Page 67 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

“How dotheyget them?” Don’t Last Pack live totally isolated?

“Swap meets. Flea markets.”

“Humanswap meets and flea markets.”

Justus shrugs. “Better humans than the lost packs.”

“Lost packs?”

He shifts uncomfortably and glances up. “That’s what we call you. Quarry Pack, Moon Lake, North Border, Salt Mountain. Like you call us ‘last’. We call you lost.”

“Why lost?”

“Why last?” he shoots back.

“Because your pack is the last one to still live in dens like the ancestors did.”

His mouth quirks. “‘Lost’because your people don’t know how to be what we are anymore. You’re losing the ability to shift. Your pups only shift if they’re traumatized, and most of you’ve forgotten how to balance the forms. ‘Lost’ because you want to be human. You keep your wolves caged and only let them out on full moons like they’re dogs that you walk. Because you don’t know any more what pack means.”

“What do you mean ‘balance the forms’?” I ask.

He flashes a small smile, and before I can blink, his beard turns to fur, his face becomes a snout, his eyes rotate to slant at the diagonal, and his nose turns into a black nub. He grins, baring sharp white fangs and black gums.

I yip, startled. He cracks his jaws wide and lets his long pink tongue loll out of his mouth for a second before he morphs his face back into a man’s.

“Did your wolf stick his tongue out at me?”

He grins. His teeth haven’t turned back. “We did.”

“We?”

His expression grows serious, and he switches to that teacher voice he used when he was talking about how shifter packsshouldn’t have alphas. “Your people have such mistaken ideas about the wolf. You try to keep him in submission, same as you do your females and pups and elders. You act like he’s a costume. Can you even hear him?”

I move the needle case to the pallet and draw my knees to my chest. I don’t like how his criticism feels. It’s not entirely unfair, I guess, but I just let him closer, and he thanked me by telling me that I’m bad at wolfing.

Part of me wants to shut my mouth, toss his yarn back in the hatbox, and pack myself up as small as I can, but the hard ball of spite forming in my gut won’t let me.

“My wolf tells me to run and hide. That’s it. That’s what she says. Constantly. Why would I want to listen to that?”

Immediately, his expression changes as if he got lost in his own bullshit for a second and then suddenly remembered he’s in a two-person conversation. Kennedy does the exact same thing when she goes off on Quarry Pack males. She’ll be bitching about how they can never truly understand our perspective because they’re so much stronger and then realize mid-sentence that her very legitimate complaints also apply to herself because of the killer he-wolf inside her.

He smiles ruefully. “My pack always say ‘you have so many ideas.’” He lowers his head ever so slightly. “It’s not a compliment.”

The ball of spite dissolves, and my belly warms. I feel kind of low for making him feel bad about what he said—I was playing on his pity, and I despise pity—but I’m also surprised and delighted that it worked.

If a female pushes back on what a Quarry Pack male says, or tries to make him feel bad, he doubles down. Every time. Maybe later he’ll bring a peace offering if she holds a grudge and he wants her sweet, but he’ll never, ever show neck in the moment like Justus just did.

I don’t know what to say, so I resettle myself so I’m sitting crisscross and draw the needle case back onto my lap so I can trace the stitches with my finger.

Justus’s shoulders relax, and he nudges the hatbox toward me again. “There’s one thing left,” he says.

I guess we’re dropping the subject for now. I look back in the box. There’s a PlayStation controller at the very bottom. Just one, sun-bleached and more than a little worse for wear. A knob is missing.

I take it out, glancing around the den in case I missed the TV and console—and electricity.

Justus tenses a little again. “I saw you with one of those at your cabin. I wasn’t quite sure what it was for, but one of the pups found it out on a hunt, so I traded for it.”

I turn it in my hands, that warmth in my belly heating up again. “What did you trade for it?”

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