The Wild Wolf’s Rejected Mate (The Five Packs Book 5)
The Wild Wolf’s Rejected Mate: Chapter 3

As soon as our mate is far enough away that my wolf feels that she has a good head start to escape him if he changes his mind, she tears off in the opposite direction. She runs as far and as fast as she can, racing along the river until she can’t stand the exposure anymore, and then she crosses into the woods, barreling through the undergrowth.

When her thin legs give out, she hides. Somehow, she finds her way to the blackberry bramble where we used to hide. She wriggles through the stickers, eyes squeezed shut, oblivious to the thorns scraping through her fur.

She knows he didn’t follow us, but it doesn’t matter. His words hurt, sharp as knives, and she might not quite understand them, but she knows she’s been attacked, so she reacts accordingly.

When she’s as deep in the thicket as she can get, she twists until she’s facing the trail we blazed and primes herself to fight.

If he comes back, you won’t have a chance against him.

The voice and I are stuck inside my wolf together now in this strange nowhere place. The thicket is close and dark and barbed, sticky with the sweetness of overripe berries rotting in the black soil. Its words ricochet, amplified, booming like proclamations.

But he doesn’t want you. He hates you. Did you see his face? You disgust him.

I saw his face—it’s burned into my mind—and I can also feel his disgust, flowing through the bond. Horror. Loathing. Revulsion.

I can’t breathe. My wolf is gasping, but there’s no air in here.

He probably wants you dead. He’s coming back to kill you. You need to run.

He’s not coming back. I can feel him getting farther and farther away, and it’s a relief—it is—or it would be, if I could breathe, but I can’t.

Can you suffocate inside your wolf? What happens then? Does your wolf run around with the spirit of your decomposing body inside them? Would that smell better or worse than my constant, unrelenting stench of fear?

My wolf bares her teeth, raising up on her haunches so that she can better launch herself against whatever’s threatening us, but like always, it’s me, my thoughts, my utter inability to defend myself.

I let him touch me. I told him to do it.

I can’t think about it. It didn’t happen. It will be another bad dream.

I can breathe. I am breathing, even if it doesn’t feel like it. I’m inflating my lungs, and if I’m really not, if I’m dying, then what will it matter if I’m lying to myself once I’m dead?

“You’re not dying,” a familiar, raspy voice calls into the bramble.

My wolf scuttles backward, snagging herself on a tangle of prickers. She whines.

“I mean, we’re all dying, in a sense, but you’re not dying right now. Probably. The odds are against it.” Abertha clears her throat. “Well, it would be really ironic if you were dying.” She’s quiet for a moment. “Or would that be a coincidence? I can never remember the difference.”

My wolf plasters herself to the ground, trembling. For once, the voice in my head has nothing to say. She recognizes the witch as a greater power.

“Is this going to be a long one?” Abertha waits for a response, but my throat is swollen shut, and so is my wolf’s. “Okay, I’ll assume that’s a ‘yes.’ I’m just going to have a seat on this handy fold-em-up stool then.” There’s a scuffling sound and a long sigh. “Take your time, Annie-girl,” she says and then mutters, “Goodness gracious, my dogs were barking.”

The first jab of shame pierces my panic. What a sad female you are. I don’t want such a pathetic coward for a mate.

I don’t want to be cringing in a bramble yet again with no choice but to wait it out and feel lower than dirt afterward. I don’t want to have to scrub one more humiliation out of my brain.

I am so tired of being sad and broken. I can’t take myself another second.

Fueled by nothing but self-disgust, I force my wolf to crawl forward, inch by inch back out the tunnel she made on her way in, and she doesn’t want to leave, but my will is stronger than hers. I drive her out of the dark thicket into the glaring late afternoon sun.

Abertha is perched on a plastic, three-legged stool, legs crossed, packing a pipe. She blinks, surprised, and smiles, flashing the gold tooth in the back of her mouth. “Atta girl, Annie. I thought we’d be here at least ’til dusk,” she says and slaps her thighs. “Let’s go put the tea on.”

She takes a second to tap the tobacco back into an old mint tin and return her pipe to its pouch, slipping it into a crossbody bag I made her. I embroidered her cat Apollonia on it wearing a snorkel since she likes to hang out in the bathtub. She’s very strange for a feline—she likes wolves and water, and I swear, one time I saw her stick her paw out to prevent Mari from knocking a cup off the table by accident.

