The Wild Wolf’s Rejected Mate (The Five Packs Book 5)
The Wild Wolf’s Rejected Mate: Chapter 15

I return to the den with water for Annie’s morning tea like I’m heading to my own execution. She was curled like a shrimp and snoring when I left her. I covered her with a quilt. She wouldn’t like her bare ass hanging out even if there was no one to see it.

She was so beautifully bold and demanding in her heat. Would she be like that all the time if she felt safe?

She doesn’t feel safe at Quarry Pack.

She belongs here. I am the male made to protect and care for her.

But I swore I’d take her home. I won’t break that promise.

I won’t.

My heart cracks and my stomach roils as I hike up the switchback trail, balancing a pot of boiling water that I’ve overfilled yet again.

She is likely carrying my pup. Am I really going to let her leave to raise the babe on her own? Who will make sure she has enough sleep? Who will make sure she drinks enough so that her milk comes in? Who will watch over her and tend her if she comes down with the affliction that makes some of the new dams take to their beds?

We’ve welcomed enough females with young babes to know the lost packs have forgotten everything they used to know about caring for new pups. They tell the dams to “sleep when the baby sleeps” as if little ones don’t sleep as randomly as bullfrogs honk in the night—and as if there aren’t perfectly capable packmates living to their left and right who could rock a fussy babe or give them a bottle of expressed milk.

I vividly remember how Lilliwen woke up every time Auggie cried, and the consternation and offense it caused when she sent away the females who came to help. There were many bitter feelings I had to smooth over before we figured out that in Salt Mountain, she was expected to do all the night feedings herself, and if she’d asked for help, it would’ve been considered shirking her duties. As if making sure a baby is fed and a dam recovers from birth isn’t the duty of the whole pack?

I can’t let Annie go back to the pack who let her live in fear. I can’t leave her to fend for herself, caring for our young alone. It’s unconscionable. Unbearable.

But I swore I would.

I can’t do it.

She’ll settle in. In time, all the stolen females do. She’ll be happy. I’ll make her happy.

I’ll learn to live with myself when she looks at me with betrayal in her eyes. And if she cries? Calls me a liar? Hates me?

If I break my word now, then am I as weak as I thought I was all those days I hid in my dam’s nest, too ashamed to face the pack? I’d sworn to my sire that I’d keep her safe when he was gone, and I’d failed.

And I am going to fail again. No matter what I do.

I reach the grassy ledge outside my den and stand there, water cooling in the pot, frozen in place. I can’t take another step. I can’t let the next part happen, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Annie rustles as she moves around inside.

Alphas are supposed to be invincible. They are the strongest in the pack. The wisest. They fix problems and right wrongs and protect the vulnerable, and here I stand, as I’ve always been, the strongest and smartest of my people—and still outmatched and outmaneuvered.

I couldn’t save Nessa’s brother from the hunters or Elis from the consequences of Alroy’s stupidity or my dam from the wasting sickness.

There are no alphas. There is no one strong or wise or brave enough.

There is only me, as flawed as I am.

And another impossible choice.

I can’t hurt her.

And I can’t let her go.

My grip on the pot handle tightens. Water sloshes over the sides. My jaw clenches, my guts knot, and my dry eyes burn.

I can’t do this.

I have to.

“Justus?” Annie appears in the den entrance. She’s wrapped herself in a light pink sheet, and she’s holding a cup. “You brought water.” She smiles, padding toward me on bare feet.

And then she stops. Her smile falls aways.

She blinks in the sunshine, the bleariness of sleep disappearing as she takes in my grim face and desperate hold on the pot. If I had dignity, I’d find a way to smile back. Say good morning. Act like everything is fine.

Her chest falls as she lets out a long, silent breath. She looks me straight in the eye. Her fear and doubt are clear as day.

She’s going to ask me to take her home now.

She takes a step closer to me, and then another, until we’re toe to toe. She gazes up at me, and for a second, all I can see is her beauty—her graceful neck, her delicate pointy chin, her soft, curving lips—and then I notice the expression in her eyes has changed.

It isn’t quite fear. It’s courage. And it’s not doubt, not exactly. It’s caution.

She draws in a deep breath and wraps her hand around mine, tilting the pot to pour water carefully into her cup. She already has a strainer filled with tea in it, the chain hung on the side with a fish hook.

