Page 2 of The Wild Wolf’s Rejected Mate (The Five Packs #5)

I steel myself for another round of run and hide, but she’s quiet. She cocks her head.

I scan the yard, the beds of purple phlox and salvia—not long for the world now that the first frost is coming any day—the sunflowers and pink panicle hydrangeas, the yellow strawflowers on the slope leading up to the ridge above our cabin.

The sun is sinking in the west, but it’s not reached that angle yet where the rays are blinding. There aren’t stark shadows cast on the grass. It’s like someone’s turned down the dimmer on the world, so the outside seems mellow and lovely and close and safe.

I take another deep breath. It feels amazing. Like my lungs can suddenly hold more.

It’s a trick. There’s something out there. Lurking. You just can’t see it.

It’s stupid to feel safe. It’s a delusion. I know that. No female is ever really safe. The reminder should spur my wolf back to her pacing, but she stays still, listening. Her nose quivers.

I take another look around, slower this time. Blades of grass flutter in the faint breeze, and so do the flower petals.

And so does the fur on the strange wolf hiding in the strawflowers.

Watching.

With gold eyes.

Every muscle in my body freezes.

Inside my head, I scream, but my throat has choked off my air. My lungs have seized mid-inhalation.

Don’t make a sound. Don’t move an inch. Don’t breathe.

No, no, no—this is the moment to run. I need to run .

I can’t. I don’t have the strength to stand. My legs are weak from terror. A droplet of warm pee dribbles down the crease of my thigh.

The wolf in the strawflowers rises to his four feet, up and up and up. He’s huge. A full-grown male. I can’t see his teeth, but they’ll be razor sharp. His ears are up and canted forward, like he’s listening for something.

My lungs seize.

My heart pounds louder, too loud. It thunders in my ears, ready to burst into mangled, meaty chunks.

The wolf lifts himself even higher, his head swiveling on his neck, scanning the horizon. He’s scouting for danger. Are there others?

I track his gaze, but I don’t see anything except flowers and shrubs and the shed where we keep the mower.

He lifts his snout in the air, his nostrils flaring. His furry brow knits. He’s confused.

He strides forward. I shrink in my skin. I want to squeeze my eyes closed, drop to the ground, and curl into a ball, but I can’t move, and besides, I need to see it coming for me.

It’s worse if you don’t see it coming.

I brace myself, pulse pounding, as he bulldozes his way through the bed of phlox and salvia, his huge paws trampling tender stems into the dirt. I cower in place, frozen and quaking at the same time. At any second, he’ll be on me. His teeth. His claws.

He pads across the lawn. A yard away. Ten feet. Five. A soundless scream escapes my throat, nothing but air.

At the last moment, he veers right and dashes to the perimeter of the yard, following it until he disappears around the cabin. Before my lungs can finish a gasp, he reappears around the other side and skids to a halt in front of me.

He stares at me, his bushy brow furrowed, leans forward in my direction and sniffs. His lip curls, showing black gums and shiny white fangs. I whimper.

His head snaps left, then right, like he’s trying to catch someone sneaking up on him. Finally, he bounds away up the slope to the ridge and stands there, outlined by the setting sun, surveying the landscape in three hundred and sixty degrees.

What is he looking for? What’s out there?

I need to run while he’s distracted, while he can be a decoy for whatever bigger danger he’s looking for.

I dig deep inside myself for the strength to move, but all that’s down there is blind terror, so I stare at the strange wolf, helpless and small and frozen.

Again.

He’s huge. Well, not as big as Killian, but still—massive. And he’s mangy. His mottled fur sticks up randomly in tufts, and it’s matted along his left haunch. Is that a twig stuck in it?

He’s not a natural wolf—he doesn’t have that way about him—but he’s not a pack shifter, either. Is he feral?

The sunset bathes him in light, and I can make out smaller details. The edges of his ears are ragged, and he has a bald patch on his side that runs on either side of a puckered scar. He’s young, not much older than me, but his body is battle worn, like the older generation in Quarry Pack who came up under the old alpha. They had to fight for food. Not in a ring, but for real.

How did this wolf get onto pack land without the patrols catching him?