Once Abertha’s got her bag adjusted, she tucks her stool under her arm and leads the way toward her cottage. My wolf trots at her side.

Occasionally, Abertha’s long skirt brushes my wolf’s flank, sending her skittering away a few steps, but then she comes back and keeps close. Abertha is safe, and she is fearsome.

She doesn’t look it. She’s older, her hair is silver-gray, but she doesn’t have the brittle thinness that the eldest shifters get, like their bones have worn to pumice stone. She has her share of laugh lines and frown lines and red roses under her high cheekbones from decades of exposure to the sun. Sometimes, she looks fifty, and sometimes she looks seventy, and I’m never sure whether it’s because of the light or her expression or how she’s holding herself.

Unmated females, especially elders, are low rank as a rule, but I’ve seen males in their prime go out of their way to give her a wide berth. There’s just something uncanny about her. She moves like a much younger shifter. She walks with a purpose. Like Kennedy.

And she’s always coming and going, disappearing for days or weeks at a time. We don’t stick our nose in her business, and besides taking a cut of our profits, she leaves us to our own devices with our farmers’ market business.

Despite the mysteriousness, she’s the only person that my wolf and I trust implicitly. She’s the one who rescued us, after all.

When we get to her cozy thatch-roofed cottage, she holds the door open for my wolf. “After you,” she says.

My wolf trots inside, instantly enraptured by the kaleidoscope of scents. It’s like everything good about the outside has been brought into the safety of four thick walls—oils and herbs and spices and extracts and essences. Lemon, sandalwood, sage, calendula, fennel, bergamot, tea tree, and lavender. The scents all blend with years of woodsmoke, baking bread, and the oak from the exposed beams overhead and polished planks underfoot.

My wolf drags it into her lungs, and some of the oxygen finally reaches me, too. We both love it here.

“Let me see what I’ve got for you to wear,” Abertha mumbles, throwing open the trunk at the foot of her narrow cot. She rummages until she finds a worn blue flannel and a denim skirt. The skirt is knee length and fringed at the hem, but beggars can’t be choosers. I’m grateful for it.

She lays the clothes on her bed and says, “No rush. You stay in your fur as long as you need. I’ll be over here, putting the kettle on.”

For a second, my wolf considers the clothes. She’s been through the wringer, and now that we’re inside behind a barred door, she’s more than ready to hand our body back. Her limbs are wobbly from running so far and so fast the very first time she’s taken our skin. She braces her shaking legs, though. She’s not going to abandon me if we’re not safe.

I reassure her that we’re okay now.

She’s not convinced. I have claws, she points out, not in a cocky way. Like she’s stating facts. She is better equipped to fight than I am, and even though she’s bone weary, survival always comes first.

We’re fine. You can rest. I draw her attention to the bar across the solid wood door and the rusty sword propped against Abertha’s bedside table for some reason.

I have sharp teeth, my wolf adds.

Not sharp enough, the voice in my head chimes in. You’re no match for your mate. You’re lucky that he left. If he’d wanted to hurt you, you’d be torn to pieces. You’d be— The voice summons up the old memory and shoves it to the forefront of my brain.

Sightless eyes, staring at nothing. A twisted mouth frozen in a soundless scream.

With all the strength of mind I have left, I force the memory back, and breathing through the panic rising in my chest, I close my eyes.

Come on, wolf. Hand our body over.

She doesn’t give in. She gives up, collapsing to the floor, and again, my bones crack and muscles tear. The pain is blinding, the reconstruction as violent as the demolition. I curl into a ball. Life has always been this way. It’s never once been easy.

My mate went from wolf to a man in an instant. He flip-shifted, like Killian. No one else in the civilized packs can flip-shift, except Alban Hughes from Moon Lake, and he can only do it once or twice, like a party trick, not whenever he wants like Killian. Rumor has it that Alban Hughes was raised in the Last Pack, and they can all flip-shift there.

Is that where my mate is from? What’s his name?

If he’s gone forever, I’ll never know.

Good, the voice says. You’re safe.

Her reassurance doesn’t let me relax like it usually does. My muscles are still frozen in knots as I drag on the shirt and skirt. My biceps ache. My thighs burn. Every part of me hurts, especially between my legs where I feel tender and torn.

