Page 11 of The Wild Wolf’s Rejected Mate (The Five Packs #5)

“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 na?ve 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.