The bottom drops out of my stomach. If he’s here, so far into our territory, I’ve been right all along. Safety is an illusion. Patrols can be dodged, locks won’t hold, doors won’t stand in anyone’s way, the alpha’s assurances are lies.

The voice is right. It knows .

I need to call for help, but the fear strangles my throat too tightly.

High on the ridge, the strange wolf takes a long final look around and trots back down the hill. When he comes to the yard, he keeps coming, but he slows down. Like he’s trying to be stealthy.

Like he’s stalking prey.

No. That’s not exactly right. He lifts his paw so carefully that the move is almost comical, and then places it daintily down before he lifts another. A wild thought pops into my mind. He looks like a pup playing red light, green light.

What is he doing?

He reaches the circle of dead grass where the bird bath used to be before Kennedy’s wolf accidentally bowled it over during one of her angry shifts. He’s close enough now that he could be on me in a single bound. My shoulders rise to my ears while my hands curl into fists.

He stops, his eyes trained on my face. The gold is so smooth and bright that they hardly seem real. They certainly don’t match the raggedy rest of him.

Slowly—very, very slowly—he lowers his hulking body to his belly.

I let out a shallow breath that I can’t hold anymore.

With exaggerated slowness, he rolls onto his back and cocks his rear leg.

I can see his butthole. And all the rest of his business, too. My face catches fire.

He cranes his neck and studies me, his ears perked.

His belly fur is filthy. The small patches on his back and haunches that aren’t matted and caked are a nice pale tan, but there aren’t many of them. It looks like he deliberately rolled around in a mud puddle.

Is he a lone wolf, on his way to going feral? Or is he Last Pack?

I desperately try to remember everything I’ve heard about them. They sleep in dens and feed on rodents and grubs and the occasional deer or hog. They live like animals, spend most of their time as wolves, and they kidnap females, who are never seen again.

What happened to their own females?

You know what happened. They killed them. You know what males do.

Another wave of panic crashes through me, spiking my blood with a fresh hit of adrenaline.

The wolf sniffs, his face screwing up like he’s caught a whiff of something foul. A tendril of embarrassment worms its way through my panic. My fear is really pungent.

He stares at me. I stare at the ground, neck tilted and bared, but I track him from the corner of my eye. He sprawls on his back and wriggles in the grass, his enormous balls drooping, not an ounce of shame or modesty. He’s not afraid.

Why would he be? I’m not a threat.

After a few more rolls, he gets bored and flips onto his flank to check my reaction. I’m not stupid. I know this is a display of submission, but I also know it’s a lie. He’s easily twice my size, and under the filthy, matted coat, his muscles are honed. If he attacks, I won’t have a chance against him.

He scrambles onto four feet.

I try to make myself even smaller, tucking my forearms to my chest and dipping my chin to emphasize my own submission.

I’m on my own here. No one will be home for hours. Which is good. I don’t want anyone else to be in danger. I need to pull it together enough to run.

I’ll head away from the commons. Lead him toward Abertha’s cottage. She’s old, but she can handle anything. She has nerves of steel, and I’ve smelled metal and gunpowder in the back of her pantry.

My brain sifts manically through escape routes while my body cowers and the strange wolf trots over to the flower bed with an exaggerated nonchalance.

What is he doing now?

He sniffs a sunflower and then glances over his shoulder to see if I’m watching. I am. I can’t tear my eyes away. He’s the clear and present danger. For once, it’s not in my head.

He casually wanders to a hydrangea bush and sticks his muzzle deep into the pink blossoms. The flowers are on their last leg, so when he delves his snout into a bunch, a handful of petals flutter to the ground. He sneezes. Another bunch of petals burst into confetti and drift down, sticking to his fur.

He glares at the bush, startled and a little put out. Then he casts me another look. This time, it’s expectant.

What does he want me to do?

He waits.

My stomach knots tighter and tighter the longer he stares. If my intestines were rope, they’d be frayed close to snapping.

Sometimes I marvel at all the ways I can mess up my body with the power of my mind—all the parts of my body that I can make ache. My belly, my head, my neck, my shoulders, my jaw. I wonder which part I’ll break first. Probably my teeth from grinding them while I sleep. And anytime I’m around the males of the pack.

