Page 59 of Rejected Plus-Size Mate

While I watch him walk out of the trees, memories come flooding back. There is so much of my life that I’d like to forget, and I never thought that friendship would be one of them.

But I had no choice. I was going back to my family, my real pack. I couldn’t stay with Rider for the rest of my life.

From the way he’s looking at me, I know he did expect us to be friends for life. Now, instead of being his hope that sympathy between people can exist, I’m just another example of how humans fuck each other over to serve their own ends.

I remember running in the woods with him, crisp snow under my paws and my breath fogging the air as I raised my head to howl. I was afraid in Sawpit Pack—it was violent and unpredictable, but it also allowed me an outlet for my rage.

I was completely validated in my feelings that the world is not safe, and since we had been abused and abandoned, we owed the world nothing, and it was only right to take what we needed to survive.

But innocent people got hurt.

According to Jethro, there is no such thing as an innocent person. Everyone was one major life event away from turninginto a savage killer. As for wolves, they weren’t even born innocent.

“No one deserves our mercy. We take from them, as everything has been taken from us.”

Jethro said this in his nightly talks to the pack. He was a man of some charisma, with piercing, slate-blue eyes that could look right through you. No matter how much violence he forced us to endure or how much fear he used to rule us, he was convincing, winning our hearts as well as our minds.

Most nights, Jethro would hold ring fights. Names would go into a hat and get pulled out at random. He said it kept us sharp, kept our brutality alive. Sometimes people got killed, and Jethro considered this a necessary evil that kept the pack strong—like pruning withering stems from a rosebush to make it bloom.

One night, I staggered from the ring in more pain than I’d ever known in my life. I didn’t know if my opponent was dead or alive. I’d tried to hold back, but Jethro had screamed that if we didn’t fight properly, he’d shoot us both. I knew enough of him to know he meant it, so I went into the fight with all my strength.

I felt something break inside me. I passed some sort of barrier in my mind, a red wave of complete and utter rage. My body had never felt so strong, and I didn’t feel a thing as I pounded my opponent with my fists. Once he was down and my haze faded, there was complete silence in the pack.

“Well done, Kyle,” Jethro said quietly. “You’ve done well, boy. I won’t forget this.”

I managed to walk away a few steps, collapsing by one of the trucks. Rider appeared before me with a jug of moonshine, offering it to me. We weren’t close friends yet, but this was the moment our bond was forged.

“That was a tough one, eh?” Rider asked.

I nodded, my chest heaving with hard breaths. Blood was drying all over me, some of it mine, most of it from my fallen fellow. I took the jug and drank down a huge gulp of it.

“Is the other guy…” I begin.

“Dead?” Rider finished my sentence. “No. Fucked up, but not dead.”

“Okay,” I muttered.

“Look, you did good. I know how it feels, but you have Jethro’s respect now.”

“I’m not sure that’s something I want.”

“You’ll be safe now. That’s the important part. He knows that you’re savage to the core.”

“I am not!” I snapped, drinking some more of the moonshine.

“But you are,” Rider said, leaning closer to look into my eyes. “Behind all the guilt, beneath all the constructed, false platitudes and standards of decency imposed upon you by society, there is something else. Something living deep in here.”

Rider jabbed me in the chest with two fingers, making me jump.

“Somewhere behind your heart,” he whispered. “You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”

I stared at Rider for a long time. My body was so numb, I could barely feel it. There was so much pain in me, I could barely breathe, but Rider was right. There was something running in my veins right now that made me feel good.

I’m free.

“Yes,” I said, and Rider smiled.

Looking at him now, I know he is remembering this night as well. After we had some more moonshine, he took me out to the nearby falls to wash, and most of my wounds healed. I came out of that icy water completely clean, a new man with a fresh purpose.

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