My face burns, and I button the flannel all the way up to the neck. I’m not going to think about it.

I cross the room to Abertha’s table, and when I sit, I don’t let the pain show. I keep my back straight and my head up.

That hour by the river didn’t happen. I wasn’t there. It isn’t real unless I want it to be, and I don’t. I know how to make it so that ugly things didn’t really happen. I know how to live around them.

Abertha plonks the teapot down on a trivet and returns to her kitchenette, coming back a minute later with a tray crowded with mismatched cups, saucers, a sugar bowl, a cream pitcher and a package of cookies from the store in Chapel Bell still in the wrapper.

I keep my hands on my lap. They’re shaking like crazy.

After giving me a once-over, Abertha pours. She dumps a huge spoonful of sugar and a big splash of cream in both of our cups, gives me another look, takes a flask from her pocket, fills our cups to the brim with its contents, and then carefully pushes my saucer across the table.

I wrap both hands around the warm china, holding it close to my face so the steam bathes my cheeks and nose. I inhale. Valerian root and whiskey. Everything feels a tiny bit less dire. That’s the power of tea.

For a few, long minutes, Abertha levels me with her cool gray gaze. Is she not sure what to say? That would be a first. She doesn’t always make sense, but she’s never shy about speaking her mind.

Finally, she blows across her cup and says, “So, I suppose the most urgent issue before us is—do you want a pup or not?”

My jaw drops. My stomach follows. “Pup?”

My hands fly up to cover my mouth. Quicker than should be possible, Abertha lunges for a mop bucket and swings it onto the table beside my teacup. The pail hits the oak with a solid thunk, startling me enough that the urge to heave disappears. My wolf yelps and hides her head under her paws.

I lower my hands back to my lap and straighten my shoulders.

“We good?” Abertha arches a thin, gray eyebrow.

I nod.

“All right. So, circling back to the subject—pups?”

Dear Fate. Pups? I can’t think about pups. I can’t fathom pups. I can’t wrap my brain around this moment, right here, right now. I’m not even wearing underwear.

What if I’m leaking? It feels like I’m leaking. The denim of the skirt should be thick enough to absorb it, but I’m not sure. At least the chair is wood. It’ll wipe clean. I don’t want to leak on Abertha’s furniture. I want to go home.

I’m filled with a male’s seed, and he’s my mate, and I don’t know his name, and he hates me, and I don’t want a mate from a pack that lives like animals, but every angry word he said also sticks in my chest like a dozen knitting needles.

Sad female.

Coward.

Stink like prey.

A female like you would make weak, spindly young.

I can’t think about it. It didn’t happen.

Are Una and the others worried about me? How long have I been gone? I have no idea. In order to figure it out, I’d have to flip back in time, and I won’t. I’m erasing it.

I’ve known for a long time how to make things go away. It’s simple. Every time your mind tries to go to the past, you yank it away and give it something else to think about. Anything else, but worries work really well.

If you do yank every single time, eventually, your mind doesn’t go there anymore, and if it does, you quickly give it something else to worry about that could happen. You tell yourself that if you don’t worry hard enough, it will happen. And that’s how you deal with the past. It’s simple.

Not easy.

But simple.

It’s warm in the cottage, but I’m shaking like a leaf. Am I getting sick?

I lost my shoes back by the river. How am I going to walk home? What if I come across a rabid natural wolf? Or a feral? How will I run?

“Can I borrow a pair of boots?” I ask Abertha.

The corners of her eyes crease, the steely gray gentling, but her jaw sets. “Not yet, Annie-girl. No shoving this into a deep, deep worry hole quite yet. You’ve got to deal with the issue at hand.”

“I don’t want to,” I say softly.

She exhales. “I know.”

She is quiet for a time, sipping her tea, dangling the fingers of her left hand to lure Appollonia over from her basket by the fire to be petted.

Abertha does know. She was there that night, not in the middle of it, but when it was too late. When it was deathly quiet.

Aunt Nola forgot her bag.

I was eight. We’d just finished a full-moon feast, and Declan Kelly had ordered the unmated females down to the lodge’s basement. Aunt Nola left the bag I’d made her on the table. I’d made it from an old denim shirt and cross-stitched it with the treasures she always brought me back from her rambles—walnuts, blackberries, nettles, pretty stones.

