Page 93 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

Red blood.

The voice hurls bombs at me, dredging deep in my memories, like horror is fuel, like that’s what I run on.

Camphor.

Rattling lungs.

A white sheet almost flat except for the knobs of Ma’s knees and the ridges of her hips.

The voice scrapes the very bottom.

Declan Kelly at our door, smirking, with a palmful of fangs. “Sorry, Aileen. This is all that’s left of him. Had to pick these out of my leg. The rest of him is in my belly.”

Ma falling to her knees as Declan Kelly belched.

Why am I back here again? I’ve already lived through all this. I grew up. I’ve come all this way, miles and miles from where I started, and here I am, fleeing, butback, notaway from, and I can’t stop. My momentum has the force of a super magnet.

The trail levels, and I find my stride again, even though I’m favoring my right leg since my left knee is scraped and bleeding. I’m not running as fast as I was, but Justus isn’t gaining on me. The trees become sparse, fields of wildflowers opening on either side. Their stalks and new buds are dark outlines in the moonlight.

Where am I even going? I can’t outrun my own body.

But I can’t stop, either. The voice has hijacked my control center—I don’t even know where my wolf has gotten to—and I’ve never learned the trick of calming myself down. Box breathing, balloon breathing, visualization, counting items, listing colors, naming a thing I can see, smell, hear, taste, and feel, plunging my face in cold water to stimulate my vagus nerve—I can panic through it all.

I’m doing it right now, slow jogging through this field of bluebells and Jack-in-the-pulpits and Dutchman’s breeches. I can see the past clear as a picture—me, out of my mind, naked in the dirt, ass up in the air. I can smell my shame, hear the river, taste the blood from where my teeth bit through my cheek.

I can’t do it again.

My fear spikes, the scent charring my nostrils. I trip over my own feet, cry out, and pitch forward.

A howl rings out. Something darts around me.

I land hard, face down, on a huge heap of fur, the air knocked from my lungs.

Freeze!

I do not need to be told.

I’m lying across a wolf. Justus’s wolf. He’s on his side. I’m sprawled on top of him. He slid underneath me while I fell like a baseball player stealing home. He’s very quiet and very still except for his flank that lifts and lowers me as he breathes.

I tilt my head so I can see his face. He’s already craning his neck to look at me, his soulful wolf eyes watchful and guarded.

I haven’t seen this wolf in years. A fist squeezes my heart.

He caught me a goose. He made himself a pair of alien antennae out of sunflowers. He sat beside me on the porch. Before he figured out what was wrong with me, he tried to hunt down my bad mental health.

I’ve missed him, and I didn’t even know it.

With his eyes locked on mine, he slowly rolls under me so he’s on his back, so I’m lying on soft belly. He slowly sprawls his legs in an X, rests his head back on the ground, and lolls his long tongue out of the side of his mouth. He’s pretending he’s dead. Like I killed him when I fell.

I giggle.

He snuffles and picks his head back up so he can see me. Wolves can’t smile, not really, but it sure seems like it, with his golden eyes dancing.

“Hi,” I say, softly, and try to push myself up without squishing his belly by accident.

He rumbles, lifts his head, and licks my face, chin to forehead. Right up, in, and over my nose.

“Oh, gross!” I roll off him, landing on my butt. He scrambles to his paws, backs off maybe three feet, and sits on his haunches. Was he always this huge?

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