Page 110 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

Yes, the wait was too long.

Yes, this is where we belong.

Yes, Fate was right all along.

I wakeup sometime in the wee hours, tucked between Justus and the blankets and pillows bunched against the den wall. It’s the same position we slept in on the trip here in the gully under the oak.

It’s toasty warm, but my heat has broken. I’m flat on my back, and I couldn’t roll over or move a muscle if I tried. I’m a limp noodle. I can’t even open my eyes. I orient myself by the smell of earth, the pressure of Justus’s arm around my waist, and the ghosting of his breath on my cheek.

Justus is on his side, facing me.

When he speaks—so very, very quietly that he must think I’m still asleep—his beard tickles my jaw.

“Stay with me,” he whispers. “Please, Annie. Please. Stay with me.”

I’m searching for my words when I slip-slide back into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep.

15

JUSTUS

I returnto the den with water for Annie’s morning tea like I’m heading to my own execution. She was curled like a shrimp and snoring when I left her. I covered her with a quilt. She wouldn’t like her bare ass hanging out even if there was no one to see it.

She was so beautifully bold and demanding in her heat. Would she be like that all the time if she felt safe?

She doesn’t feel safe at Quarry Pack.

She belongs here. I am the male made to protect and care for her.

But I swore I’d take her home. I won’t break that promise.

I won’t.

My heart cracks and my stomach roils as I hike up the switchback trail, balancing a pot of boiling water that I’ve overfilled yet again.

She is likely carrying my pup. Am I really going to let her leave to raise the babe on her own? Who will make sure she has enough sleep? Who will make sure she drinks enough so that her milk comes in? Who will watch over her and tend her if shecomes down with the affliction that makes some of the new dams take to their beds?

We’ve welcomed enough females with young babes to know the lost packs have forgotten everything they used to know about caring for new pups. They tell the dams to “sleep when the baby sleeps” as if little ones don’t sleep as randomly as bullfrogs honk in the night—and as if there aren’t perfectly capable packmates living to their left and right who could rock a fussy babe or give them a bottle of expressed milk.

I vividly remember how Lilliwen woke up every time Auggie cried, and the consternation and offense it caused when she sent away the females who came to help. There were many bitter feelings I had to smooth over before we figured out that in Salt Mountain, she was expected to do all the night feedings herself, and if she’d asked for help, it would’ve been considered shirking her duties. As if making sure a baby is fed and a dam recovers from birth isn’t the duty of the whole pack?

I can’t let Annie go back to the pack who let her live in fear. I can’t leave her to fend for herself, caring for our young alone. It’s unconscionable. Unbearable.

But I swore I would.

I can’t do it.

She’ll settle in. In time, all the stolen females do. She’ll be happy. I’ll make her happy.

I’ll learn to live with myself when she looks at me with betrayal in her eyes. And if she cries? Calls me a liar? Hates me?

If I break my word now, then am I as weak as I thought I was all those days I hid in my dam’s nest, too ashamed to face the pack? I’d sworn to my sire that I’d keep her safe when he was gone, and I’d failed.

And I am going to fail again. No matter what I do.

I reach the grassy ledge outside my den and stand there, water cooling in the pot, frozen in place. I can’t take anotherstep. I can’t let the next part happen, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Annie rustles as she moves around inside.

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