She loved her bag—it was her favorite thing—so I decided to take it to her. To make her feel better.

When Declan bellowed for the lone females, her face went ghost white, and Ma smothered a cry with her fist in her mouth. Half of the great room went silent. The other half—the males—stomped their boots and howled.

While Ma was whisper-hissing with the other dams, I slipped away, down the stairs. I’d been in the basement many times before to help Aunt Nola clean. There were no windows, only fluorescent lights with the shadows of dead flies smudged against the plastic.

I tripped into the room. The lone females were clustered together, their fear blossoming in the air like skunk spray.

They saw me skid across the linoleum.

Heavy footsteps sounded at the top of the stairs.

They surged toward me as one, reaching for me with octopus arms, clutching me close and bearing me away. A palm mashed my lips into my teeth. Steel fingers curled around my wrist.

They lifted me, rushed me over to an old leather sofa against the wall, shoved me underneath, and kicked Aunt Nola’s bag in after. The sofa was saggy, the cushions drooping over the warped wooden slats. I couldn’t turn my head. There wasn’t enough room. I had to stare out into the room, and all I could see were tiles, skirt hems, and dirty, scuffed boots.

Males laughed and shouted and brayed, their voices echoing off the low ceiling. The scent of liquor, sweat, aggression, and fear seeped under the edge of the sofa, burning my eyes.

The females’ small feet were frozen in place while the males’ boots stomped and dashed and rocked back on their heels.

Wedged so tightly between the underside of the sofa and the cold floor, I couldn’t hear the males’ words, but I understood them all the same. They were taunting the females. Lunging at them to make them shriek. As the fear stench grew thicker and thicker, their laughs boomed louder.

And then something changed. A female screamed in earnest. Then another. Feet dashed. Shouts rose, followed by guttural snarls. A rubber sole squeaked on the tile. The swampy air thickened with copper and salt and terror and pain and rage.

I didn’t dare close my eyes.

A yard away, Iona Ryan fell to the floor by the leg of the pool table, cradling her left arm. It was hanging from the socket wrong. A male approached her, looming, squatting—

Aunt Nola crashed to her knees, right next to my head, holding her dress to her chest. It had been rent, collar to hem. She hovered there, bent over, shoulders hunched, her side pressed against the sofa, blocking me, shielding me while she shook, head tucked to her chin, arms tight to her ribs, protecting her organs.

The weeping and screaming and laughter whipped toward some kind of crescendo, and something inside me screamed run, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t protect my soft parts; I couldn’t even turn my head.

And then a distant door slammed into a wall as it was flung open. New shouts filled the air.

“Fire!”

“The commissary is on fire!”

Declan Kelly and his favored males rumbled in disbelief.

“It’s burning down!”

They ran, stomping up the stairs, their frenzy put on hold like it was nothing at all.

The silence that they left in the basement resonated like an aftershock. It singed like ozone.

The males’ heavy footsteps trekked across the ceiling, tracking away toward the front of the lodge. Aunt Nola rose to her knees, and I could see the others’ bare feet as they picked through the clothes and shoes strewn about like they’d been caught in a tornado.

They moved slowly, silently, like haunts. Aunt Nola staggered to her feet and wandered a few steps away, so I could see.

A female on her back in the middle of the room, staring at me. Her eyes were dark and wide. They didn’t blink.

It was Orla Sullivan.

I’d never really spoken to her. She was grown. I was only eight.

She was old enough to be mated, but she wasn’t, and now she never would be.

I’d never spoken to her, but I’d heard her scream.

She rested in a pool of blood, her sightless blue eyes staring at me, her mouth twisted in a frozen scream. Red marks blossomed on her skin like roses.

We looked at each other, but she wasn’t there, and neither was I. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

Iona Ryan used her good hand to cover Orla’s body with someone’s torn dress. Blood soaked through the homespun linen. More roses.

“They didn’t get her,” the females whispered to each other as they circled Orla Sullivan’s body, drifting into each other’s arms, holding each other up.

“Where is she?”

“Under the couch.”

“She alive?”

“Yes. She’s safe. She’s fine.”

“Did she see?”

“No, no, Nola blocked her view.”

“She’s not hurt?”

“She’s fine. They didn’t see her.”

The females murmured and wept—softly into their hands or with their faces pressed into each other’s bare shoulders—until a sharp step sounded on the stair. They tensed and then exhaled as one when Old Noreen’s raspy voice called down, “It’s clear. I have the crone.”

