The Wild Wolf’s Rejected Mate (The Five Packs Book 5)
The Wild Wolf’s Rejected Mate: Chapter 8

Carrying my wolf like a sack of potatoes, Justus hikes up a narrow switchback path that runs along the steep incline surrounding the clearing that acts as their commons. There are no buildings, but the higher we get, the better I’m able to make out how the camp is organized.

At the end furthest from the dens, there is an area for tanning with the lowest branches of a magnolia scraped smooth to act as a frame and drying racks. At the center of the clearing, around the huge bonfire, there are spits and barrels and long, sturdy wooden tables for cooking and eating.

Moving away from the center of camp, I see crescent-shaped herb gardens and vegetable patches, and various small groups of packmates. Elders in rocking chairs snooze or play a game with stones on a table carved with blocks like a chess board. Males wrestle or squat on stools, whittling and mending, or nap on their backs, gathered near clusters of canvas tents situated around small fire pits.

I only see one group of females, and they’re mostly hidden underneath a canopy of deer skins battened to posts sunk in the ground. They watch over pups who swarm a tall sycamore strung with ropes and ladders and swings.

When we reach the highest level, I can finally see the water source that I heard below, a rushing stream—not quite a river, but too wide for a wolf to leap across—that meanders the perimeter of the camp. I count three rough-hewn bridges at three different oxbows.

The stream’s headwater seems to be the mountain to the north, and it enters camp via an unlikely opening through the rocks, visible now that we’re above the canopy. It doesn’t seem natural, but I can’t imagine how a tunnel could be bored through the rock and then made to look like a haphazard arch of fallen rocks.

From this height, I can also trace the curving dirt paths that run between and among all the various areas of activity. Exactly like the males’ maze of swirl tattoos.

The fur along my spine bristles. There is magic here. It tickles my nose like it does in Abertha’s cottage.

If it were this time of day at Quarry Pack, no one would be outside. I’d be in the lodge’s kitchen, prepping dinner with Mari, Kennedy, and Old Noreen—and the Z-roster males still under punishment from backing the traitors. The other males would be training in the gym, and the females would be working at the laundry or the commissary or in their cabins, tending their pups. No matter what exactly they were doing, they’d be busy.

Not so here. Some of the Last Pack folks are working on something, but most are lounging or chatting or napping or roughhousing. There’s lots of roughhousing.

No patrol. No guards. Nowhere to hide but these dens. These traps.

The voice is back, and no surprise, she has concerns. My nerves twist tighter—there isn’t even a guard posted at the narrow entrance—but I can’t tear my eyes away from the scene.

It’s so peaceful. Like a lazy dance.

When I started watching, there was a single, older male at the long table by the fire, peeling carrots, naked except for his long, swishing tail. After a while, another, younger male joins him. He grabs a carrot and pops it in his mouth.

The older male cuffs him upside the head. The youngster, not chastened in the least, leaves with the carrot dangling from his lips like a cigarette. I figure he’s been chased off, but he returns a minute later with a milk crate full of potatoes. He sits down and joins the older male to do the prep work.

A little later, a pup wanders over on two legs with paws for feet. The older male tosses him a raw potato chunk, and he snaps it out of mid-air, like a dog with a treat. The older male then asks him something, pointing to the far side of the clearing. The pup waits until the older male tosses another potato chunk before he heads off on his errand.

I track him as he meanders off. His route is not straight.

First, a gang of wolf pups race across his path, and he detours to chase them. When they shift to human and haul themselves into the sycamore like monkeys, the helper pup loses interest and continues on his way.

He passes the deer skin canopy, and a female calls him over and hands him a wide-brimmed straw hat. He carries it awhile, spinning it on a finger like a frisbee. When he passes a group of elders, he places it carefully on the bald head of a snoozing, gray-bearded male. The others raise their trembling, gnarled hands, and he brushes their fingers with his own, a brief show of casual affection, like bumping noses.

We don’t really touch like that in Quarry Pack, not unless the person is blood. I’ve worked with Old Noreen in the kitchens for years, but I don’t think we’ve ever touched except by accident. The gesture is still familiar somehow, though. It reminds me of how the pack’s wolves act after they return from a run when they’re resting in the commons before shifting back.

We don’t nuzzle packmates in our human skins. Our males spar. That’s about it.

It’s strange to watch as the helper pup passes his people. It’s like a daisy chain of touch—his back is clapped, his hair riffled, his shoulder bumped in greeting, his leg clung to by a little guy with chubby arms and an octopus’s grip. Except for the octopus hitching a ride, the helper pup hardly seems to notice. He reciprocates automatically.

Like it’s perfectly natural to touch and be touched.

Like it never hurt.

Eventually, after dropping the octopus off with his sire, the helper pup arrives at his destination, the only solid structure I’ve seen so far, a tall and narrow wooden shack resting on a platform of stacked slabs of stone. Smoke puffs from a tin pipe on the roof.

Unlike the entrance to the pack land, the shed is well-guarded by a trio of grizzled males with full complements of claws and fangs, but not a patch of fur between them. There is a lot of conversation and gesticulation between the helper pup and the males before a haunch of meat is taken down from a hook and handed over on a platter that, from this distance, looks very much like an upside-down metal trash can lid.

The helper pup carries the meat back to the fire, knees bent and arms straining. He takes the direct route this time.

When he returns to the fire, others have gathered and formed something of an assembly line. It looks like they’re making a stew. Besides the potatoes and carrots, they’re chopping onions, mushrooms, parsnips, and some kind of green herb, maybe parsley. They fill one huge cast iron cauldron after another and hang them on tripods set about the fire.

The wind is too brisk this high, and it’s blowing the wrong way, so I can’t smell the cooking, but my wolf’s stomach grumbles anyway.

“Once you’re settled, I’ll go fetch us a bowl,” Justus says.

My wolf startles. We both forgot ourselves. How long have we been standing here, letting him hold us? A good while.

My wolf yips to be let down, but Justus lifts her a little closer and bends his head to talk into her ear. “The pup is Griff. He’s Elspeth’s oldest. He does take his good ol’ time, but he can be relied upon not to nibble the beef on his way back with it.”

Justus points my wolf at the older male who started chopping carrots. “That’s Tarquin. If no one else makes a move to get dinner together, he’ll do it once he gets hungry, but he only ever makes stew.”

So the males cook in this pack? None of the females are helping. As far as I can tell, they’re all still lounging under their canopy.

“The male with the black and white ears is Pierce. The skinny one thieving meat is Colm.”

I watch Colm, who is tall and lanky as a beanpole, carve a haunch into bite-size pieces, pausing every so often when no one’s watching to toss a hunk into the air, snap it up with his teeth, and scarf it down.

Why is Justus telling me their names?

It feels like the first day of school at Moon Lake Academy when the human instructors would make everyone introduce themselves and do something silly like tell two truths and one lie about themselves. The humans sailed through the assignment, but we shifters were various degrees of terrible.

I might have been the worst. One year, I said that my name was Mari, and I love knitting and gardening. The instructor said I needed to say one more thing, so I said I was looking forward to the class, which I figured she could take as the truth if she wanted, but it was a massive lie. She called me Mari all year long.

Anyway, we did introductions because we were going to be there together for a while. I am not going to be here long. This is a kidnapping.