I am so tired of myself, and I’m tired of cowering here, soaked in sweat and terrified, while a feral wolf makes a mess of our flower bed.

“Just do whatever it is you’re going to do,” I call to him. In my mind, my words are loud and clear. In reality, they splutter out of my mouth, mumbly and faint.

The wolf cocks his head. He’s meandered behind the sunflowers so he’s standing with all four paws in the mulch, facing me. His brow scrunches, as if he’s lost for what to do next. Then his ear twitches, knocking against a sunflower stalk. It sways, bopping his muzzle, and he startles, his clumpy fur bristling like a porcupine’s quills.

I can’t help it. A tiny smile flashes across my face, half hysteria, half reflex. I mean, he freaked himself out by accidentally whacking himself in the snoot with a flower. Totally something I would do.

His golden eyes light up, and he bumps the flower with his muzzle again, closely observing my reaction.

I gawk back at him. Is he playing ?

He sits back on his haunches, reaches up with a paw, and bats the sunflower, watching me, waiting.

What am I supposed to do?

He picks up a paw and gently presses down on the stalk until the sunflower is touching the ground, and then he lets it go. It flies up and boops his snoot. His wooly brows rise in expectation. My eyes round. He cocks his head and blinks.

He’s being silly on purpose.

Quarry Pack wolves don’t play, at least not like this. When the males are in their fur, they act like animals. They might wrestle or chase each other, but they’d never fool around in a flower bed. They’d never be silly .

He’s looking around now, and I can see his gears turning. Suddenly, inspiration strikes, and he trots to stand between two flowers with small blooms growing close together. He shoves his shoulders between them, stretches his neck, and simultaneously shoves the bottom of the stalks together with his front paws.

He’s given himself sunflower antennae. He tilts his head left and right, showing off for me.

My lips curve again, of their own volition, and so do his, revealing wickedly sharp incisors. Fear snatches at my heart. I moan, my smile disappearing.

His wolf snorts a sigh and flops back down on his belly. Now he has really long sunflower antennae. He raises an eyebrow. It’s a question, but I don’t know what he’s asking.

He waits, watching and listening, but I can’t give him any reaction. Even if I knew what to do, my body wouldn’t let me. At the Academy, we learn about fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, but I’ve only got three in my repertoire, and if I can’t run, I’ll be playing possum.

Once, a possum got into Abertha’s cottage when someone—ahem, Kennedy—left the door open. The little guy freaked out and played dead in the middle of the kitchen. Abertha just picked him up and carried him outside like a baby. He didn’t move a muscle the whole time, his paws sticking straight up in the air and his glazed eyes wide open. I’ve never seen anyone more committed to a bit.

Sometimes, I imagine someone picking me up like that, carrying my stiff body outside and dropping me by the compost heap. It would be a relief.

The strange wolf is losing his patience. First, his tail begins to flick, and then he wriggles restlessly in place. When he gets bored enough, he begins to army crawl forward, keeping his body low to the ground. The closer he gets, the tighter every part of me clenches.

I don’t think he wants to hurt me. Obviously. The sunflower antennae were a giveaway. My body doesn’t believe that though. Neither does the voice that has reverted to tossing images in my mind like a game of fifty-two pick up.

Fangs tearing muscle. Fists pummeling flesh. Heart wrenching cries. Male laughter. Sightless eyes, staring at nothing. A mouth twisted in a frozen scream.

My hands shake in my lap. I curl them until the nails bite into the meat of my palm, and the pain doesn’t make it better at all, but it’s something else to think about besides the sharp-beaked birds of memory swooping and pecking at my brain.

I would give anything to not be this way.

“Please go away,” I mumble, but I can’t even hear my own voice.

The wolf keeps coming, and when he’s a few feet to my left, he casually turns so that we’re both facing the ridge with Salt Mountain rising beyond it in the distance. He sits beside me, watching the sun sink behind the peak for a long moment. My shallow breath is jagged and loud in the quiet.

He scooches his butt a little closer. I can really smell him now. The earthy scent is definitely him. It wafts from him like a just-opened air freshener. My wolf likes it. She sits very still at the edge of the boundary between us and peeks at him from the corner of her eye.

This wolf is my mate.