I couldn’t see what happened then. Nola and a few others moved and blocked my view, but I heard Abertha’s quiet orders, and I smelled the smoke that clung to her skirts.

“You, get her shoulders. You two, get her sides. You and you, get her knees. Wait. Hold a second. Let me cover her back up. Take her out through the kitchens. There’s a wheelbarrow by the woodbin. Take her to my cottage. We’ll clean her up there. Don’t let her mother see. Keep your ears open and your eyes peeled. Go quickly.”

There were murmurs and grunts and a thump, and then Aunt Nola and the others drifted apart, and Orla was gone. The green and white checkered vinyl tile where she had been lying was empty, except for the blood. The white tiles were smeared with bright red. The blood was so dark against the green that it looked black.

Aunt Nola bent over and offered me a trembling hand. “It’s safe now, Annie. You can come out.”

No, it’s not, a strange, new, blade-sharp voice had said in my head. It’s a lie. She knows she’s lying. Look at her shake. It’s a trap.

I tried to scrunch myself farther back, but I was lodged in tight, my cheek pressed to the slat holding up the sagging leather cushions.

“Come on, Annie,” Aunt Nola begged. “We’ve got to get out of here.” She darted a glance over her shoulder.

They’re out there, the voice said. She knows they’re out there, and she’s afraid.

Aunt Nola knelt and reached for me. Somehow, I curled my fingers around a slat, puffing my body so she couldn’t budge me.

“Annie, you’ve got to come now. What if they come back?”

See, she lied. It isn’t safe. Don’t let her take you.

Tears rolled down Aunt Nola’s cheek. “Please, Annie. Please.”

I couldn’t tell her to leave me. I couldn’t make a noise.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” The crone’s boots appeared next to Aunt Nola. The hem of her flowy skirt was stained with brown blood, already drying.

Abertha lowered herself into a squat and peered under the sofa. Her face was gaunt and grim, but her gray eyes flashed like steel.

“Why is she down here?” Abertha asked.

“I left my bag on the table when they called me. She thought to bring it to me.”

Abertha hissed softly through her teeth. “You were quiet as a mouse, weren’t you?”

I was.

“Good girl. You did right. But you’ve got to come out now.”

I couldn’t.

“It’s not safe here,” Abertha said. “The males are still blood mad. They’ve left for now to deal with the fire, but they’ll be back. It’s not time for quiet mouths anymore. It’s time for quick feet.” She snapped her fingers, and her bangles jingled.

The voice in my head had nothing to say. Abertha was right, but I still couldn’t move. Nothing worked, not my legs, not my arms. Even my fingers were frozen, curled around the wooden slat.

“Oh, hell,” Abertha sighed. “Can you lift the couch, Nola? Maybe I can grab her…”

Foot falls sounded on the ceiling above us. Aunt Nola moaned in fear.

“Shit. Get out of here, Nola. Now. I’ve got the pup.”

Aunt Nola swayed. The scent of her fresh terror lashed my face.

Abertha pushed her. “Go now. I can’t see to both you and the pup. Go! I’ve got her.” Her voice was as hard as stone.

Aunt Nola stumbled in the direction of the stairs, and then she ran. Her bare feet left trails in Orla’s blood.

For a moment, the crone just stared at the couch, as if she was gauging its weight, but then she sighed and said, “I’ve got an idea.”

She reached under her skirt and took a knife from her leather ankle holster.

She held it so I could see, and then she placed it solemnly on the tile in front of her, hilt toward me. “The tip is poisoned. You don’t even have to stab someone. Just nick his skin, and he’ll die in agony.”

My gaze homed in on the blade. I wanted it so badly. It was so close. So sharp.

The crone nudged it forward. “You know who gave that to me? Darragh Ryan. The Mercenary. The Haunt of the Hills.”

I’d heard of him—everyone had—even though he’d left the pack before I was born. The males got shifty when his name came up, but their dismissive laughs always rang false, like they were whistling past a graveyard.

“Go on, Annie-girl. Take it. We have to get out of here before they come back even angrier.”

The voice inside me had nothing to say. Abertha was telling the truth.

All I had to do was reach out and take it. Let go of the slat and grab. It was so close.