I think.

Even Justus said I’m not going to be here long. When the wolf called Khalil asked how long a false trail would fool Killian, Justus said, “Long enough.” That means he’s going to take me back soon.

If it hurts my heart, it’s only because of the reminder that I’m not going to get what other females have. A mate. A pup. A home of my own.

I could never belong here, even if Justus decided to keep me, which he wouldn’t. There aren’t any doors, any locks. There’s nothing to hide behind.

Long enough.

The pecking voice won’t let that rest. She wants to know—long enough for what?

I worry, and my wolf squirms. Justus sets her down. She wanders away from the ledge-side path, through a small, mossy patch with two skyrocket junipers growing like sentries beside a crack in the rock.

The place smells like Justus, as if this is where his scent comes from, this is the earth that exactly matches his earthiness. The ache in my heart turns to butterflies in my belly.

There’s a rickety stool outside the den with a book sitting on it, a paperback that’s gotten soaked and dried at least once, opened like a fan. A bookmark made of braided grass is tucked between the pages.

He reads?

What is he reading? My wolf can’t read. All she can do to satisfy my curiosity is sniff the pages. They smell like they’ve been dew-dampened and baked in the sunshine many, many times. She bumps it off the chair with her enthusiasm, and Justus rescues it from the ground.

“Go on in,” he urges her, nodding toward the low entrance. His voice has dropped an octave, but it’s also shaky, in a rough, raspy way.

Is he nervous? He can’t be, right? He’s the male, and this is his territory. I’m female, smaller and weaker and surrounded by his people. And if I walk into his den ahead of him, I’ll be trapped.

Still, I think he’s uneasy, too. He thumbs the pages of his waterlogged book and stands in a very posed, very nonchalant way. Like he very much wants me to go into his den, and he’s very worried I won’t, and he doesn’t want me to know that.

What’s in there?

My wolf prowls a few inches closer to the entrance and pokes her nose in. It’s dark inside and smells even more like him than the grove out front.

As my wolf’s eyes adjust, the outlines of objects rise from the gloom. A pallet. A big, round woven basket with a lid. An apple crate full of books. A braided mat made of rags.

My wolf sniffs and takes a step forward. The pallet smells like sweet grass, and linen, and Justus—like the things he must do there, under the sheets. My cheeks heat. Whatever he does, he does it alone. His scent is the only one in the den. My wolf is pleased. She draws in another, deeper breath.

The basket is willow. The books smell like the one on the stool outside, but these also have a hint of tart sweetness, maybe from the apple crate. The rag rug looks clean, but it smells exactly like a long-faded version of the scent of the whole pack gathered around us—wolfy and earthy and warm. Homey.

Without a second thought, my wolf pads over so she can get a better sniff.

No! Stop! It’s a trap!

My wolf whirls, but it’s too late. Justus has followed us in, blocking the entrance. My fear explodes, the stink obliterating the straw, the apple, the mat, the sweet grass, the linen—everything.

Justus immediately drops to a crouch and raises his hands, but for once, his face doesn’t show even the slightest reaction to the smell.

He’s blocking the exit. You’re trapped. Hide. Hide!

The voice shrieks, but my wolf doesn’t take her eyes off Justus. She’s well aware that there is nowhere to hide. She stands in place and waits.

We’re afraid, but then again—we’re not. He’s not going to hurt us. She knows.

I know.

The voice is incapable of knowing that we’re safe. It’s a blaring alarm. That’s all. It doesn’t have some kind of insight that we don’t have.

The night of the coup, when our cabin caught fire, Fallon rolled up on his ATV, saying Killian sent him to take us to safety, and the voice didn’t warn me that he was part of the plot.

It can’t see the future, and it can’t read minds. It can only scream in the back of mine.

“Annie, please come out. Talk to me,” Justus says, deliberate and calm, but rough underneath. Not with impatience. With yearning?

He lowers his arms to brace them on his thighs. My wolf is very quiet, like she’s faded into a spectator.

“I’d like to hear your voice again.” His lips curve in a rueful smile, there and then gone.

His eyes are so somber.

Behind him, the sun has sunk, its last rays backlighting him, falling across the center of the den, and illuminating the faded colors in the worn rug, so clean despite the packed earth floor. He must shake it out a lot.

The sun picks out gold streaks in his long brown hair. It’s not groomed, per se. He clearly hasn’t done more than run his fingers through it, but it isn’t hopelessly matted like it was when his people tried to trade the Byrnes for us.

Come to think of it, none of the males in the camp are as unkempt as that crew. Last Pack males don’t look nearly as recently showered as Quarry Pack males do, but they’re not dirty dirty. I guess they look like folks who live in dens, bathe in a stream, and spend most of their time naked and outdoors.

“Where’d you go, sweetling?” Justus asks, a brief, soft twinkle in his eyes. “Won’t you come out?”

How did he know I drifted off?

I’m so curious, and I’m not used to it. I don’t usually have the bandwidth to have questions. I have to keep my eyes peeled. Be ready. Run down the list of all the horrible things that can happen, over and over again, ticking them off like the elders with their prayer beads.

“I won’t hurt you,” he says. A shadow crosses his face. Regret? Shame?

There I go, wondering again.

I could shift. Talk to him. Ask him when he’ll take me home. If it goes to hell, I can shift back.

I prod my wolf for reassurance, but she remains quiet and passive. She’s tired. She’s had our skin for such a long time now. Quarry Pack wolves don’t spend this much time in our fur. I’m going to have to shift back at some point.

Don’t. You need claws. Fangs.

Even the pecking voice sounds tired.

If I shift, I’ll be naked. In this small den. With a male. My mate.

The last rays of sun outline his wide shoulders. His upper arms. Sinewy. It’s such a funny word, but that’s what describes him. Sinewy and self-possessed and still.

“Listen,” he says, rising to his feet. “I’ll go get our dinner. You can think about it.”

No.

My wolf stiffens. She doesn’t want him to leave us alone, but he’s already turning, and then he’s already gone.

She whines and lowers herself to her belly. The silence is heavy. At the entrance, the wind blows faintly and the cedars’ needles rustle, but the center of the den has that close, warm quiet that you make when you pull your winter comforter over your head.

Out of habit, I scan my surroundings, but there’s no place for anyone to hide. I suppose a wolf could hide in the big basket, but I don’t smell anyone except Justus.

Better check it anyway to be sure.

I don’t see how I can unless my wolf knocks it over. The lid is battened on with straps looped over the handles. If she knocked it over, he’d know we looked.

Still, better check. It’s a big basket.

There’s no nefarious, scentless wolf hiding in a basket. I’d hear him breathing.

Better check now.

This is the kind of baseless worry that I’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring. My common sense tells me it’s bullshit, and the voice’s heart isn’t really in it. She’s just doing her job.

But what is in the basket?

And what books does he have in that apple crate?

If I shift, I can snoop. Not in the basket—that would be an invasion of privacy—but the books are out for anyone to see.

But I’ll be naked.

I could shift right back after I take a peek.

Justus has to walk all the way back down to camp and back up again. I have time. And my wolf needs a break. Is it fair to keep hiding inside her, especially now that she’s dragging ass?

Curiosity wins.

