Page 61 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

“Why not?” he asks. His brow knits. He’s serious.

“They’re your belongings.” I might not have acted like it, but I was raised right. I know to respect other people’s privacy.

“But you’re my mate.”

“But not really, though, right?” Why did I say that? I don’t want to go there. Ever. Certainly not right now while I’m sitting on his bed, post-panic attack, wearing a sheet.

Heat sears my cheeks. I want to close my shutters and shut my door and turn the locks. Tuck myself into my shell.

My gaze dives to the ground. The flush seeping across my chest is so intense that it heats my chin. I don’t want to talk about him and me.

Right?

So why did I say something? It’s like my deepest fears are in charge of this conversation.

“This is real to me,” Justus says, his voice low and even, not accusatory or angry. He leaves it at that, falling silent.

I could stop talking, too, drop the subject and shrink into myself until he gets bored and turns his attention to something else. That’s what I do, right? Hide.

“But you don’t want it to be,” I say instead, and my face bursts into flame.

Justus holds himself very still while he answers. “I don’t want my mate to fear me. Or hate me. Or hate my pack.”

“I don’t hate your pack.” I blink up, accidentally meeting his eye. Instantly, I’m snagged, a fish on a hook, dry drowning.

“Just me, then?” His lip quirks, wry and bitter.

“Not you either,” I whisper. “I don’t know you.”

“Can’t you feel me?” He presses his palm to the center of his chest. My hand rises to cover my heart, mirroring the motion.

The bond is there, aching so very, very faintly, deep in the recesses of my mind with all the other ghosts and bogeymen I’ve shoved down there. And yet, somehow, when I focus on it, the gash the bond makes in my soul is still pink and fresh, the kind of walking wound that makes you fixate on the thinness of your skin and how impossible it is that something so fragile holds all your guts and bones together.

“A little,” I say.

“But you can feel that I won’t hurt you, right? I didn’t ever want to hurt you. Or frighten you. I’m sorry that I did. I—I was rough, and—I didn’t understand that—”

He’s talking about the nest beside the river. No, no, no. I don’t want to talk about that. Not with him. Not ever.

“I’ve never heard of any of these before,” I interrupt, scooting over to the apple crate and picking up the book with the sun on the cover. I thumb through the pages. “What are they about?”

He’s thrown, but again, only for a second. “That one? Mostly about how once an individual claims to own his territory within pack lands, everything goes to hell.”

“So you don’t own this place?”

“I stay here,” he says.

“But it’syourden.”

“No, it isn’t.”

I sniff to check, but no, I’m right—it smells like him and no one else. “Whose is it then?”

“Yours.” He flashes another slight smile.

“You’re playing.” I pull my heels closer to my body. I don’t like being teased.

“Dens belong to females. It’s a male’s honor and duty to provide shelter for his mate and their family, the elders and pups. He can stay, too, if he’s welcome.”

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