I willed my fingers to let go of the slat. To reach and wrap around the knife’s handle.

I sucked in my belly and scooted out from under the sofa.

Abertha held out her hand, her eyes pleading. “Good girl. Come on now.”

Boots pounded down the steps, so quick, too quick for me to do anything but look at a huge male skid to a halt at the bottom of the stairs, his mouth curling into a sneer.

The knife slipped from my fingers, clattering to the floor.

“Shit,” Abertha muttered under her breath.

“What have we here?” the male said. He bared his teeth and licked a canine. It wasn’t human. It was wolf.

Run, my wolf urged me with all her might. Run, run, run.

“I can’t,” I whispered back. “My legs don’t work.”

Abertha moved to block me. The male laughed. “I have enough for you, too, witch,” he said as his hand went to his belt buckle.

“Now or never, Annie-girl,” Abertha hissed.

I looked down at the knife. So did the male.

Run, my wolf begged.

I bent. Curled my little fingers around the knife’s hilt. The male came for me.

Abertha shielded my body with hers, covering every part of me except for my arm. That, she tugged forward, covering my small hand with hers, squeezing it like a vise, and with an impossible strength, she lunged and stabbed the male with the knife in my hand, tearing my shoulder from its socket as she plunged the blade into his stomach. Hot blood spurted over our hands.

The male blinked down at the red stain blossoming on his shirt.

Abertha bolted for the stairs, towing me by my blood-soaked hand, dragging my entire body when my legs buckled, faster than I’d ever have imagined she could.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the male. He was still standing. He glanced up from the knife, his gaze narrowing on us, his gray face twisting into a howling maw, his fangs descending.

“Abertha, he’s not dying in agony.”

He was wrapping his clawed hands around the hilt.

“Life lesson—magic doesn’t always work, but your feet do,” Abertha huffed. “Run, Annie-girl. Run!”

We scrambled up the last few stairs, tearing through the lodge and out through the kitchens, fleeing into the dark woods away from the eerie, red sky over the burning commissary.

I take a long sip of my cooling tea, bringing myself back to the present.

Until today, I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast and far as I did when I escaped that basement. After that night, I became some kind of burrowing animal, living life hiding in plain sight with my eyes screwed shut. But I can’t hide from this.

I mated a wolf from Last Pack. His seed is inside me right now. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. Not yet.

“I can’t have a pup,” I say. A babe would be vulnerable. It would need me. I can hardly take care of myself, and I’m definitely not strong enough to protect it from this world.

Abertha doesn’t even blink. “Are you sure?”

Am I sure? What choice do I have? You mate, and then, unless you get really, really lucky, you have a pup. And I’m not lucky.

I have heard whispers, though. Some females don’t keep their babes. I don’t even know where I heard that, or how I know, but I picked it up somewhere, the same way I learned how to pitch my voice when a male is angry and that when a male tells you to smile, that’s a threat and he’s dangerous.

There are ways.

The crone would know them.

“I can’t—” The words stick in my throat. I can’t be a mother. But I can’t make the choice not to be, either. I don’t have that power. I don’t want it. I’m scared, too scared for any of it.

I want my mother. I want her back.

“Can’t what?” Abertha asks, so very gently.

“I can’t have a pup.” And I can’t make the decision not to. “But I—” I can’t say it. Fate will surely strike me down if I do. What’s done cannot be undone.

“There are ways,” she says, pushing up from the table and padding to the kitchen. She takes a mason jar from an overhead cabinet and spoons loose leaves into a metal ball strainer. My nose twitches. The blend smells medicinal.

I watch her like a mouse watches an eagle. She shuffles back to the table, downs the dregs of her tea, and then drops the strainer in and pours a fresh cup of hot water.

Is that poison?

“I can’t…can’t do that to a pup.”

Abertha’s face hardens. She holds the strainer by its thin chain and dips it into the water. “We’re not talking about a pup.”

“We aren’t?”

“Not at this point.” She lets out a long, tired breath. “What do they even teach you at that academy?”

I shrug. “Literature. Geology. Calculus.”

“What is that?”

“I don’t know. It’s math about figuring change. Continuous change.”

“At least that sounds useful. Change is continuous.” She gives her head a shake and returns to the subject. “You’ve learned no basic anatomy and biology, though, I’m guessing. How do I put this…we’re not talking about a pup because there is no pup. No bun in the oven yet. Just ingredients. Or possible ingredients.”