She lets go of my hand and blows the tea water, although it’s hardly steaming now.

“I think I’ll stay here,” she says, her cheeks pinkening, her eyes glued to the hands wrapped around her tin cup. “If it’s all right by you.”

My heart shoots up like a rocket. My wolf howls in triumph so loud the water ripples in the pot I’m still holding.

Annie’s mouth quirks, but she keeps her eyes down and flushes a deeper red, plunging ahead like she’s afraid to hear what I’m going to say back. “I can help with the meals while you attend to your business. And I can do laundry and mending, as well as gardening and canning and beekeeping. But you don’t have hives.” She finally stops and glances up, flustered.

I’m grinning like an idiot. “Will you stay with me, Scout?”

She jerks a bashful nod, but her lips curve higher. “Yes.”

“It’s settled then,” I say as if she hasn’t just given me everything I’ve ever wanted. As if this isn’t the best moment of my entire life.

I water the cedar with the cool tea water and set the pot on my reading stool. Annie turns to watch the sun finish rising over Salt Mountain. I join her, and we stand side by side in silence.

It rained during the night, but now the sun is the warm yellow of a baby chick, fuzzy as the morning mist burns off. The sky overhead is a bracing blue.

It’s going to be a beautiful day.

I take Annie on my morning rounds, careful to keep my pace leisurely. She’s walking a little slower than usual. I can’t think about the reason why, or I’ll get hard, and the knowing looks are bad enough without me adding any fuel to the fire.

My feet are so light, I’m surprised I’m not floating, but I’m scowling and snarling like I’ve just come back from one of my stalking trips to Quarry Pack. Good-natured joking is tradition after a mating, but the smirks immediately soured Annie’s scent, so I’m having to warn our bigger idiots off left and right before they can open their mouths.

I’m mostly successful. I’m not sure whether Rodric can’t hear or see my posturing—or whether he doesn’t care—but when we pass the bonfire, he bellows, “Why is your pretty mate up and out of the den so early, Alpha? Speed isn’t a virtue in everything, pup. Sometimes you’ve got to take your time.”

Thankfully, Nessa has the grace to intervene and calls us over to join her at the breakfast table. Annie winces when she sits on the hard bench, and I make a note to send Griff for a pillow before lunch.

Efa is excited as always to see her favorite female. The pup has decided to be on her best behavior this morning. She sits primly next to Annie and makes a game of offering Annie every other bite from her biscuit. Annie thanks her for each piece, rubs her stomach and exclaims, “Yum. Thank you. So delicious.” For some reason, Efa finds this to be the best entertainment ever.

When Efa runs out of her own biscuit, she steals mine by ordering, “Look away, Affa.”

She’s such a confident little thief that she doesn’t even wait for me to turn my head before she nabs the biscuit from my plate.

After breakfast, Annie and I continue on our rounds. We accept the elders’ congratulations, Annie smiling prettily as the females make the effort to stand and embrace her. The females are more ribald in their comments, and I don’t dare growl at them, and they wouldn’t mind me if I did. When we leave them, Annie is flushed bright red.

I chase a few squealing, giddy pups up the sycamore as we pass, and then we swing by a secluded bend in the stream for a quick dip. Annie makes me turn my back when she slips under the water, and I don’t even sneak a peek. She has me leashed. I would follow her to the ends of the earth.

As the hours pass, she becomes more talkative, and I am more and more enraptured. After lunch, when she asks to go back to the wildflower field to pick some lavender, I’m happy to go.

The afternoon is as beautiful as the morning. The air is fresh, the wind carrying an earthy note from last night’s rain. Annie picks flowers, and I pretend to do the same, but really, I watch her and wonder at my luck.

“This is purple. Is this lavender?” I hold up a bluebell. I know damn well it isn’t. I just want to see her hide the smile that says foolish male.

“Lavender is light green this time of year. It doesn’t bloom until June or July.”

“What are you going to do with it now then?”

“Make a sachet. The scent mostly comes from the oils in its leaves.”

“Make a sachet for who?”

I wade through the tall grass to stand close to her and inhale her sweet rainy scent.

“For the den,” she says, glancing bashfully up at me from under her thick brown lashes. She’s wearing my old sweater and another pair of my drawstring pants. Her pulse flutters at the base of her throat. She’s excited, too.

