The Tyrant Alpha's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #1)(97)

But she wasn’t.

Haisley, Rowan, a whole bunch of other females are willing to do whatever with a high-ranking male. I don’t disallow it. It’s better that the females choose. Better than how it used to be when males took.

Una chose. I hadn’t claimed her. I have no right to feel this way. I don’t change what I believe day-to-day to justify whatever I want to do in the moment. That was my father’s way.

If I was okay with females spreading their legs last week, I can’t have a problem with it today. That’s logic.

I don’t actually believe a word of it.

“There’s no rule that females have to save themselves for their mates,” I say out loud, test if it has the ring of truth. “This isn’t the old world.”

Darragh grunts. It’s an acknowledgement of fact, but not an endorsement of the idea.

“Males mount whoever’s willing before they mate.” That’s a fact.

“Some keep going afterwards,” Darragh points out. He speaks the truth.

I’ve had plenty of opportunities to get my dick wet over the years. I always told myself I didn’t because it’d mess with rank in the pack. The natural order of things. And that’s true, as far as it goes. But I also didn’t want anyone who wasn’t mine.

I was waiting. And I knew I’d wait forever, and some nights were long, and I’d wonder why I was making such a big deal out of something every animal does when the mood strikes him. But I never changed my mind.

I never wanted anyone until Una Hayes, and it came on so gradually. She slipped into my hands, and I am so very painfully aware that she can slip right out again. Maybe she already has.

I’m an idiot, but I feel what I feel.

Why couldn’t she have waited?

I sigh. “I want to kill someone, and I don’t ever want to know who he is.”

“Did she want it?” Darragh asks carefully.

“Yeah. That’s what she says. She says it’s not my business.”

“You’re her mate.”

“I am.” Everything about her is my business.

“Heard you rejected her in front of the whole pack. Had Tye throw her out back by the trash.”

My chest aches. None of this has been auspicious. None of it has been right.

“Yeah. I made a mistake.”

“And now you’re losing your shit because—I don’t mean to presume, but—she, uh, has seen a little bit of the world?”

I don’t think I’d put it that way, but I grunt. I don’t want to be talking about this, but at least with Darragh, he’ll take it to the grave.

“Alpha, I don’t know another way to put this, so I’m just gonna say it—she’s, what, twenty-eight years old?”

“Twenty-seven.”

I wait for his point.

He coughs. “Twenty-seven,” he says again. “In the old world, she’d be a couple years away from being a grandma.”

“This isn’t the old world.”

“No. It’s not. It’s your pack.” He pauses a second and then he plunges ahead. “I don’t know. I don’t keep up with the comings and goings so much down here. You keep the lone females in the lodge basement for the males’ entertainment like your father did?”

“Fuck you.” My fists ball, fur sprouting up my spine. Those are wrongs I have long put to rights, and everyone knows not to speak of it.

“Why change things?” he pushes.

“You have to ask?”

“It’s a—what do you call it—like Socrates did? To get at the truth. Just answer the question.”

“You’re fuckin’ Socrates?”

“Not lately. We’re on a pause.” He smirks again. Asshole. “Just answer the question—why did you change the way things were done in this pack?”

“It was wrong.”

“Why?”

“She wasn’t safe.” And then the memory sails into clear view like a galleon, canvas billowing, churned up whole from the black storm of the past. The memory that had been there all along, waiting, biding its time.

In the bed at the crone’s cottage. Bundles of lavender and Queen’s Anne Lace hanging from the wooden rafters to dry. Una huddles into my side. The moon shines through the thick glass pane. My mother is asleep in a rocking chair, head tilted at an awkward angle, snoring.

My body is raw, my muscles torn and weak. All I have the strength to do is lay on my back and stroke Una’s soft shoulder with my fingertips. She shakes with fever. She’s swaddled in blood-soaked bandages. I’m feeble, painfully aware that in this state, I can’t protect her or myself. My brain is churning. I need a human gun.

I killed the male who attacked her, but there are others, always waiting in the wings for an opening, and I’m paralyzed. Thomas Fane has friends, males who covet my father’s rank, and who won’t hesitate to take out his son to deal him a blow. I don’t trust rat-faced Eamon Byrne. Who will protect Una if I’m gone?

Panic gives me energy, but not the strength to move my shredded limbs. I try anyway, but I jostle Una, and she whimpers in pain, so I stop.

My brave mate. She’s so small. And fierce. Perfect.

The crone rises from her stool by the fire. She quietly shuffles over, a chipped china teacup in her weathered hand. She sits on the edge of the bed and smooths my hair from my forehead. I jerk my head away. I’m not a pup. Not anymore.