Page 89 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

I overreacted. My brain leapt to the worst-case scenario. Like always. My cheeks burn hotter. “I’m sorry,” I say.

He opens his mouth, and I know he’s going to tell me not to apologize—which is what Kennedy and Ivo and Tye and everyone always says when I act like they’re monsters because they had the audacity to come upon me around a corner without warning or ask me for something from across the lodge in a loud voice.

For some reason, I don’t want Justus to sweep it under the rug like everyone else.

I tighten my grip on his hands. “I get jumpy,” I tell him. Yeah. And the surface of the sun is a little hot. I exhale. “I worry a lot. I get anxious.”

To his credit, he doesn’t sayno shit. Instead, he bends forward and presses his forehead to mine. “Maybe one day you’ll tell me why.”

I would shake my head, but I’m held in place with the pressure of his noggin.

“I would die before I let anything hurt you,” he says, so softly that the warmth of his breath hardly reaches my lips.

“I don’t want you to die.”

He squeezes my fingers, drawing my arms to his side, and runs his temple down my cheek and along my chin. Scent marking me. I’m so hot and trembly. I feel like my knees are going to give out.

“Then how about I worry with you?” His nose brushes my jawline, right in front of my ear, and every nerve in my body jolts awake.

“I worry enough for ten people,” I say. “I have it handled.”

“I worry,” he says.

I’ve heard this a hundred times before, too. People love to tell you about their anxieties and how they conquered them, and the only time it hasn’t both irritated and depressed me was when Kennedy told me how weed gummies helped her get over her fear of accidentally shifting into her he-wolf in public, and she followed the confession up by sharing one with me, and we spent the night watching videos of cats being weird on her phone.

“Yeah?” On the one hand, it’s past time I changed the subject, but on the other, his beard is brushing along my cheek, and it’s scratchy and comforting and strange and lovely, and I don’t want him to stop.

“I worry that something will happen to me, and I won’t be here to protect my people. Or we’ll be attacked, and I won’t be strong enough, or the sickness will come back, and like last time, there won’t be anything I can do.”

Oh. Wow. His voice is even, but it’s deadly serious. I worry about bad things happening to the people I love and not being strong enough all the time, but no oneexpectsme to protect them. I’m not an alpha.

“Is that why you don’t want your pack to call you alpha?” I ask before I can stop myself. I don’t mean to suggest he’s scared. I brace myself. Males don’t like you to insinuate they’re less than, even if you don’t mean it.

“I guess,” he answers, completely unfazed. “I don’t believe that one of us is somehow superior than the others or destined to lead, but I’d let them call me alpha all day, if it made them happy, if it didn’t make us weaker as a pack.”

“What do you mean, weaker?”

“My decisions aren’t any better than anyone else’s. Well, they’re better than Alroy’s, but other than that—I’m just as shortsighted, just as prone to careless mistakes as the others. Ilose my temper. I miscalculate. My pride makes me stupid.” He pauses there and flashes me a look I can’t quite understand.

He goes on. “And the second Iletthem call me alpha, half of them are going to stop disagreeing with me, and there won’t be anyone to point out when my ideas are bad. Or dangerous. A lot of them will rely on my judgment, and theirs will get rusty. If you know our history, you know what can happen.”

“Whose history?” I know more about Moon Lake’s than Quarry Pack, and that’s very little. I know nothing at all about Last Pack.

Justus takes my hand, and we continue our walk. “Ours. Shifters in this part of the world.”

“We didn’t really learn about that at the Academy. Except for Broderick Moore and how he led Moon Lake Pack out of the dens.”

Justus snorts. “Nothing about First Pack?”

“Who is First Pack?”

He smiles ruefully. “You call us the Last Pack. We call us First Pack.”

“Oh. No. Not much. Just how you wouldn’t leave the dens.”

He laughs, and there’s a bitter edge to it. “That’s more or less the story.”

We’ve gotten to the pups’ sycamore playground. It’s abandoned. There are still quite a few dancers by the big bonfire, but I don’t see any little ones running around. They must’ve been herded to bed.

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