I don’t really take our skin. The instant I make the decision, my wolf dissolves into a puddle of fur with a huge sigh, and I have no choice but to mold us into legs and arms, rising up until I’m standing, shivering on two bare feet.

My body feels strange and rubbery, and my knees sway when I step toward the apple crate. The clock is ticking. My heart speeds up.

Run now. He’s gone. It’s your last chance. Run!

Through his entire pack, pups and elders and all? With these rubber legs? Butt naked?

I sink to my knees beside the crate and pick up the top book, a small white-covered paperback with a surreal picture of a sun with a human face on it. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men. The pages are sepia and brittle as fall leaves. I’ve never heard of it.

I’m not much of a reader of books. I’m too distractible. When the money started to come in from the farmers’ market, I got into audiobooks, though. The sound doesn’t exactly drown out the pecking voice, but I can kind of focus on the narrator, and it really helps the day go by better.

I like mysteries and psychological thrillers, but only if they’re written and narrated by women. If a woman’s reading it, I can listen to the most grotesque crime scene descriptions and think nothing of it, but if it’s read by a man, I can’t handle it. I can’t explain it, but I don’t have to, either, if I don’t bring it up, and I’m not one to ever start conversations.

I sniff the paperback—old, musty paper, glue, and Justus—and set it on the pallet. The next book in the pile, Peter Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread, has a picture of two men chopping down a tree on the cover. It smells the same. All the books are dog-eared paperbacks with yellowed pages—Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant, several each by Ursula K. Le Guin and N. K. Jemison, and a massive hardback of Plato’s collected works.

The Plato is the only one that looks like it hasn’t been read a hundred times. There are dozens more. I haven’t heard of any of them.

How did Justus learn to read? Can everyone in Last Pack? I was always told that they can’t.

I flip through the book with the sun on the front. The font is small, and the paragraphs are long. I skim the first page, but none of it sticks. My eyes slide along the words like they’re buttered.

I’m about to put it back when someone whistles outside the den. My fingers fumble, and the book falls, wide open and face down.

Another whistle rings out, closer this time. I pitch the book into the crate and scramble to sit on the pallet, wrapping my arms around my shins, tucking my knees to my chin.

Justus ducks into the den, and the second that he sees me, huddling in my skin, his eyes light on fire. A delicious spicy, muskiness fills the den. My heartbeat skips.

He has blue fabric folded over his right forearm and a steaming bowl in each hand, and he stands in the entranceway like he’s forgotten what he came here to do.

Suddenly, I’m aware of my bare bottom on the edge of his pallet. How my breasts smoosh against my knees. The trickle from my pussy that is immediately soaked up by his cotton top sheet.

His chest is rising and falling like he ran back. His nostrils flare.

In the back of my mind, the voice is shouting, but he’s not moving an inch, so I can ignore her.

He clears his throat. “Can I bring you this?” he asks, raising the arm with the fabric and a steaming bowl. My stomach grumbles.

I nod, keeping my eyes locked on him. In case he makes a sudden move. Not because he’s so tall and muscular and tattooed and bearded, and he has fabric folded over his forearm and a bowl like a fancy waiter on TV.

He slowly sets his own bowl down at his feet and then approaches me, one step at a time, like he’s stalking deer. My muscles tense and my belly explodes with butterflies.

I’m still shivering, but I’m not the least bit cold. The temperature in the den is actually pleasantly warm. Cozy, not stuffy. If I weren’t so terribly, painfully, awkwardly naked, it’d be comfortable.

Justus stops a few feet from me, places the bowl on the rug, and then lays the fabric beside it. He tries to fold it, but he does it about as well as the Z-roster males working off their punishment in the laundry.

“I’ll turn around so you can, uh—” He waves at the fabric and then goes back to the entrance and squats with his back to me, staring out into the dark.

His butt and quads stretch his pants tight. There’s a crease that follows his spine all the way into his waistband, and those dimples. His tattoos swirl along his right arm and shoulder, wrapping around his right side, but the left side of his body is blank except for the lines his muscles make.

I don’t realize I’m gawking until he fidgets, shifting his weight. I quickly bend forward and grab the fabric. It’s lightweight, but there’s a lot of it. I wrap it around me like a shower towel, and I’m covered from boob to ankle. I sit back on the pallet, but the fabric is too tight to pull my knees up, so I fold them sideways.

“I’m good,” I say. My voice is soft like usual, but the cave is quiet, so he hears me fine. He turns and sits, knees bent and thighs wide open like males do without thinking twice. He drags a bowl to the space between his legs and digs in.

I wait—I’m not sure for what—but when he keeps eating and not paying me any attention, I grab my bowl and give it a stir with the spoon that came with it. I was wrong about the herb. It’s not parsley; it’s rosemary. It smells heavenly.

My stomach rumbles, and my wolf adds her two cents, growling along. I take a bite. The carrot is mushy, and the beef is stringy, but it’s easily the tastiest stew I’ve ever had.

Old Noreen says that hunger is the best spice. As I ladle spoonful after spoonful into my mouth, quicker and quicker, I acknowledge that’s true, but I’ve been this ravenous before—we were always hungry during Declan Kelly’s day—but nothing has ever filled my belly like this.

It tastes like a long time ago. Like when my mother was alive, and she’d take me to visit Abertha in her cottage, and there’d always be something delicious bubbling in the old black pot over the fire and a few other females gathered around the sturdy wood table, laughing and ranting and crying and whispering, while us pups filled our bellies, licked our bowls clean, and then got into every bit of trouble we could find.

I haven’t remembered those days in years. The food stuck to your ribs, and Ma seemed younger there with the other females in that cottage, like a pup herself.

I actually whine when I take my last bite.

At the sound, a growl rattles Justus’s chest, and he immediately springs forward. I startle, and my bowl clatters on the floor. Thank goodness it’s empty.

Justus freezes mid-spring, lunging forward with his bowl in one hand and his other palm raised to assure me he means no harm. It’s the world’s most awkward yoga position.

“Here,” he says. “More.” He empties his bowl into mine and offers it to me, lifting it higher so I’ll take it when I don’t grab it right away.

His watchful eyes gobble me up. He really, really wants to feed me more. I’ve watched males fight each other for rank all my life. I know what it looks like when a male is trying to hide how desperately he wants something.

The warmth from the stew spreads from my belly, through my chest, and into my breasts. My nipples harden and poke through my toga. I hold Justus’s gaze with all my might. Please, please don’t let him look down and notice.

Partly to distract him, I take the bowl. I can’t avoid brushing his fingers. I couldn’t say how they feel, whether they’re as rough as they look, because when I touch him, my whole body wakes up. A ball in my belly unfurls. My mouth waters. Tingles trip down my neck and spine, swirling around my tailbone until I feel like I have to pee even though I know I don’t.

My body is glitching so badly, I wouldn’t be surprised if smoke is coming from my ears, but Justus seems fine. Totally unaffected. He doesn’t prolong the contact, not even a little. As soon as I have a good grip on the bowl, he backs off to sit exactly where he has been.

I start eating. He fixes his focus on my hand, watching me scoop up a chunk of potato like I’m defusing a bomb, not slurping soup. When I blow on a spoonful to cool it, his gaze darts to my lips, and his wolf rumbles.

