Page 9 of The Wild Wolf’s Rejected Mate (The Five Packs #5)

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.