The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(89)

Fuck Darragh Ryan.

Fuck this.

I speed up, pick my way back the way we came, cross the wide cavern that still smells like pack and woodsmoke, teeth chattering. I wrap my arms around myself, but the cold is in my bones.

The dumb, tragically hopeful part of me whispers, “He’ll be outside, waiting.”

When I duck through the opening, the sun is just sinking behind Salt Mountain in the distance. It’s warmer than in the den, but not by much. A brisk night breeze sweeps down from the foothills. Goosebumps pucker my arms.

There’s no sign of Darragh. I can’t scent him on the wind.

He’s gone.

I drove him away.

He didn’t even try to stay.

I fucked up. I pushed too hard.

No, no, fuck him. I’m done. This is over. No more. I can’t pick my pieces up again. I can’t reach out and grab nothing. Again.

I’m going back to my cabin, and I’m bolting the door. I don’t care if he comes and stands in the path, wooden and tortured. I won’t even know. I’m not peeking through a curtain. I’m not lying awake listening for his wolf’s howl. No more neatly wrapped packages of steaks. No more leaving but never being gone.

No more bruised heart that never heals.

I stand in front of the den, hands balled, arms stiff at my sides, desperately summoning my old anger to me so I can walk away. My wolf is strangely quiet. She’s waiting, but not for Darragh. For me?

I need to walk away.

Why won’t my feet move?

Why does my mind keep coming back to memories of those slabs of meat wrapped in white paper, my name written in grease pencil? All caps. MARI. MARI. MARI.

Sometimes he scrawled a date as well, but always, he wrote my name, his script blocky and careful. A male’s awkward handwriting.

For the first time, I think backward, like a film in reverse. Darragh at the roughhewn table behind his shack, carefully forming the M, the A, the R, the I. Before that, wrapping the steaks, lining up the pieces of freezer tape so they cover the seams evenly. Earlier, butchering the deer or the elk or sometimes the wild hog. Skinning it. Field dressing. Tracking the animal. Alone. Waiting up in the stand or lying on his belly in a hollow, alone.

Walking down into camp to give it to me, even though I wouldn’t take it. Walking home. Alone.

No acknowledgement. No encouragement.

And who could blame me? I don’t. He’s the one who rejected me. That’s the story, right?

He’s the villain. I’m the poor victim—easy to reject, easy to abandon, easy to leave behind. Not worth trying. Not worth the risk.

Right?

In this moment, with the sky darkening from denim to midnight blue, the rosy gold fading in the west, it doesn’t feel right.

It feels like the kind of garbage I’ve outgrown.

Overhead, Venus appears, and then another white pinprick, and another. An airplane. A star.

The world feels vast, roofless, dark, and forbidding. My wolf longs to return to the den and hunker down. In my chest, the bond is loud and furious, a burst of static, a scrambled signal, but somehow, it’s also a tether, like astronauts use on spacewalks.

How many treks did Darragh make to camp, gift in hand, to leave with nothing? More than a hundred at least.

He came back.

Because my mate is strong.

I am, too.

I square my shoulders and close my eyes, listening, for the first time, really listening to the bond singing in my heart. From my heart.

Where are you?

I reach out into the night, perk my ears, and turn toward the rush of fear and anguish and ferocious love. I follow the trail, and every minute, a dozen stars pop on, lighting my way.

My wolf settles, down for the ride. She knows we’re heading in the right direction.

I’m not surprised when a heavy tread sounds from the direction of camp. I felt him coming back to me.

He rounds a bend in the path and comes to a stop, standing tall and proud, chest rising and falling from running, in a pair of black athletic shorts. His face is stone, his brown eyes gone black. Something’s draped over his arm.

In a split second, a tsunami of feelings I can’t stop—can’t push down, can’t think away—crashes through me, knocking my new certainty onto its ass, casting up old memories, a deserted child’s fear, a rejected female’s devastation. The bitterness. The desolation. The weight of hiding it, day after day, long night after long night.

I clench my shaking hands. Tears flood my eyes, blurring my vision. “You left.”

“I did.” He doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything else, only stands there stock still, as if he’s steeling himself.

As if this doesn’t hurt him, too, but it does. I can feel that it does, but he doesn’t show it, and it’s unfair that we both feel this, and it crushes me, but not him.

I take a step, and then I break. I fly at him, flailing my fists, beating at his stone chest, trying to pound my way inside, make him hurt so I won’t be alone in this anymore, so we won’t ever be alone again.

He drops to his knees. Thrusts his shoulders back. Offers me a clear shot. My fury spins faster. I hit him, hard, harder, but I can’t hurt him. I’m nowhere near strong enough. The side of my hand collides with his steel jaw, and a pained whimper escapes between my ragged sobs.

He grabs my wrists, snatches them midair, and tucks them to his heart. “Enough, Mari,” he says. “I’m back.”