“What’s a possible ingredient?”

“Well, to be specific, the egg. The egg is still in the fridge. It’s not even in the mixing bowl yet. And an egg in the carton isn’t an ingredient, right? Who knows what you’re going to do with that egg. You might throw it at someone’s truck. You might drop it.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. I think the bowl is my vagina, but the rest—I’m lost. I did take biology and anatomy, but it was mostly about the mechanics of shifting and how we’re different from humans, so we need to be careful not to hurt them by accident.

Abertha sighs again. “Okay, let me put it this way. Is an egg in the fridge a cake?”

“No.”

“If you mix egg and flour and leave it on the counter, is it a cake?”

“No.”

“To make a cake, you’ve got to mix the egg and flour and put it in the oven, and if you don’t take the egg out of the fridge, or if you don’t put the batter in the oven, all you’ve got are ingredients. No cake.”

“Okay.”

“The cake is a pup.” Abertha is looking at me like I’m slow as molasses.

“I get that.”

“The oven is your uterus. Not your vagina. And there’s a difference.”

My face heats. I didn’t say that out loud. She can’t know I was thinking it.

“We can shut the refrigerator door so no egg gets out. Get it? No cakes will be hurt. No cakes will ever exist.”

“I get it.” I kind of do. She can give me something that will make it like today never happened. Nothing and no one will be hurt. I can erase everything. That’s what I want. My heart doesn’t hurt at the thought. Those are just aches from a hard day. “Okay, yes, I want that. Is it sure to work?”

“It’s very likely to work. Of course, if the cake’s already in the oven, it won’t.”

“Will it hurt the cake if the cake is already in there baking?” I don’t want to hurt anything. I just want it never to have happened.

“No, it won’t. If you shut the refrigerator door after the egg gets out, it has no bearing whatsoever on the cake.”

I stare at the dark green brew, and the thin tendrils of steam rising into the air. My mate is gone. I’ve already muffled the bond to a cold, fading shadow in my chest. Soon, I’ll be able to consign it to the deep well where I consign all the bad things that have happened to me in my life. If I do this, that’s it. It’ll be me, alone, forever.

Safe, the voice whispers. Safe forever.

“All right. I’ll drink it,” I say.

Abertha blinks. “Oh, no, not the tea. That’s for me. For my nerves.”

She stands again to go rummage in her cupboard and comes back with a waxed paper box with green and blue swirls sealed in plastic. It’s human. They love to seal paper boxes in plastic.

She passes it to me. “I’ll let you open this. Humans do these things up like bear traps.”

Out of habit, I reach for the knife in my ankle holster, but it’s not there. I must have lost it during my shift.

A memory flashes in my mind. The knife clattering to the linoleum floor in the lodge basement. A wave of sick horror rises in me, clogging my throat, until I swallow it back down. That’s the distant past. I’m not there, in that moment, anymore. I know how the story ends.

The male died. Somehow, in the confusion that followed, Abertha got the knife back and brought it to me. She said, “Life lesson—sometimes the magic needs time.”

I take a deep breath and force my brain back into the moment. The text on the box comes into focus.

Plan B.

What was plan A supposed to be?

I try to pry the plastic apart, but my nails are torn from what happened by the river. Eventually, I use my teeth to rip the package open. In the end, after I unbox and unwrap everything, it’s only a tiny white pill.

“This is it?” I ask. “It’s so small.”

Abertha hums in agreement and sips her tea. She’s letting me make the decision, but really, it’s no choice at all. If I can make it like this never happened, erase it without hurting anyone, of course I will. Keep the egg in the fridge.

I pop the pill and chase it with a sip of lukewarm tea.

“It never happened,” I say to myself.

“Didn’t it?” Abertha raises an eyebrow.

“No.” And in the rush of deciding for myself, a molten flood of frustration fills me. I don’t want this.

I don’t want to have a failed mating. I don’t want to go back and tell Una and the others that I mated a strange wolf from the Last Pack, and I rejected him, and he walked away, disgusted. I don’t want them to look at me with even more pity.

I can’t bear for them to whisper about me behind my back and shake their heads yet again. It took years for the females to stop looking at me like I’m a ghost, a walking reminder of Orla’s dead body and that basement and the horrors of Declan Kelly’s time.

