricking his skin with my nails. The gold glitters. My wolf purrs under my ribs. My bite is vivid and raw on his neck. For a moment, I catch a glimpse of what perfect would actually be. All of us. Whole. A family.

It’s a dream.

I don’t have them anymore.

But I could.

If I were brave enough. If I dare.





I want to stay at the treehouse, but Darragh doesn’t want me sleeping away from camp at night until we know who the humans are who kidnapped us, and he doesn’t feel like Lucan and Fallon are enough security. I’d agree about the guys, but Darragh’s not counting himself.

The only reason the humans were able to take Darragh down was because they had me, and he was out of his mind. Without that advantage, there’s no way they’d have a chance against him or his wolf. He’d scent them well before they could get anywhere near shooting range.

Darragh also wants to check in with the command center set up in the lodge. He says that the humans are from the branch of their government that “administrates” us. I have no idea what that means, but apparently, they’re more on our side than the hunters, and they have resources we don’t when it comes to tracking them down.

Darragh drops me off at my cabin. It takes everything I have not to beg him to take me with him, and it takes him a few false starts before he can leave me. He says he’ll be back in a few hours. When he goes, Fallon and Lucan are at a respectable distance out on the porch, but as soon as he disappears down the path, they slip inside to play video games with Kennedy.

I’m distracted. I shower, reapply cream to my burns and put on fresh bandages, and excuse myself to lie down. Despite the exhaustion I’m still feeling as my body finishes healing up all the scrapes and bruises, I can’t nap.

Now that I’ve got the thought in my head, I can’t stop worrying at it—what if Darragh’s wolf isn’t mad?

Or what if he used to be, but he’s changed?

Or what if he never was, but he’s been made that way from the years of solitude?

Shifters are pack animals, especially in our wolf form. What would it do to a wolf if he shifted too soon, no more than a pup, ripped from his only family and sentenced to a life in exile? What does that kind of loneliness do to a soul?

I think it’s made Darragh rough on the outside and burnished as smooth as diamond in his heart. Why should his wolf be so different?

I should let it go, focus on the fact that I might have a real mate now, and a new home, and maybe, possibly, a little critter in my belly. That’s enough to freak out over, for sure, right?

But I keep flashing back to that moment when I was strung from the tree, suffocating and scared out of my mind, and Darragh blew through the tree line, bolting for me without a second’s hesitation, arms thrown wide to protect me from the darts he must have heard coming, knowing it was a trap, knowing he didn’t have a chance, but still racing for me full tilt, brave and stupid and unstoppable.

I don’t know what love is. I had ideas when I was young that mostly revolved around a palette of faded pastels, bittersweet acoustic songs, and the vague notion that love would be pretty and delicate and simple.

I don’t think I had it right at all. I think it’s the opposite—ugly and messy and tough as gristle. It’s not a miracle, not a gift out of nowhere, not a vibe. You make it out of thin air, from nothing, by what you do.

Like when I was a baby and Una threw her body over mine.

I think you can crush it, too. If you aren’t strong enough. If you don’t hold onto hope hard enough.

I lay in bed and stare at the bare walls where my fairy lights used to hang, my hand resting lightly on my stomach where maybe there’s a new life growing, another love conjured up out of nothing at all, and I know in my bones that Darragh would die for us both.

I am not leaving half of him behind.

Not like I was left.

Like my mother left me.

I close my eyes, but I don’t sleep. I plot, but mostly, I pray, and when Darragh’s wolf howls from the path outside for my wolf to join him in the wee hours of morning, I know exactly what I’m going to do.

I only hope that once it’s done, he forgives me.





15





DARRAGH





All those times I drove my ass out to Salt Mountain and let my wolf run, knowing he’d be too run down by the time we reached Quarry Pack territory to fight me for our skin—the fucker was paying attention.