The stew is hardly even lukewarm at this point, I don’t know why I blew on the spoon in the first place—habit, I guess—but I do it again. The movement is mostly hidden under his beard, but his jaw definitely clenches. My pulse speeds even faster.

He feels this, too.

I usually hate being the center of attention. My whole life, I’ve done everything possible to avoid it. I’m an expert at position and timing, a choreographer at blending into the background. In any group situation, I make sure I end up standing behind someone else. I don’t make work or ask questions. I’m never first in line or last to finish.

Attention is dangerous. But Justus’s isn’t. Not to me. Not right now, at this moment. And I don’t hate being here with him.

Maybe because he’s keeping his distance, and he’s not leering like a Quarry Pack male would. In a way, he reminds me of a scruffy pup who’s come across something fascinating like tadpoles or an ant hill. His interest isn’t creepy at all.

When there aren’t any grownups around, sometimes Abertha will do tricks for the pups, pull buttons from behind their ears or make it seem like she’s levitating a few inches off the ground, that kind of thing. The littlest, shyest pups don’t crowd close and bug her to spill her secrets. They hang back, rapt.

Justus is looking at me like that. Like I’m magic, and he’d best give me room because I might be dangerous.

My spoon scrapes the bottom of my empty bowl.

“Do you want more?” he asks.

I shake my head and set the bowl down as far as I can get it from me.

Much more slowly than last time, he prowls forward, bracing himself on one hand. His forearm and bicep flex to take his weight, and then he shifts onto his opposite knee and that thigh tenses. With every move, every flex, my breath softly catches. I sound like the world’s quietest chugging train engine.

If he kept coming, he could push me onto my back on his pallet and cover me. Pin me in place with his weight. I wouldn’t dare try to push him off. He’d growl, but it wouldn’t be threatening. It’d be more like a dare. If he pressed his chest against my swollen breasts, how would it feel?

What am I even thinking?

I squirm, shifting to a butt cheek so I’m not sitting directly on my lady parts. I’ve never noticed the pressure a seat can exert on my bottom before, but I’m keyed into it now.

It’s not like I want Justus to touch me. It would pop this bubble, ruin the moment, and bring the voice back with a vengeance. Justus doesn’t take a second longer than he has to, plucking my empty bowl off the floor and immediately returning to his side of the den. He stacks my bowl on his and ducks out of the den to place them outside.

When he comes back, he lights an oil lamp, and instantly, the den feels different. Shifters can see pretty well in the dark, even in human form, so I don’t see anything new, but the feel of the space totally changes.

The curl of smoke from the match twists mid-air like a thin, twirling ribbon, and the glowing flame is soft and warm, casting velvet shadows on the wall. I can pick out the colors of the rug now—coral and goldenrod and burnt sienna. The basket is made of willow, and Justus’s sheets aren’t plain white. They’re super-faded robin’s egg blue.

Justus returns to his seat barely past the den’s entrance and goes back to watching me, so casual, like he could do it all night. I’m feeling the effects of a belly full of stew on top of a kidnapping. I need a bed.

Where am I going to sleep? Where is he?

“When are you taking me home?” I blurt because I don’t dare ask him about beds.

His shoulder blades snap together. That amazement in his eyes flickers out. My stomach sinks. I’ve made things heavy again. I curl my toes into the rug and hug my knees tighter.

“Later,” he says.

Never. They have you now. You’ll never see Una or anyone from home again.

A fresh wave of fear bursts from my pores, overpowering the lingering scent of stew. Justus’s jaw clenches, his lips curling back in a grimace.

“But you will take me back, right?” My voice rises with each word, my anxiety taking off like a shot, running wild, coloring everything until it’s ugly and menacing—the den is a trap, Justus is my jailer, the bed is a threat.

I can’t breathe. I gasp for air, my hands reaching for something to help myself, but there’s nothing, nothing. I look to Justus, pleading with my eyes, my throat strangling my ability to speak.

“I will,” he says, holding my gaze, his face both fierce and terrified at what’s happening to me. His mouth turns down and his skin grows pale like I’ve asked him to do the unthinkable. Like he’s my hostage. “I promise you that I will take you home when you ask. I swear it to you on my dam’s grave.”

My throat eases. Air fills my lungs.

I recover more quickly than he does, but then again, I’m used to panic attacks. There was a time when I’d have them almost daily. The trick is to tell yourself you’re not really dying, and if you are, at least it’ll end. This was a quick one, and I didn’t go into a full-blown meltdown. Thank goodness for that.

I glance around the den to avoid Justus’s eyes. I don’t like that they’re guarded now. It felt safer before, when I could read them.

It was actually starting to feel almost good.

I can’t get in trouble for just thinking it. Not every positive thought can be a jinx. That’s what I tell myself while I practice my deep breathing and search for something to say. My gaze falls on the apple crate.

“Where did you get the books?” I ask.

It takes him a second to realize I’m sweeping the past few minutes under the rug, but considering, he catches on pretty quickly. “The hedge witch. I trade her.”

“You mean Abertha? You know her?”

He nods.

“What do you trade?”

He shrugs. “Meat, mostly. Odds and ends. Herbs. Stones. Eye of newt, toe of frog.”

Oh, gross. “You cut off frog toes?” Our people will eat a fat toad if they come across him as their wolves, but they wouldn’t pluck him apart for pieces. That’s vicious. And besides, do frogs even have toes?

Justus’s lips curl. It’s a bashful smile, not mocking. “‘Toe of frog’ is from a book. A play, actually. It was a joke.” He glances down. “A bad one.”

Now I toss a shoulder, my cheeks warming. “I don’t read plays. Or books like yours.”

“You looked through them?”

Oh, no. What am I doing, admitting I went through his things?

He’ll be angry. Shut your mouth before you make it worse. No. Beg forgiveness. Now. Before he loses it.

“I’m sorry,” I rush to say. “I shouldn’t have.”

“Why not?” he asks. His brow knits. He’s serious.

“They’re your belongings.” I might not have acted like it, but I was raised right. I know to respect other people’s privacy.

“But you’re my mate.”

“But not really, though, right?” Why did I say that? I don’t want to go there. Ever. Certainly not right now while I’m sitting on his bed, post-panic attack, wearing a sheet.

Heat sears my cheeks. I want to close my shutters and shut my door and turn the locks. Tuck myself into my shell.

My gaze dives to the ground. The flush seeping across my chest is so intense that it heats my chin. I don’t want to talk about him and me.

Right?

So why did I say something? It’s like my deepest fears are in charge of this conversation.

“This is real to me,” Justus says, his voice low and even, not accusatory or angry. He leaves it at that, falling silent.

I could stop talking, too, drop the subject and shrink into myself until he gets bored and turns his attention to something else. That’s what I do, right? Hide.

“But you don’t want it to be,” I say instead, and my face bursts into flame.

Justus holds himself very still while he answers. “I don’t want my mate to fear me. Or hate me. Or hate my pack.”

“I don’t hate your pack.” I blink up, accidentally meeting his eye. Instantly, I’m snagged, a fish on a hook, dry drowning.

“Just me, then?” His lip quirks, wry and bitter.

“Not you either,” I whisper. “I don’t know you.”

“Can’t you feel me?” He presses his palm to the center of his chest. My hand rises to cover my heart, mirroring the motion.

