Page 21 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

She takes a second to tap the tobacco back into an old mint tin and return her pipe to its pouch, slipping it into a crossbody bag I made her. I embroidered her cat Apollonia on it wearinga snorkel since she likes to hang out in the bathtub. She’s very strange for a feline—she likes wolves and water, and I swear, one time I saw her stick her paw out to prevent Mari from knocking a cup off the table by accident.

Once Abertha’s got her bag adjusted, she tucks her stool under her arm and leads the way toward her cottage. My wolf trots at her side.

Occasionally, Abertha’s long skirt brushes my wolf’s flank, sending her skittering away a few steps, but then she comes back and keeps close. Abertha is safe, and she is fearsome.

She doesn’t look it. She’s older, her hair is silver-gray, but she doesn’t have the brittle thinness that the eldest shifters get, like their bones have worn to pumice stone. She has her share of laugh lines and frown lines and red roses under her high cheekbones from decades of exposure to the sun. Sometimes, she looks fifty, and sometimes she looks seventy, and I’m never sure whether it’s because of the light or her expression or how she’s holding herself.

Unmated females, especially elders, are low rank as a rule, but I’ve seen males in their prime go out of their way to give her a wide berth. There’s just something uncanny about her. She moves like a much younger shifter. She walks with a purpose. Like Kennedy.

And she’s always coming and going, disappearing for days or weeks at a time. We don’t stick our nose in her business, and besides taking a cut of our profits, she leaves us to our own devices with our farmers’ market business.

Despite the mysteriousness, she’s the only person that my wolf and I trust implicitly. She’s the one who rescued us, after all.

When we get to her cozy thatch-roofed cottage, she holds the door open for my wolf. “After you,” she says.

My wolf trots inside, instantly enraptured by the kaleidoscope of scents. It’s like everything good about theoutside has been brought into the safety of four thick walls—oils and herbs and spices and extracts and essences. Lemon, sandalwood, sage, calendula, fennel, bergamot, tea tree, and lavender. The scents all blend with years of woodsmoke, baking bread, and the oak from the exposed beams overhead and polished planks underfoot.

My wolf drags it into her lungs, and some of the oxygen finally reaches me, too. We both love it here.

“Let me see what I’ve got for you to wear,” Abertha mumbles, throwing open the trunk at the foot of her narrow cot. She rummages until she finds a worn blue flannel and a denim skirt. The skirt is knee length and fringed at the hem, but beggars can’t be choosers. I’m grateful for it.

She lays the clothes on her bed and says, “No rush. You stay in your fur as long as you need. I’ll be over here, putting the kettle on.”

For a second, my wolf considers the clothes. She’s been through the wringer, and now that we’re inside behind a barred door, she’s more than ready to hand our body back. Her limbs are wobbly from running so far and so fast the very first time she’s taken our skin. She braces her shaking legs, though. She’s not going to abandon me if we’re not safe.

I reassure her that we’re okay now.

She’s not convinced. I have claws, she points out, not in a cocky way. Like she’s stating facts. She is better equipped to fight than I am, and even though she’s bone weary, survival always comes first.

We’re fine. You can rest. I draw her attention to the bar across the solid wood door and the rusty sword propped against Abertha’s bedside table for some reason.

I have sharp teeth, my wolf adds.

Not sharp enough, the voice in my head chimes in.You’re no match for your mate. You’re lucky that he left.If he’d wanted tohurt you, you’d be torn to pieces. You’d be—The voice summons up the old memory and shoves it to the forefront of my brain.

Sightless eyes, staring at nothing. A twisted mouth frozen in a soundless scream.

With all the strength of mind I have left, I force the memory back, and breathing through the panic rising in my chest, I close my eyes.

Come on, wolf. Hand our body over.

She doesn’t give in. She gives up, collapsing to the floor, and again, my bones crack and muscles tear. The pain is blinding, the reconstruction as violent as the demolition. I curl into a ball. Life has always been this way. It’s never once been easy.

My mate went from wolf to a man in an instant. He flip-shifted, like Killian. No one else in the civilized packs can flip-shift, except Alban Hughes from Moon Lake, and he can only do it once or twice, like a party trick, not whenever he wants like Killian. Rumor has it that Alban Hughes was raised in the Last Pack, and they can all flip-shift there.

Is that where my mate is from? What’s his name?

If he’s gone forever, I’ll never know.

Good, the voice says.You’re safe.

Her reassurance doesn’t let me relax like it usually does. My muscles are still frozen in knots as I drag on the shirt and skirt. My biceps ache. My thighs burn. Every part of me hurts, especially between my legs where I feel tender and torn.

My face burns, and I button the flannel all the way up to the neck. I’m not going to think about it.

I cross the room to Abertha’s table, and when I sit, I don’t let the pain show. I keep my back straight and my head up.

That hour by the river didn’t happen. I wasn’t there. It isn’t real unless I want it to be, and I don’t. I know how to make it so that ugly things didn’t really happen. I know how to livearoundthem.

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