I don’t think the pity would have ever stopped if Killian hadn’t sent the worst-off females away to live in other packs. He sent my Aunt Nola to Salt Mountain. Before she left, she got so bad, she wouldn’t leave the house. Once the ones who couldn’t get over it were gone, the others let themselves forget, and they let me blend into the scenery like I wanted.

My failed mating is going to turn back the clock. They’ll stare and whisper, and in their eyes, once again, I’ll see nothing but regret that they couldn’t save me from what that night did to my head—and that they couldn’t save themselves at all.

It’s too heavy to bear.

“Can you make it so no one knows?” It’s a child’s request, but I want it like a child wants magic to fix the unbearable, and I’m sure that she can.

“What do you mean?” Abertha narrows her eyes.

“Cast a spell. Make it so that no one notices that I’m different now.”

She shifts back in her chair. “That’s a big ask, little girl.”

“I can pay.” But actually, no, I can’t. I have some money stashed from our farmers’ market sales, but most of it slips through my fingers. There’s a human at the market who weaves yarn from alpaca, and it’s so soft, I can’t resist, and I spend most of what I make before we leave town. “I can work off the cost.”

A speculative gleam lights in her eyes. “You know, no one can dodge their fate forever.”

That’s what everyone says. You can’t fight Fate. But Fate feels very far away, and honestly, part of me feels like I’ve been living on borrowed time ever since the basement. Who knows if I’ll even be around when Fate decides to make me pay up. I need to get through tonight and tomorrow. I need to make this go away, and I can’t if everyone is staring and wondering where my mate has gone.

“Please help me.” I make myself hold her gaze, make her see—in me—the pup under the couch who she rescued, if rescued is the word.

I can tell the exact moment that she remembers she was too late that night, and like the rest of us, not nearly as powerful as we needed to be.

She sighs. “You’ll owe me. One day, I’ll come to collect.”

“Whatever I have will be yours.”

Her lip quirks. “Clearly, your instructors at that academy are not the only ones failing you educationally. Never promise a witch ‘whatever you have’ while drinking her brew in her cottage in the woods. Have you never read a fairy tale in your life?”

“Make it like it didn’t happen, and I’ll be in your debt forever.” It’s an easy vow. What do I have that’s worth anything?

She sighs. “All right. It’s not a simple spell, though. I’m going to need to fetch some ingredients. And you’re going to have to watch Appollonia while I’m gone. Don’t let her outside no matter how much she yowls. She’s been digging up the yams again.”

“You can really make it so no one asks any questions about why I can shift now?”

“Eh.” Abertha piles the tray with our tea things and rises from the table. “I can make folks uninterested in the fact. I am becoming an uncommonly powerful witch, but still, it’s hard to make people not see what they see, or not smell what they smell. It’s very easy to make it so they don’t care, though. That’s just encouraging folks’ natural selfish inclinations.”

For the first time since I lost control of my will by the river, I feel a glimmer of hope. I walk on wobbling legs to the kitchen and run the dish water, holding my fingers in the stream to feel for when the heat is right. Abertha sets the tray on the counter. For a long moment, we stand side by side, our shoulders brushing, and we stare together out the small window above the sink.

Dusk is almost done, but the garden and the woods beyond are still cast in a rich, royal blue. The color belongs to early summer—it’s out of season—but the sky overhead is true to November, crisp and clear and smattered with stars. The moon is round and low. Inside my chest, my wolf stirs, shaken to her bones and exhausted, but still drawn to its glow. The moon seems wise, somehow, as if it knows things we can’t.

Is the Last Pack male looking up at it, right now? Does he feel his loneliness, like I do? Is he still angry? I’m too scared to search inside me for that fragile bond. I don’t want to feel his hate inside me.

He’s probably back in his fur and miles away, happy to be done with me.

Which is good.

I’m grateful.

He doesn’t want a female like me, and I don’t want him.

Abertha will fix things. No one will wonder why I can shift if I have no mate. And in a few months, if I shove this away like I did the night in the basement, he’ll never even come to mind.

And it’s not the saddest thing; it doesn’t break my heart at all.

I’m going to be safe.

I decided. I chose.

And if it doesn’t feel like a choice, no matter.

I’m not trapped, I’m not hurt, and I’m not scared. And in my experience, that’s pretty much the best you can hope for.