Page 23 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

She exhales. “I know.”

She is quiet for a time, sipping her tea, dangling the fingers of her left hand to lure Appollonia over from her basket by the fire to be petted.

Abertha does know. She was there that night, not in the middle of it, but when it was too late. When it was deathly quiet.

Aunt Nola forgot her bag.

I was eight. We’d just finished a full-moon feast, and Declan Kelly had ordered the unmated females down to the lodge’s basement. Aunt Nola left the bag I’d made her on the table. I’d made it from an old denim shirt and cross-stitched it with the treasures she always brought me back from her rambles—walnuts, blackberries, nettles, pretty stones.

She loved her bag—it was her favorite thing—so I decided to take it to her. To make her feel better.

When Declan bellowed for the lone females, her face went ghost white, and Ma smothered a cry with her fist in her mouth. Half of the great room went silent. The other half—the males—stomped their boots and howled.

While Ma was whisper-hissing with the other dams, I slipped away, down the stairs. I’d been in the basement many times before to help Aunt Nola clean. There were no windows, only fluorescent lights with the shadows of dead flies smudged against the plastic.

I tripped into the room. The lone females were clustered together, their fear blossoming in the air like skunk spray.

They saw me skid across the linoleum.

Heavy footsteps sounded at the top of the stairs.

They surged toward me as one, reaching for me with octopus arms, clutching me close and bearing me away. A palm mashed my lips into my teeth. Steel fingers curled around my wrist.

They lifted me, rushed me over to an old leather sofa against the wall, shoved me underneath, and kicked Aunt Nola’s bag in after. The sofa was saggy, the cushions drooping over the warped wooden slats. I couldn’t turn my head. There wasn’t enough room. I had to stare out into the room, and all I could see were tiles, skirt hems, and dirty, scuffed boots.

Males laughed and shouted and brayed, their voices echoing off the low ceiling. The scent of liquor, sweat, aggression, and fear seeped under the edge of the sofa, burning my eyes.

The females’ small feet were frozen in place while the males’ boots stomped and dashed and rocked back on their heels.

Wedged so tightly between the underside of the sofa and the cold floor, I couldn’t hear the males’ words, but I understood them all the same. They were taunting the females. Lunging at them to make them shriek. As the fear stench grew thicker and thicker, their laughs boomed louder.

And then something changed. A female screamed in earnest. Then another. Feet dashed. Shouts rose, followed by guttural snarls. A rubber sole squeaked on the tile. The swampy air thickened with copper and salt and terror and pain and rage.

I didn’t dare close my eyes.

A yard away, Iona Ryan fell to the floor by the leg of the pool table, cradling her left arm. It was hanging from the socket wrong. A male approached her, looming, squatting—

Aunt Nola crashed to her knees, right next to my head, holding her dress to her chest. It had been rent, collar to hem. She hovered there, bent over, shoulders hunched, her side pressed against the sofa, blocking me, shielding me while she shook, head tucked to her chin, arms tight to her ribs, protecting her organs.

The weeping and screaming and laughter whipped toward some kind of crescendo, and something inside me screamedrun, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t protect my soft parts; I couldn’t even turn my head.

And then a distant door slammed into a wall as it was flung open. New shouts filled the air.

“Fire!”

“The commissary is on fire!”

Declan Kelly and his favored males rumbled in disbelief.

“It’s burning down!”

They ran, stomping up the stairs, their frenzy put on hold like it was nothing at all.

The silence that they left in the basement resonated like an aftershock. It singed like ozone.

The males’ heavy footsteps trekked across the ceiling, tracking away toward the front of the lodge. Aunt Nola rose to her knees, and I could see the others’ bare feet as they picked through the clothes and shoes strewn about like they’d been caught in a tornado.

They moved slowly, silently, like haunts. Aunt Nola staggered to her feet and wandered a few steps away, so I could see.

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