Page 12 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

At least no one from the pack saw. I’d never live it down. Annie doesn’t know it was a goose that got the drop on me, though. For all she knows, maybe I fought off a natural wolf for the goose. Or a feral.

I fix my face, trying to look like even though I’m in pain, I’m suffering stoically. Females love fussing over every little injury. At least that’s what I remember from when my dam was alive. It was a long time ago, but I do remember that.

Maybe if Annie sees me injured, she won’t be as afraid. It’s a small scratch, so she won’t think I’m weak, but she’ll see that I’m a wolf like any other.

Or maybe she’ll think that I’m the kind of sad, sorry wolf who gets himself hurt taking down a bird?

Shit. I quickly rotate so my uninjured side is facing the door.

I wish I could just fight someone and take her. I feel like an idiot, skulking around this cabin, bringing her meat she won’t eat, hoping she gets used to me enough to stop smelling like I’m a monster come to murder her.

Mating a female is the least dignified shit I’ve ever done. I should have brought her straight to the dens, but no, I listened to Max. He said if I stole her, she’d cry and make me wait, and it’d be better in the long run to hang around her territory, whereshe feels safe, until she presents. He said she won’t fight so hard afterward once the bond is in place.

I don’t know about that. It doesn’t smell like she feels safe here, and she’s crying and making me wait now. I’m sleeping outside under the bushes and hiding from the Quarry Pack patrols like I’m scared of them. It’s embarrassing.

She keeps saying that her pack is going to kill me, but they’d have to catch me first, and they’re not going to do that patrolling the same routes every day at the same time. That’s what happens to you when you spend so much time as a man. You start thinking like a human and ignoring your instincts. Wolves don’t follow the same trails day after day. Because it’sdumb.

As soon as I get her back to the dens, that’s the first thing I’m going to teach her. She takes the same paths every day at the same time. She needs to vary her routes. And another thing—someone’s going to steal her if she doesn’t pay more attention to her nose. Every time I approach her, she startles. I haven’t bathed since I got here. My wolf should not be able to sneak up on her.

At least I think she’s close to presenting. She didn’t go to the lodge this morning or up to the witch’s afterward, thank Fate. I hate it when she goes to the witch’s place. I track her there, but I don’t get anywhere near the boundaries of that female’s territory. I like my balls attached, and the witch has been clear. If you trespass without permission, she says she’ll go “collecting nuts.”

What is my mate doing in her cabin now? I know she’s in there. The spicy scent of her heat wafts from the open windows, a dinner bell to a starving male. It makes me hungry to take my skin, and I’m never excited to become the man, not like I crave the wolf when it’s been too long.

My wolf rises to his feet, restless, and trots over to peer inside a window. The large front room is dark. It’s filled with allkinds of human equipment like the stuff we find abandoned in the woods. I press my nose to the glass, teasing out the scents. Plastic. Metal. Chemicals. Teabags left seeping and biscuit crumbs. Traces of the three females she lives with—the hobbled one, the blessed one, and Mari.

Despite whatever’s wrong with Annie, I’m happy that Fate gave her to me. She is the prettiest of the females I’ve seen, either here or back home, and she has the best tits. One is a little bigger than the other so it spills over her bra cup, and it shows through her shirt. I want to bite that little pooch. But gently.

She’s also clever with her fingers. I snuck up to the porch when the others were at dinner last night and watched her in her rocking chair, knitting. She knew I was there—of course, she did—and she tensed, terrified, but her fingers kept looping and hooking the yarn, despite the shaking. She dropped stitches, but she caught and mended them all. She will make good blankets to keep our pups warm and to trade for the things we can’t get ourselves.

I don’t know how to make her understand that I won’t hurt her. I keep low around her, but I’m a big wolf. I can only make myself but so small. I show her my neck, too. Doesn’t seem to make a difference.

She’ll be calmer after I mount her. Then she’ll know she has nothing to fear and that I know what I’m doing.

I will be very careful to please her. Lelia and Diantha both let me mount them when they’re needy, and they’re the pickiest females in the pack. I must be decent with my cock. It’s thick, but Alroy’s is much thicker, and they won’t let him near them.

Once Alroy asked me why they liked me and not him, and I didn’t want to tell him it was because I do exactly what they say to do when I mount them, so I told him it was because I had a deeper rumble. He spent a month rumbling as deep as hecould whenever the females were around, annoying the hell out of everyone.

I pad quietly along the porch and peek in the next window. The room is dark. It belongs to the hobbled one. She’s not old, but she acts like a dam to my mate and the others. They follow her like ducklings up to the witch’s cottage and down to the lodge, slowing their pace to match hers.

My dam died during the wasting sickness that fell during the year of the late frost, not long after my sire passed from injuries he got fighting a feral. My mate’s parents are gone, too. I’m happy that Annie has had a female to care for her.

I don’t remember my dam very well anymore. I can’t recall her face, but I can picture perfectly how one side of her mouth curled higher than the other when she smiled. I remember random things—her ginger cookie smell, her wolf’s rough tongue lapping crumbs from my snout, her gentle yips calling me back when I ventured too far afield.

I was an adventurous pup. For a long time, I thought that’s why Fate took her. Because I didn’t keep a close enough eye on her like my sire asked me to do before he passed.

I’m grown now. I’ve lived eighteen years, and I’ve long since figured out that Fate doesn’t have reasons for what she does.

An owl hoots, and my fur bristles.

Why does Annie not come out? She’s not even creeping to the door to see what I’ve brought her.

I growl softly to let her know that I’m coming closer and then leap over the porch rail, continuing alongside the cabin to her room. Her heat is heavy in the air. I don’t know how she’s held out this long. If I were in human form, I’m sure I would have gone into rut days ago.

I reach her window, peer through the glass, and come eye-to-eye with her peeking through her curtains. She startles, screams,and bolts. Her footsteps pound toward the back of the house. The kitchen door slams.

My wolf sighs. We made noise. We brought a goose. How did she not smell the goose? Its blood is all over my face.

My wolf trots after her. We give her lots of space. Maybe if she runs long enough, she’ll be too exhausted to be so afraid.

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