The Tyrant Alpha's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #1)(110)

I’m past ready. My ankles are swollen, my boobs are leaky, and I’m horny and mad at the same time—all the time. I’m not in the mood to suffer fools, and that’s what Killian is if he thinks I’m going to tolerate this repulsive thing in my space for another day.

“What’s wrong with the sofa again?” Killian’s using that “reasonable” tone of voice that I want to smack out of him.

“It stinks.”

“You never had a problem with it before.”

“It didn’t stink before.”

Tye bends over and takes a whiff. He shrugs at Killian like I’m nuts.

“It’s dead cow carcass treated with smashed brains, urine, and chemicals. I’m not nuts.” I hike my chin. My mate moves so the breakfast bar is between us.

“Where am I gonna sit, Una?”

“Sit on this.” I flip him the middle finger. I’ve picked up the habit from the males at the gym. When we were first mated, Killian liked me to hang out with him a lot—and I wanted to be around him all the time, too. I picked up tons of useful, new cuss words, and I was starting to learn how to fight when Killian caught a whiff of me one day, declared me preggo, and forbade me from doing anything more dangerous than weeding.

He’d probably be pissed if he knew the girls and I have dedicated the locked backroom of the old greenhouse to growing mandrake, hemlock, and henbane. The more I learned about Killian’s defensive efforts—the patrols, the contingency plans, the bunker under the commissary—the more I realized the threat from Last Pack and Moon Lake isn’t as far-fetched as I thought. If they are ever dumb enough to come for us, we’ll have more than fangs and claws to greet them.

Banning me from the gym was our first major fight, though. It ended with Killian buying me a Subaru and building me a raised garden in our backyard. I don’t remember exactly how it unfolded. I was shifting to my wolf a lot, and we were not using our words.

On the porch, Tye sighs, sinks to the sofa, and takes out his phone. “We’ve got a reconciliation match in a half hour,” he calls over his shoulder.

Those were my idea. You can’t leave ten males in the proverbial doghouse forever. You need to provide a path back to the pack’s good graces, or they stop bathing, spend too much time as wolves, and terrorize the chickens.

Hence—reconciliation matches. If a wannabe insurgent can beat an A-roster male—or go five rounds without getting knocked out—he can start eating meals in the lodge again.

Fallon was first to come back. It was a good day. I cried, but I waited until I was alone to do it. The pack is always looking at me now, but in a different way than before. I don’t want to call it awe, but it’s close. It’s how you look at a snake handler or a lion tamer, I guess. Like they’re insane, but also kind of magic.

Handling Killian Kelly isn’t magic. It’s all tenacity, an ability to ignore nonsense, and the willingness to tell him no a few times a day for his own good.

It turns out I’m pretty good at all of those things.

“Tye, put the sofa back.” Killian adds a growl to the order. Tye looks up.

“No.” I put my hands on my hips. Tye drops his gaze back to his phone.

“There’s not enough furniture in this camp to make you happy, female.”

“That’s a gross over-exaggeration, and you know it. This is the only thing I want out of the house. The rest I just moved around.”

“I have no idea where my good hand grip is.”

“What’s a hand grip?”

“Exactly!” Killian slaps the counter.

I’m screwing with him. I know what a hand grip strengthener is. It’s in the junk drawer behind him. I put it there after I almost knocked it into the toilet. He had been keeping it on the tank. And he thinks I put things in weird places.

This has gone on long enough. My feet hurt, and Killian does need to be at the gym. This match is important to Garrett and his family. His mother has been torn up since the failed coup. She started dropping by Abertha’s garden to plead his case, and now she comes over to help with my backyard garden every day.

She has a wicked green thumb. She said she never knew it before. She’d always been stuck in the kitchen. I’m not sure what exactly stuck her there, but she’s unstuck herself now.

A lot of females are branching out. Rowan convinced Ivo to teach her how to fight. Old Noreen is learning French cooking from Julia Child videos on the internet. Annie showed her YouTube, and it’s a good thing we all have unlimited data now.

Killian emerges from the kitchen. He knows by my tone that we’re done messing around. He’s wary. His hands are on his hips, too.

I narrow my eyes. “It’s either me or the sofa.”

“I pick you.”

My insides melt. It’s the baby. But also because I know it’s a hundred percent true. Killian is not an easy male to live with, but loving him comes as natural as breathing.

We’re fated mates, but that’s mere biology. It’s not respect. Care. Loyalty.

We have that. And maybe we’ve never said it, but it’s there, growing stronger every day as we navigate this strange connection that both of us now protect with our lives.

I didn’t know what I was doing when I let Abertha sever the bond. It wakes me up in a cold sweat sometimes, the thought of what I almost lost forever.