Page 34 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

Sometimes I find babies in the wildflower field or the woods. Bunnies. Squirrels. My wolf always hunts them, ferreting out their nests. Not to eat. She just likes to watch them nestle. The same with Una’s baby. My wolf likes to watch him kick and coo. She stares, and then later, when we’re alone at home, she paces, restless.

I pick up my jar of dead bees and tumble it, counting out another two minutes in my head.

I’m actually calmer than my wolf these days, now that Una is the alpha female. We don’t have to hide our phones or the business or our trips to Chapel Bell anymore.

Of course, my brain has no trouble finding other things to worry about, but there’s one hundred percent less sneaking around in my life now, and that’s made a huge difference. My stomach ulcer is healing. I can eat Old Noreen’s chili again.

I put the bee jar down and set up a filter in a funnel. Then, batting away the few bees that escaped the reaping, I screw a mesh lid on the jar and empty the dead bee water through the funnel. This is the part of varroa mite testing when the rubber hits the road. I take the filter, hold it up to the light, and examine it carefully. Nothing. Sweet.

I breathe a little easier. Varroa mites are the stuff of nightmares. They feed on the bee larvae and pupae, and then when the bees emerge as adults, they’re missing chunks of their bodies and wings. You can treat for the mites, but that doesn’t do the bees flying around with holes eaten out of them much good.

Justus’s pointy wolf ears have jagged edges like they’ve been bitten. That’s my mate’s name—Justus. I finally learned it during last year’s failed kidnapping attempt. He tried to trade for Kennedy, Mari, and me, but he acted like he didn’t know me. Like I was no one to him.

He recognized me, though. I saw the hate before he shuttered his face and focused elsewhere.

Sad female.

Coward.

A female like you would make weak, spindly young.

The voice recites her favorite chorus. I let her. If I argue with her, she shouts over me.

After the showdown between Killian and the Byrnes at the old dens, when Justus shifted and ran, I saw his ears, and they looked chewed up. He looked rougher than he did when we mated. Bigger. More weathered. More scarred.

In my memory, he wasn’t young when I met him, but seeing him now, I realize he hadn’t even grown to his full height then. He was Fallon’s age when we mated. Maybe eighteen or nineteen.

He’s different now. Hard. Unforgiving.

I think a lot about his wolf, every time I have my tea on the back porch and look at the garden. I imagine him with his flower antennae, so worried about what was frightening me.

Does his wolf hate me, too?

My heart beats faster, and my hands shake as I unscrew the jar and walk over to the compost to toss the bee carcasses on the pile.

Regardless, the man doesn’t want you.The voice reassures me.Sad female. Coward. You would make weak, spindly young.

He’s the alpha of the Last Pack. I am his best—likely only—chance for pups, but when he saw me, he acted like he didn’t know me.

I felt him in my chest, though. He is still so angry, angrier than he was when we mated. Despite the weakness of the bond, his rageseared.

I didn’t know his name before that day. In my head, I called him the Last Pack wolf, and as soon as I thought about him, I thought about something else. And it worked. For a long time. Until Una mated Killian, and everything changed.

Kennedy is allowed to train and patrol now. The traitors who Killian let live are now on kitchen duty, so I’m expected to sit with the pack at meals. Una insists I sit with her, so I have a front row seat to the pups wandering up after dinner to show her the treasures they’ve found during the day or to give her baby crafts they’ve made for him—flower crowns and rattles made from pebbles in used plastic bottles.

And I’m happy for her—Iam—but by the time I can excuse myself without causing concern, I’m sliced to ribbons. No one will ever love me like Killian loves Una, and I’ll never have my own baby to love like Una loves Raff.

But you’re safe. The voice is stubborn. Argumentative. Right.

I am safe, and it feels like cold, dirty dish water.

There’s no sense in dwelling on what can’t be changed. I shake it off and rinse out the jar now empty of dead bees. The sun is inching closer to the peaks of Salt Mountain. It’s time to go home to change before I head for the lodge. I don’t need to rush, but I should get going.

There’s never a need to rush anymore. There’s no one at the cabin hogging the bathroom. The days of us racing each other to the bathroom are over. Kennedy usually showers at the pack’s gym.

Why am I so moody and mopey today? It’s not that time of the month. I just finished my period.

I shake it off again, for real this time, and dry the testing jar before tucking it neatly in the metal toolbox where I keep the testing supplies. I peel off my beekeeping gear, hang it up on the hook on the back of the shed door, and tug my long skirt back on over the bike shorts I wear in the suit. The cool, early evening air is bliss on my sticky skin.

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