The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(88)

I run.

My bones knit back together as I pump my legs, fleeing, fueled by sheer desperation. I head south towards camp for no other reason than it’s downhill.

My heart knocks closefisted against the wall of my chest. I have to put as much distance between the wolf and Mari as I can, as my body can handle. I push it past its limits, straining every muscle, my lungs fighting for air.

I have to protect her. It’s the only thing that matters. Get this horrible thing that lives inside me as far from her as I can. Don’t let it touch her. Her perfect, precious body, so soft, so fucking defenseless.

Totally unaware, I find myself bent with a cramp, gasping, on the ridge above Mari’s cabin, near the tree where I first noticed her, too damn young, hiding her phone behind a tattered copy of America’s Vanishing Folkways. I still remember the cover—a woman in a dress on a bicycle, a man in a suit raising a top hat.

I hold my aching side, bracing myself to keep going, run it off, when I notice two things at once. A few feet away, under the tall oak where Mari had been perched, there’s a white rabbit, upright on her haunches, staring at me, frozen in place.

And my wolf isn’t fighting me for our skin.

The rabbit’s tiny heart flutters under its smooth fur, racing. Its pink and white ears point skyward.

My wolf notes the little critter, his mouth instinctively watering, but he dismisses her as quickly as he notices her.

Go back.

There is no way. I’m not letting him near Mari.

Go back.

My wolf speaks louder, but still, he’s not pushing for our skin.

I force myself to straighten, stretch backwards, deepen my breath despite the cramp. Cool air fills my lungs. A stiff breeze blowing down from the hills begins to clear the chaos from my mind.

Mari’s safe. I got us away in time.

You left her. Go back.

Fury, hot and swift, rushes through me. My burning muscles seize with the force of it. I want to fight him, shove him out of our body, kill him so he can never hurt her, so I will never be that fucking terrified ever again.

I kill her enemies. He flashes an image of Smith’s skull into my brain.

“You’re fucking mad,” I spit.

The rabbit startles at my voice, and despite her paralyzing fear, she bolts. My wolf idly tracks her escape through the dark green underbrush, calculating the few leaps it would take to catch her. He rumbles in my chest, but he lets her go.

And he doesn’t deny the accusation. He accepts it without argument. Without shame.

I had to be.

He falls quiet. The only sound in the woods is the rustle of leaves. Like the rabbit, every living thing has flown. We’re alone—the wolf and I.

But that’s not exactly true.

The bond still flows into and out of my heart. Mari is still there as she has been since the moment I first noticed her. As she will always be.

My mate.

I picture her in that moment after she shifted, her bare skin, her halting smile, the tremble in the arm she reached out to me. Brave and beautiful.

As long as we live, I am going to be terrified for her.

But that isn’t all, is it?

I will also be grateful to my bones for what Fate has given me, and no matter what, I will watch over her and protect her and care for her and provide for her, and since I don’t have a choice, I have to do it with a mad wolf inside me.

I have to be what I am, too.

And I am Mari’s mate.

I belong with her, and she belongs to me.

My wolf snorts as he settles himself onto his side, relaxing for the trek back to our mate, not a bit worried about our reception.

For once, he wasn’t the one who fucked up.

He flicks his tail and yawns, stretching his legs and bending his back.

And before he fades away, content that I’m going where I’m supposed to go, he throws an image of the rabbit and a suggestion into my head.

Bring her meat.

And he lets go, and for the first time in our lives, we walk forward together in peace.





16





MARI





I am alone and naked and cold. The cave is silent. My hands shake.

I’ve been here before.

Four years ago.

And another time, years before, the night of the full moon when Ma didn’t come back to fetch me from the knoll where the unmated females watched us little ones. I sat in the dew-wet grass, forgotten, while a male gasped out the story to Deirdre Sullivan.

“Her wolf just leapt,” he’d said, still stunned, not bothering to lower his voice. “No hesitation. There was no way she could have thought she was going to make it. No way.”

Her wolf.

My gaze careens around the empty cavern. Shadows collect in the corners. The bare bulbs hanging from a wire cast haloes on the rough, damp walls, the darkness hardly held at bay. I shiver.

My heart skids on the edge of crashing into a hundred pieces.

I made a terrible miscalculation.

Darragh’s horror and rage echoes through the bond, hammering, shattering.

I broke this thing between us. The wet stone floor is icy on my bare soles. On numb feet, I stumble toward the tunnel leading out.

I tried, and he ran, and now I’m alone again, left again, because that’s the carousel I’m on in this life. I’m a magnet the wrong side ’round. Easy to reject, easy to abandon, easy to leave behind. Not worth trying. Not worth the risk.