Maybe we should cut this trip short and head back to the den.

Or take a detour into the woods.

She probably wouldn’t do that, but I think she’d agree to return to camp. I draw in another deep breath. Her arousal teases my nose.

My wolf snarls.

Annie startles.

It takes my brain three seconds too long to catch up.

Underlying the rain and slick, there is another scent. Earthy, yes, but not the right earth. It doesn’t belong. I’ve smelled it before. A long time ago.

I sniff deeper with my shifted snout. It’s not mud. It’s muck. Like from the bottom of a lake. And every second, the stench is getting stronger.

Lakes don’t move.

I grab Annie’s arm, spin her toward camp, and bark through my wolf’s descended fangs, “Run. Raise the alarm. Intruders. Go to Khalil. Go!”

She’s frozen in place, staring over my shoulder, her eyes growing larger and larger.

I spin.

At least two dozen wolves, caked in muck from head to tail with moss and leaves stuck to their matted fur, stalk out of the tree line, no more than three or four yards away.

“Run!” I roar at Annie as I shift.

The steadily blowing wind eases for a moment, and their scent smacks me in my face. Quarry Pack. And Salt Mountain. They circled our camp to approach from the east, staying upwind.

I crouch, readying myself to spring and buy Annie time.

The wolves stop at the far side of the field, a huge, golden-eyed male in the lead. Killian Kelly. He’s come for my mate. He can’t have her.

My wolf bares his fangs.

And then his balls shrivel in their sack.

Annie runs past us, toward the Quarry Pack alpha. The breath is torn from my lungs.

“No, Killian,” she shouts as she runs, waving her hands, the rancid scent of her fear trailing behind her like a train.

My wolf bolts after her.

“He’s my mate!” she yells at her alpha. “He’s my mate!”

Killian’s wolf doesn’t understand her. She’s running to him, and he smells fear. He does what I would do.

He tears toward me through the wildflowers. My wolf, no coward, rushes him. They crash mid-air, a collision of hard muscle and bone, and fall to earth, grappling and snarling in a frenzy of fangs and claws.

Killian’s claw slashes through my flank, slicing through the scar left by the feral that killed my sire, as I sink my fangs into his haunch, ripping through muddy fur and flesh.

We plow through the field, tearing chunks from each other, rolling and fighting for dominance, but neither of us can hold position. He’s bigger, but not stronger. I’m quicker, but nothing slows him down.

The broken stalks drip with blood, and the other wolves hang back, watching, while my wolf sinks his teeth into Killian’s shoulder, and his wolf shakes himself free. His wolf slams into my flank. Mine twists onto his back, dragging his claws along Killian’s wolf’s underbelly as his momentum carries him past.

The world around us fades, and the daylight dims, the other wolves’ howls muting as if lost in a thick fog. Time slows. There is nothing but this alpha and me, nothing but the taste of copper in my mouth and the cast iron certainty that even if I’m skinned to the bone and gutted, I will win this fight.

I can’t lose.

Annie is mine.

As the minutes pass, and even the muted howling fades, it becomes clear—my wolf can’t lose, but he can’t win, either.

And neither can Killian’s.

My wolf clamps his jaws around a foreleg. Killian’s wolf sinks his fangs into mine. In perfect synchronization, we shift to human form. Killian throws a punch at the side of my head. I duck and kick out at the leg I had in my mouth a split second ago.

We trade blows, landing some, blocking others, discovering each other’s weaknesses and exploiting them, recovering and compensating, faltering and rebounding in turn. We flash between forms, throwing punches while we snap our fangs, leaping with four legs to bowl each other over with our full human bulk.

Killian’s talent and experience can’t overcome my intuition. My instinct can’t prevail over his skill.

We will kill each other in this field, watering the wildflowers with our blood, before either of us wins. Or concedes.

Killian slams his fist into my side at the same instant I drive an uppercut into his chin. And then, in the distance, screams cut through the red mist in my mind.

Females. Pups.

Killian and I both whirl to face the direction of the screams, our ears lengthening. They’re coming from camp.

Annie is gone, but so are a dozen of the mud-matted wolves. The ones who smell like Salt Mountain.

Killian and I leap and land on four legs, and we race toward the sound of screams.