The heat, his smell, the fact that he’s here at all in our pack’s territory—my head might be jam-packed with all kinds of wild and unfounded fears, but at the same time, I don’t tend to delude myself. He’s here for me.

I swallow. I can hardly get the spit down my throat.

“Y-you should leave,” I say. “B-before they find you here.”

He glances at me out of the corner of a golden eye and snorts.

“They won’t care that you’re my mate. You’re on Quarry Pack territory without permission. My alpha will kill you.”

He blinks, unfazed, and keeps watching the sunset, but I know he’s as aware of me as I am of him. The silence stretches. My nerves would, too, if they weren’t already strung as tight as they can go.

“This isn’t going to work anyway.” I stare at the scuffed toes of my boots, peeking out from the hem of my long denim skirt. “I’m…I’m not right. I can’t do this. I can’t have a mate.”

His tail twitches, brushing the grass. My heart lurches at the sudden movement, and I gasp. He jumps to his feet, searching the distance, looking for the threat.

Kennedy’s wolf does the same thing when I freak out. He smells my fresh burst of fear, and in the second before he remembers that I’m just messed up, he starts howling, ready to shift and fight for our lives, and then he gets pissy when there’s no one to beat down. It’s a whole thing.

“There’s nothing out there,” I tell the strange wolf. “Ignore the smell.”

He either doesn’t believe me, or he doesn’t understand. Growling at me to stay put, he races up the ridge, and when he doesn’t see anything, he trots the perimeter of the yard and circles the house again before coming to sit beside me. Closer.

He glances over, considering me, a question in his eyes. I shrug a shoulder. He bends his head to sniff himself and then frowns back at me, clearly having trouble believing that whatever’s bothering me could possibly be him. It shouldn’t be a hard leap for him to make. He’s huge, and he looks feral—there’s a burr stuck in his belly hair and dirt inside his ears. I can’t believe females are easy in his company.

“You need to go,” I say with the softest, sweetest voice I can muster. “I can’t be your mate. I’m sorry.”

It’s not that I don’t want a mate. A home of my own. Warm and snuggly pups. A bright fire, thick walls, strong doors with solid bars, and a male made for me who’ll watch for danger while I sleep. It’s the kind of dream that’s so achingly sweet you don’t dare want it lest Fate snatches away what little you do have as punishment for your audacity.

Maybe that’s why Fate sent this wolf. I can’t mate him; there’s no way. He’s either a lone wolf, or he’s from the Last Pack. Either way, he lives in the wild. No walls, no doors, no locks. I couldn’t. Not in a million years.

And he’d want to—mount me.

There are knives in the kitchen. There is a baseball bat in Kennedy’s closet. You can run. You’ve got a clear path.

But I can’t move. I’m stuck here because my survival instincts are cross-wired. I’m a possum in a wolf’s world.

“Please go,” I murmur, knowing he’ll do what he wants. He’s male, and he’s big.

He slowly rises to his feet again, turning to gaze at me, narrow-eyed as if he’s trying to figure me out. I stare at my feet.

I know I don’t really have a choice. Sooner or later, I’ll go into full-blown heat, and then it won’t matter that I’m scared. I’ll get on all fours and stick my butt in the air until he takes me. Or, if I manage to fend off the heat long enough, he’ll break first and go into rut. He’ll pin me down, and it won’t matter how hard I fight. I won’t have a chance against him.

A fresh wave of terror barrels through me like a freight train.

The strange wolf growls as he takes a few steps away, but this time, he doesn’t scan the horizon. He keeps his gaze riveted on me. He’s figured out that he’s the danger.

He stands at a distance a little longer, his head cocked, waiting. Confused. Or disappointed.

Sweat trickles down my face, but I can’t even raise my hand to wipe it away with my sleeve.

“Please go,” I mutter into my lap.

After a few more seconds, I hear him pad away. His scent fades, and my lungs can finally expand to take in a full breath. My muscles go slack, and I slump forward, resting my forehead on my knees.

What do I do?

I listen for the familiar, almost reassuring chant of run and hide from my wolf, but she’s silent and shaking. She knows it’s hopeless. We’re trapped. There’s no way out but through.

This is happening.

There’s no way to stop it.

We’re going to have to live through hell.

Again.