The bond is there, aching so very, very faintly, deep in the recesses of my mind with all the other ghosts and bogeymen I’ve shoved down there. And yet, somehow, when I focus on it, the gash the bond makes in my soul is still pink and fresh, the kind of walking wound that makes you fixate on the thinness of your skin and how impossible it is that something so fragile holds all your guts and bones together.

“A little,” I say.

“But you can feel that I won’t hurt you, right? I didn’t ever want to hurt you. Or frighten you. I’m sorry that I did. I—I was rough, and—I didn’t understand that—”

He’s talking about the nest beside the river. No, no, no. I don’t want to talk about that. Not with him. Not ever.

“I’ve never heard of any of these before,” I interrupt, scooting over to the apple crate and picking up the book with the sun on the cover. I thumb through the pages. “What are they about?”

He’s thrown, but again, only for a second. “That one? Mostly about how once an individual claims to own his territory within pack lands, everything goes to hell.”

“So you don’t own this place?”

“I stay here,” he says.

“But it’s your den.”

“No, it isn’t.”

I sniff to check, but no, I’m right—it smells like him and no one else. “Whose is it then?”

“Yours.” He flashes another slight smile.

“You’re playing.” I pull my heels closer to my body. I don’t like being teased.

“Dens belong to females. It’s a male’s honor and duty to provide shelter for his mate and their family, the elders and pups. He can stay, too, if he’s welcome.”

“But you’re the alpha. Aren’t you?”

“Wouldn’t matter if I was, and I’m not.”

I’m not sure if he’s lying or not. The pack sure acts like he’s in charge, albeit not at all the way we act around Killian at Quarry Pack. “Your people call you Alpha.”

“To annoy me.” He sighs, leans his head back, and stares at the low ceiling for a few seconds before he explains. “I’ve told them a hundred times—in nature, wolves don’t have alphas or betas or whatever. That’s a human thing. Humans put wolves in cages, and when the wolves didn’t have enough room to breathe, and they couldn’t hunt for their own food, they lost their minds. The strongest took everything he could for himself, and the others lived in fear. That’s where alphas came from, and it’s not the natural way of things. As shifters, it’s sure as hell not our way.”

Yes, it is. That’s exactly our way. The strongest gets whatever he wants, and everyone else gets to be afraid. A snort that I meant to keep in my head somehow comes out my nose.

Justus raises his eyebrows. “You disagree?”

Never. Not with a male his size. I put the book down and pick up the next in the stack. “What about this one? What’s this one about?”

His lips quirk. “Are you changing the subject again already, Annie?”

My heart rate kicks up another beat. He says that like he knows me. He doesn’t. But the way he says my name like he’s accustomed to it—I don’t hate it.

I hold the book a little higher.

His lips curl higher. “It’s about what packs should do instead of claiming to own land.”

“Are all the books about the same thing?”

“Pretty much.”

I return it to the stack.

“You’re not interested?” He’s still smiling. It’s not a grin or anything, more like a soft curve, but he’s clearly enjoying this—talking to me.

I shift position to rest on my other butt cheek. My fingers twitch. I wish I had my knitting.

“I like fiction,” I say.

He kind of lights up. “Oh, I’ve got something you’ll like,” he says and makes to come over. Before I can tense up, though, he catches himself. “There’s a book at the bottom I want to show you.” He glances toward the crate. “All right?”

He waits until I nod and then prowls over slowly to sit beside me. His earthy scent follows him, filling my lungs, making me feel strangely greedy.

Quarry Pack females always complain when a male’s wolf rolls in his kill and then trots into the lodge to let everyone know what he’s found. I never understood why the males insisted on doing it since they could just shift and tell people what they caught. I get it now.

I want to roll in this scent. Wear it like a coat. Snuggle deep into it. I inhale quicker so I can get more into my lungs. It’s not a particularly good smell—no one would make a cologne out of it—but it eases my chest and makes me feel languid and weightless, like I’m floating in space.

I’m hardly paying attention as Justus takes all the books out of the crate to get a hardback at the very bottom. I hadn’t noticed it earlier. It’s an old children’s book. Thumbelina. The fabric cover is threadbare in places, and the gold embossed lettering is tarnished.

I remember the story vaguely from the early years at Moon Lake Academy. It’s a human fairy tale.

Justus resettles himself on the pallet so that his thigh is pressed to mine. Now we’re both perched on the edge, but I’ve folded myself up as tight as possible, and he’s manspreading, knees bent and wide open, totally comfortable. And why wouldn’t he be? It’s his den—despite what he says—his bed, his pack, his territory. Whatever he wants to call himself, it’s clear that he’s the strongest here, the top of this particular food chain.

The pecking voice should be rattling off these facts, but she’s grown eerily quiet.

“Look at this,” he says, flipping to a full-page illustration.

A tiny woman, Thumbelina, is kneeling on an enormous lily pad. In the murky water underneath, huge wide-mouthed fish with bulging eyes swim among the reeds. She covers her face with her hands in despair. A monarch hovers in mid-air, gawking at her while she cries.

The colors are lovely in the lamplight—butter yellow, crimson, olive green—but I don’t like the picture. Thumbelina is scared and alone, and the butterfly just gapes at her while the fish swarm underneath, horrified surprise on their fishy faces. Something terrible is coming, and she can’t see it.

Justus smooths the page with a calloused thumb. “It reminds me of you. That’s why I traded for it.”

I feel like I’ve been socked in the stomach. “I have brown hair,” I argue. The woman in the picture is a blonde, but I know why the sad, weeping lady stranded on a lily pad reminded him of me.

What was it that he said that day by the river?

“What a sad female you are. You stink like prey. You would make weak, spindly young.” I don’t realize I’m reciting the words out loud until he sucks in a breath and tenses, the warmth of his thigh disappearing from mine.

I brace for my own fear stink, but it doesn’t come. His chest rumbles softly. I glance over. He’s still holding the book open, but he’s staring across the den, his jaw clenched.

“I was angry when I said that.” He pauses. “I’ve wished a thousand times that I could take it back.”

He means it. I can hear the regret in his voice, as well as read it clear as day on his face, but it doesn’t make me feel any better at all. It actually stokes a strange, new anger in my chest.

“You don’t have to say all that.” I don’t want a sincere apology that I have to graciously accept.

“I was young and stupid,” he says. “It’s not an excuse, but it’s true, all the same.”

I don’t want excuses. We were both so young, after all, and I didn’t react the way a female is supposed to with her mate, and he didn’t try to hurt me, not ’til the end, and that was his bruised ego. I see that now that I’ve let myself remember the day, a little, in the broadest strokes.

“I am not proud of myself,” he goes on. “You were scared, and I couldn’t see past my own hurt pride. I am sorrier than you can know.” He pins me with his soulful, earnest brown eyes. I drop mine, my fingers curling into fists.

I don’t want him to be sorry, and I don’t want to see things from his point of view. I want what I lost—a proper nest indoors with blankets and pillows and lavender sachets, excitement and anticipation and joy, a mate and a pup and a home of my own. I want what other people get, all the time, with no fuss at all.

