The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(90)

Tears and snot run down my face. I feel like a tornado has roared through me, and everything’s shattered, but the air is clear again.

I snuffle. “I shouldn’t have shifted like that on you.”

He doesn’t say anything. He lets go of my wrists and inspects my hand, gently testing the bones.

“Aren’t you going to tell me I shouldn’t have done it?” I ask.

He jerks his chin no.

“Why not?”

He looks up from my hand, the gold rings around his irises blazing, and when he finally speaks, he does it through clenched teeth, like he’s in pain. “I’ve wanted him not to be broken, too.”

His face hardens, darkens, his gaze shifting over my shoulder. He drops his arms to his side.

I rest my palm on his solar plexus where our bond connects, and it flows over my hand. Strong. Certain. No matter how much we mess up, it doesn’t stop. The reality of the bond has never comforted me before the way it does now.

I sniff and scrub my eyes, blinking at Darragh. He’s kneeling in front of me, muscles bunched, mouth turned down, his brow furrowed as deep as I’ve ever seen it. There’s dirt on the hems of the basketball shorts that he’s wearing.

“No jeans?” I ask.

He glances down at himself, surprised. “I had to borrow these.” He holds up the fabric he was carrying. He’d dropped it when he went to his knees. It looks like one of Annie’s long corduroy dresses. “I brought you this.”

“Thanks.” I take it and slip it over my head. It’s definitely Annie’s, too long and too tight in the boob and butt. You’re supposed to wear it with a shirt underneath, but this is it, so I hook the loops, grateful for the cover.

He rises to his feet and reaches for my dress straps, fiddling with the buckles even though the buttons are snapped in tight. He’s doing it because he wants to touch me.

I want to be touched.

“You didn’t bail,” I say.

“I did.” His rough fingers move to smooth the corduroy straps on my shoulders. They’re already lying flat.

“But you came back.”

“I’ll always come back.” His fingers still, and his eyes find mine. “I will fuck up, but I’ll come back every time. If you’ll have me.” His jaw tightens. “I’ll come back even if you won’t.”

“Because I’m your mate.”

His brown eyes shine. “Because you’re the light of my fucking life. I would do anything for you. Stay away. Come back. Anything. You’re my heart, Mari Ryan. You make it beat.”

The corners of my lips float up, a lightness filling the space the earlier emotional tempest left in my chest. “Mari Ryan?”

He grunts, and I know he means, “Fuck yeah.”

I’m smiling now, and his brow is furrowing away, and the dark sky is scattered with twinkling diamonds, the starlight outlining the willowy limbs of bare autumn trees. My gruff mate is wearing what—upon more careful examination—I do believe are Kennedy’s shorts with tan workman’s boots and no socks, and I’m stuffed like a sausage in a beige kindergarten teacher dress.

I just made a huge mistake, and my mate lost his mind on me and ran, but he came back, and I waited for him. We both know that nothing’s solved, nothing’s fixed. We’re a mess.

But it’s perfect all the same.

“Let’s go home,” I say, holding out my hand.

He takes it, and we walk together into the foothills, moonbeams catching his patches of gray, my blonde curls bobbing against his shoulder, mismatched, on our own but not alone anymore, and I know—

If he leaves, he’ll come back.

I’ll go after him. I’ll fight for him.

He’ll fight for me.

Whatever happens, we’ll never be alone again. He belongs to me, and I belong to him. We chose.

Trust.

Hope.

Each other.





EPILOGUE





MARI





I thought the hardest that treehouse living would get was being nine months pregnant, hauling my ass up a rope ladder with Darragh crowding me from behind so I don’t fall. I was wrong.

Staring into the sleeping face of our six-week-old baby girl, daydreaming about first words and first steps, it occurs to me that it can get much, much worse.

“Darragh,” I whisper.

He grunts. “I’m awake.”

I know. He won’t let himself fall asleep up here in bed with us. He waits until Cait and I are both dead to the world, and then he heads down to his bedroll in the shack.

Sleeping with us in the family bed is one of our two perpetual disagreements. The other one is about cell phones. I think that he should carry a charged cell phone at all times. He says the bond is good enough. He can hear what I’m feeling. I say sometimes I want to send him an eggplant emoji or a picture of Cait while he’s out patrolling or hunting, and the bond has limits. He just doesn’t know how to work one, and he’s being stubborn.

“Mari?” he prompts.

Oh. I lost my train of thought. It happens a lot these days. The sleep deprivation is really kicking in.

“What about when Cait starts walking?”

“What about it?” He rolls to his side to face me and props his head in his hand. My belly flips. The abs, the biceps, the hair he’s growing back out since I told him I like it longer. I lick my lips. His chest rumbles. It’s a blatant invitation.