I want a life where I haven’t been afraid every minute of every day. I want to go back in time and leave Aunt Nola’s bag on the table. I want my dam back, and Justus’s “sorry” is a poke in the eye. It fixes nothing, changes nothing, and we both know it wasn’t even his fault, not all of it, maybe not even most of it, but he can say sorry to me because he’s so strong that he can afford to take the blame.

I hate him. I hate this. I hate myself.

“Annie?”

I clench my fists and glare a hole through an invisible spot on the rug. I wish I could say sorry, too. That I wish I’d done things differently, and I do wish that, but I also know I couldn’t have. I’m a half-dozen coping mechanisms in a trench coat, and the only reason I function at all, day to day, is I do the same things with the same people and force everything that scares me deep under the surface like those ugly, terrified, teeming fish in the picture.

Justus exhales and flips ahead several pages. Then, slowly—so very slowly—he slides the book over so it’s propped on my knees. He’s flipped to a different picture. In this one, Thumbelina is riding a blackbird, gazing down with a serene smile at a miniature fairy prince lounging on a white morning glory throne. He’s wearing baggy green harem pants, a vest with no shirt, and a gold crown with spikes like sun rays.

Justus taps the lady. “She reminds me of you because she’s beautiful. Like you.”

Warmth spreads through my belly. She doesn’t look anything like me, but he’s clearly not lying to flirt or flatter. Ivo and Jaime and their type will say things like that to try their luck with the unmated—and unhappily mated—protected females. Justus isn’t like that. He’s not slick in any way. He’s what Old Noreen would call a ‘rough instrument.’

He thinks I’m beautiful.

I let my gaze flicker to his face. He’s watching me. My cheeks flame. He looks away for a split second, his face stern, but if I tune into the faint bond and listen closely, I can tell he’s not mad—just bashful—and his eyes come right back. Like he can’t help it, and he doesn’t want to, either.

He lets his thigh touch mine again. His upper arm, too. I curl my fingers around the top edges of the book and grip it tight.

I’m not panicking. The voice is silent. My wolf is conked out. I’m tucked away in this cozy den, alone except for a male—my mate—and despite the earlier bump in the road, I’m okay. In fact, I’m so afraid of tipping the moment over that I don’t dare move.

I watch Justus watch me.

“Our irises are the same color,” I say.

“Yours have sunbursts.”

They do. I have thin golden halos around my pupils, but no one’s ever noticed them. I widen my eyes as big as I can and bat my lashes a few times, my cheeks reheating immediately.

What am I doing? I’m being goofy. I’m an idiot. My face catches fire. My bones are going to melt. I’m going to sink off this pallet and disappear under the rug forever, and I’ll still be mortified.

Justus grins.

My gaze falls to his mouth. The bristles closest to his mouth are a slightly lighter brown than the rest of his beard. His canines dent his lower lip, but when his smile disappears, so do his fangs.

Is his beard as scratchy as it looks? Are his lips as soft?

Whistling softly, like he did when he was warning me that he was back with the stew, Justus reaches over and takes my hand, coaxing it from the book, and places it against his cheek. I let him.

The patrols at Quarry Pack whistle when they pass our cabin or Abertha’s cottage, so I’m not startled. Is it a common thing, or did he pick it up from them when his wolf was stalking me?

He nuzzles my palm. His beard is coarse. I let the pad of my thumb rest on his bottom lip. It is soft.

He nips my thumb, gently, grinning for a brief second when I squeak. I snatch my hand away. But not too far. He chases my palm with his cheek until I cradle it again. Our faces are closer now. Inches away.

How did I end up sitting so close to him? I blame his scent; it’s turned my brain muzzy.

It’s a trap.

The voice is so far away, it’s a whisper on the wind.

I raise my fingers to his long hair. It’s thick and coarse, too, but it’s not dirty and knotted like when I first saw him.

“This was all matted and tangled before,” I say.

He hums in agreement. “I mudded it up.”

“Mudded it?”

“To hide my scent.”

“You did that on purpose?”

“You thought I kept it that way?” He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Because I’m ‘Last Pack’ as your people say? And we’re wild animals.”

I drop my hand to my lap. That is what we’re taught.

Justus’s mouth curves down, his face shuttering. I clasp my hands in my lap.

“Worse than wild animals, I guess, since animals keep their coats clean.” He braces his forearms on his thighs and stares across the den.

The air between us sours. I shift so our thighs aren’t touching.

I stare at the picture of Thumbelina riding the bird. I can feel through the bond that his pride is bruised. That’s when males are the most dangerous.

The voice is missing a trick. I had to remind myself this time.

Justus sighs. “I guess your pack only comes across us when we’re, uh, hunting. I see where they might have gotten the impression.”

Hunting or stealing females. I keep my eyes on the book.

Justus rumbles and tugs at my wrist—coaxing, not demanding—and I’m so thrown by the touch that I let him lift my hand.

“Don’t stop because I’m proud and bad with words,” he says, pressing a bristly kiss to my inner wrist and then covering my hand with his and returning it to his cheek, cradling it there.

“People do say that about your pack,” I admit.

“Is that why you didn’t want me?” he asks tightly.

My hand trembles. Justus guides it lower to press against his bare chest. His heartbeat thumps against my palm.

“I was afraid.” I splay my fingers, stretching them across his breastbone. His muscles tense. The line where his tattoos ends cuts straight down between my middle and ring fingers. He keeps his hand pressed on top of mine. Like we’re staunching a wound.

“That I’d be rough with you? Or that I wouldn’t be able to care for you?” His rumble grows jagged.

“That it would hurt,” I whisper. “And other things.”

“What things?”

I don’t know how I’m doing this, speaking to a male I don’t really know, far from home, surrounded by strangers, but my belly is full, I’m out of adrenaline, and the den is drowsily dim and warm like a dream or a fugue. Justus is so much stronger and fiercer than me, and I’ve let him so close, that he’s not really a threat anymore. A brandished knife is a threat. Once it’s been resting against your throat for a while, it’s something else. A negotiation, maybe.

“Everything.” I swallow a bitter laugh. “Mostly that you’d take me away.” For the first time, I try to line all my anxieties up in a way that I can explain them to someone else, and I just can’t. There are too many. So I try to explain a different way. “I’ve set my life up exactly the way it needs to be so that I can function. It has to be the way it is, or I’m a mess. It’s just the way it is.”

I wait for him to argue like Mari and Kennedy do whenever I say something like that. Nothing is as bad as you make it in your head. You can’t live scared. If you want to grow, you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Challenge yourself.

Like every minute of every day isn’t a challenge.

And yes, you can live scared.

Justus blows out a slow breath. “So what’s the set up?” he finally asks.

I look at him, surprised. He’s serious.

For a second, I feel too silly to tell him, but it’s just us, and his earthy scent has somehow untied all my knots. “Well, I have my places and the things I do, and I know everyone, who’s okay and who I need to stay away from. And I know where the exits are, and the hiding places, and what I can use for a weapon.”

He’s nodding. I decide to go on.

“And I have my tea and my knitting and my work with the bee hives and in the kitchen. I always know what’s happening, you know?”

His brow creases. “I didn’t think about any of that back then.”

“Or now,” I say softly.

He smiles ruefully. “Or now.”

We sit a few moments in silence before he clears his throat and asks in a very careful, even voice, “What happened to you?”

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

“Something bad,” I answer softly. “When I was a pup, I saw something, and eventually, most of the others who were there got better, and I just didn’t.” I shrug and hunch my shoulders. I’m squeezing the book so tightly, the edges bite into my palm.

“I didn’t realize back then,” he replies, his voice low, too, like we’re telling secrets. “And I never really worried about how you felt. I figured you’d come around.” He shakes his head. “My head was so far up my ass. I knew it all, right?”

I peek at him. His lips are curving again, like he’s chagrined. I don’t know any males like him. None of the males at Quarry Pack will freely admit that they’re wrong. If they’re backed into a corner, they sandwich their “my bad” in excuses and reminders of all the times they were right. Inevitably, they lose rank.

I’ve never heard a male say he’s been mistaken like it wasn’t costing him everything to say it, which is funny since females in the pack apologize all the time for things that aren’t even their fault.

“We were young,” I say, letting him off the hook because that’s what you’re supposed to do when a male humbles himself—preserve his dignity at all costs. A male with hurt pride is dangerous.

“I didn’t think,” he says. “I was so happy that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.”

“Happy?”

He glances down at the rug, the hollows under his cheekbones darkening. “You were all I ever wanted.”

I wish I could believe him—my loneliness longs to—but I was never naïve enough to take that kind of thing at face value. “You wanted a mate, you mean.”

He’s quiet for a moment, but then he draws a deep breath and gnaws his lower lip. “Stay here,” he says.

Where would I go?

I’m expecting him to leave the den, but instead, he crosses to the big basket and begins to unpack it. It’s a clown car. I have no idea how it holds so much. He takes out a stack of fluffy blankets and several quilts, two feather pillows squished flat in a plastic case, a leather knife roll, and an assortment of pants and shirts. No socks and no underwear.

My face heats, and I fuss with my blue sheet dress, arranging the hem so it covers my bare feet.

Finally, Justus reaches the bottom of the basket and takes out a round hatbox. I wouldn’t recognize what it was except a vendor at the Chapel Bell farmers’ market decorates them with decoupage and sells them for fifty dollars apiece.

Justus pushes the hatbox over to me with his knees and then sits on his heels so it’s between us. His lips are curved in what I recognize as his usual, hesitant smile, but his shoulders are tense, and his eyes are carefully blank.

“Open it,” he says.

I’m scared. A male has never given me a gift before, and I think that’s what this is, even though the box is plain white cardboard. I look up at him.

His hands are firmly braced on his thighs like he’s ready for something to go down. “Go on. It’s for you,” he says.

I take a deep breath and lift the lid.

It’s yarn. Lots of yarn, hand-dyed, and by the look and smell, homespun, too. I raise a skein to my nose. Merino. I brush it against my cheek. It’s so soft.

“Keep looking,” Justus says, his voice low and gravelly, and nudges the box closer to me.

I pile the skeins on my lap. The colors are almost too bold for natural dyes, which must be what Last Pack uses. They aren’t blue and red and green; they’re indigo and crimson and emerald. “They’re so beautiful. Who spun them?”

“The females,” he says.

No shit. “Which females?”

He looks caught for a second, and then he says, “I’ll find out. Keep looking.”

I take out the rest of the yarn, and underneath, there’s a rectangular leather case, about the size of a laptop. It looks handmade, too. The stitchwork is very neat and even, but not perfectly uniform like you’d get from a machine.

I unfold the case, already knowing what I’ll find, and I’m right. There are slots filled with every size needle and crochet hook you could want, as well as a pouch with a thimble, scissors, and a random assortment of safety pins, straight pins, buttons, and a few threaders for good measure.

I take out a needle for a closer look. It’s hand carved, either rosewood or maple, with little acorns carved into the tops. They’re not perfect, either, but they’ll work fine. “Who carved the needles?” I ask.

“I did.” Justus’s voice has gone downright gruff.

He’s staring intently into the hatbox, and doesn’t even look up when I ask, “What about the case?”

“Max made the leather. I did the cutting and sewing.”

“Who’s Max?” I don’t remember meeting him earlier.

“He’s Elspeth’s mate. Gray wolf. Missing half his tail.”

I vaguely remember a wolf like that watching the proceedings from under a tree, lying on his side and idly flicking his half of a tail.

“It’s beautiful,” I say. “Will you tell him thank you?” I feel like I’ve got a leak inside me—my heart is swelling, and my eyes are welling, but I’m too on guard to let myself cry in front of him.

My fingers flit from needle to needle. Their shapes aren’t quite uniform, but they’re all sanded perfectly smooth.

“There’s more,” he says.

I fold the case up carefully, and keeping it on my lap, I reach back into the box. The next layer is all small tins and wooden boxes. Tea.

I take them out, one by one, stacking them like blocks. Each tin and box is absolutely charming. There’s a red tin of Jasmine tea with a sailing ship on it. A tin of herbal tea with a koala wrapped in a blanket, pouring a cup in a eucalyptus tree. Several are decorated with flowers and birds—flamingos and hummingbirds and hibiscus and lilies.

I crack one of the boxes open. It’s full of tea, wrapped in a wax paper pouch. I give it a sniff. Chamomile. My clenched stomach relaxes, and my cheeks flush.

A male has never given me a present before. There is no explicit rule against it, but Killian definitely wouldn’t be okay with any of the males approaching an unprotected female that way. It’s different for those with fathers or brothers. They have someone to tear a chunk out of a male’s hide if he oversteps.

Even if it were allowed, males don’t notice me like they do females like Haisley and Rowan, and I’ve never been anything but grateful for that.

I’m not sure what I feel right now.

“Where did you get all of these?”

He coughs, and with his eyes still averted, he says, “The others know I’ll trade for them.”

“How do they get them?” Don’t Last Pack live totally isolated?

“Swap meets. Flea markets.”

“Human swap meets and flea markets.”

Justus shrugs. “Better humans than the lost packs.”

“Lost packs?”

He shifts uncomfortably and glances up. “That’s what we call you. Quarry Pack, Moon Lake, North Border, Salt Mountain. Like you call us ‘last’. We call you lost.”

“Why lost?”

“Why last?” he shoots back.

“Because your pack is the last one to still live in dens like the ancestors did.”

His mouth quirks. “‘Lost’ because your people don’t know how to be what we are anymore. You’re losing the ability to shift. Your pups only shift if they’re traumatized, and most of you’ve forgotten how to balance the forms. ‘Lost’ because you want to be human. You keep your wolves caged and only let them out on full moons like they’re dogs that you walk. Because you don’t know any more what pack means.”

“What do you mean ‘balance the forms’?” I ask.

He flashes a small smile, and before I can blink, his beard turns to fur, his face becomes a snout, his eyes rotate to slant at the diagonal, and his nose turns into a black nub. He grins, baring sharp white fangs and black gums.

I yip, startled. He cracks his jaws wide and lets his long pink tongue loll out of his mouth for a second before he morphs his face back into a man’s.

“Did your wolf stick his tongue out at me?”

He grins. His teeth haven’t turned back. “We did.”

“We?”

His expression grows serious, and he switches to that teacher voice he used when he was talking about how shifter packs shouldn’t have alphas. “Your people have such mistaken ideas about the wolf. You try to keep him in submission, same as you do your females and pups and elders. You act like he’s a costume. Can you even hear him?”

I move the needle case to the pallet and draw my knees to my chest. I don’t like how his criticism feels. It’s not entirely unfair, I guess, but I just let him closer, and he thanked me by telling me that I’m bad at wolfing.

Part of me wants to shut my mouth, toss his yarn back in the hatbox, and pack myself up as small as I can, but the hard ball of spite forming in my gut won’t let me.

“My wolf tells me to run and hide. That’s it. That’s what she says. Constantly. Why would I want to listen to that?”

Immediately, his expression changes as if he got lost in his own bullshit for a second and then suddenly remembered he’s in a two-person conversation. Kennedy does the exact same thing when she goes off on Quarry Pack males. She’ll be bitching about how they can never truly understand our perspective because they’re so much stronger and then realize mid-sentence that her very legitimate complaints also apply to herself because of the killer he-wolf inside her.

He smiles ruefully. “My pack always say ‘you have so many ideas.’” He lowers his head ever so slightly. “It’s not a compliment.”

The ball of spite dissolves, and my belly warms. I feel kind of low for making him feel bad about what he said—I was playing on his pity, and I despise pity—but I’m also surprised and delighted that it worked.

If a female pushes back on what a Quarry Pack male says, or tries to make him feel bad, he doubles down. Every time. Maybe later he’ll bring a peace offering if she holds a grudge and he wants her sweet, but he’ll never, ever show neck in the moment like Justus just did.

I don’t know what to say, so I resettle myself so I’m sitting crisscross and draw the needle case back onto my lap so I can trace the stitches with my finger.

Justus’s shoulders relax, and he nudges the hatbox toward me again. “There’s one thing left,” he says.

I guess we’re dropping the subject for now. I look back in the box. There’s a PlayStation controller at the very bottom. Just one, sun-bleached and more than a little worse for wear. A knob is missing.

I take it out, glancing around the den in case I missed the TV and console—and electricity.

Justus tenses a little again. “I saw you with one of those at your cabin. I wasn’t quite sure what it was for, but one of the pups found it out on a hunt, so I traded for it.”

I turn it in my hands, that warmth in my belly heating up again. “What did you trade for it?”

Justus shrugs. “I can’t remember. Maybe I let him come on patrol with me.”

I replace it carefully in the box, and then I return the teas, examining each more closely. I’m getting tired, and I really have to focus to read the tins—oolong, black, chai, hibiscus, Darjeeling, Earl Grey. I’m a Tetley girl exclusively, but it’s the thought that counts, and the pictures on the tins are so pretty.

“Thank you,” I say as I arrange the yarns in the box by color. I’m too shy to look at him. My face is already permanently flushed.

When he answers me, his voice is almost a rumble. “I have an oak barrel. Someone’s borrowed it, but I’ll get it back, and I can trade for another. Whatever else you need, I can get.”

Why do I need oak barrels?

All of a sudden, my nerves flare back to life. I don’t need anything. I’m not going to be here very long. I’m going home. He said so. He swore on his dam’s grave.

And that is what I want.

I can’t stay here. I need my own bed and my locking doors and my friends. My things.

He’s never going to let you leave. He lied.

“You said you’d take me back,” I say in a rush, and it’s like I douse the moment in ice water.

He jumps to his feet. I flinch and whimper. His face darkens, but he ignores the reaction and takes over with the box, shoving the lid on and returning it to the basket.

“I swore I would. I keep my promises,” he mutters darkly as he stuffs the blankets, quilts, pants, and shirts on top of the box with complete disregard to whether the stacks are in the right direction. When he puts the lid on, it won’t close.

I want to say sorry. I didn’t want to make things weird—well, weirder—but I didn’t have a choice either. When the panic hits, seeking reassurance is a compulsion. If I don’t, I freak out, and then things get really, really weird. I wish I could explain, but he’s an angry male, so I’m not about to open my mouth.

The air around me is tainted by a slight burst of my fear. Whatever gland or chemical in my body creates it—and I definitely wasn’t paying attention that day in class—is still mostly exhausted. Justus’s nose wrinkles, though, and he freezes, his arms braced on the basket lid as he tries to force it shut enough to loop the straps over the handles to keep it closed.

He sighs and straightens, opening the basket again and taking out two quilts. The straps go over the handles easily now.

He turns and comes to me, slowly but without hesitation, and kneels. I draw my knees back to my chest.

He sets one of the quilts next to me on the pallet. “If you want to go, I’ll take you. Right now, if you want,” he says and waits.

His face isn’t angry anymore. He’s wearing that supernaturally cool expression that he wore with his pack before he lost his temper. But he didn’t really lose it, did he? He threw Alroy like a frisbee, and he yelled and threatened to skin them and trade their pelts to Quarry Pack, but that’s not a real threat, is it?

I’ve heard real threats before. I’ve seen packmates beaten for real.

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

Justus was performing.

He’s performing right now, with me. Hiding his anger? Or something else?

I do something I don’t ever remember doing on purpose before—I seek out the bond and listen very, very carefully. It’s so weak. I have to close my eyes, focus with all my might, and weed through the bramble of fears, anxieties, regrets, and doubts that crowd my brain.

My eyes fly open.

He’s scared.

He watches me with perfectly calm, unworried brown eyes, motionless, waiting for me to decide whether I want to leave, and he’s terrified.

My heart cracks open.

Now, I’m scared, too. I grab the quilt and hug it to my chest. “I’m tired right now,” I say quietly. “Maybe tomorrow.”

He nods like his system isn’t flooded with relief, but it is—I can feel it flow into my chest. Does he know that I know?

Oh, crap, is he feeling my feelings, too? Does he always?

I cover my absolute dismay with a yawn. Although it starts out fake, it soon becomes real. I am exhausted. I can’t sort through all of this now.

His gaze softens. “I’ll sleep out front. If you need something, call. I’ll hear you.”

Before I can argue about stealing his bed, he flashes a real, fond smile, and whistling softly through his front teeth, he leans forward and presses his forehead to mine. He stays there a moment, his nose bumping mine, our breath mingling. His beard tickles my chin.

His scent fills my lungs, and every muscle in my body relaxes as every inch of my skin comes alive.

My fingers itch, and suddenly, my ma’s fudge comes to mind. She made it from scratch, and it was my pa’s favorite. It took so long, she’d only make it for his birthday and winter solstice. You had to stir it continuously as you brought it to a boil, and then once it reached a certain temperature, you had to beat it with a heavy wooden spoon until it lost its gloss.

I was her helper, but I wasn’t allowed to taste it until it cooled, and she cut it into squares. She’d always go sit on the porch to find a breeze, and I’d be left alone in the kitchen, watching the fudge like I was stalking my prey, its sweetness thick in the air. I remember the want, the longing, the fear of losing control, gobbling it up, and getting into deep, deep trouble. That’s what I feel now.

I don’t dare focus on the bond to see if he feels the same.

Would it be scary if he felt the same as me?

What if it felt good?

“Good night, Annie,” he says, rising to his feet.

He leaves without looking back.

I lie down, pulling the quilt over me, and roll onto my side so I can see the den entrance. I see where he lays his quilt, and until I fall asleep, I keep my eyes on his shadowed form.

And I don’t know if I’m watching to make sure he doesn’t move from that place—or to make sure that he stays.