Page 26 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

The knife slipped from my fingers, clattering to the floor.

“Shit,” Abertha muttered under her breath.

“What have we here?” the male said. He bared his teeth and licked a canine. It wasn’t human. It was wolf.

Run, my wolf urged me with all her might. Run, run, run.

“I can’t,” I whispered back. “My legs don’t work.”

Abertha moved to block me. The male laughed. “I have enough for you, too, witch,” he said as his hand went to his belt buckle.

“Now or never, Annie-girl,” Abertha hissed.

I looked down at the knife. So did the male.

Run, my wolf begged.

I bent. Curled my little fingers around the knife’s hilt. The male came for me.

Abertha shielded my body with hers, covering every part of me except for my arm. That, she tugged forward, covering my small hand with hers, squeezing it like a vise, and with an impossible strength, she lunged and stabbed the male with the knife in my hand, tearing my shoulder from its socket as she plunged the blade into his stomach. Hot blood spurted over our hands.

The male blinked down at the red stain blossoming on his shirt.

Abertha bolted for the stairs, towing me by my blood-soaked hand, dragging my entire body when my legs buckled, faster than I’d ever have imagined she could.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the male. He was still standing. He glanced up from the knife, his gaze narrowing on us, his gray face twisting into a howling maw, his fangs descending.

“Abertha, he’s not dying in agony.”

He was wrapping his clawed hands around the hilt.

“Life lesson—magic doesn’t always work, but your feet do,” Abertha huffed. “Run, Annie-girl. Run!”

We scrambled up the last few stairs, tearing through the lodge and out through the kitchens, fleeing into the dark woods away from the eerie, red sky over the burning commissary.

I take a long sip of my cooling tea, bringing myself back to the present.

Until today, I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast and far as I did when I escaped that basement. After that night, I became some kind of burrowing animal, living life hiding in plain sight with my eyes screwed shut. But I can’t hide from this.

I mated a wolf from Last Pack. His seed is inside me right now. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. Not yet.

“I can’t have a pup,” I say. A babe would be vulnerable. It would need me. I can hardly take care of myself, and I’m definitely not strong enough to protect it from this world.

Abertha doesn’t even blink. “Are you sure?”

Am I sure? What choice do I have? You mate, and then, unless you get really, really lucky, you have a pup. And I’m not lucky.

I have heard whispers, though. Some females don’t keep their babes. I don’t even know where I heard that, or how I know, but I picked it up somewhere, the same way I learned how to pitch my voice when a male is angry and that when a male tells you to smile, that’s a threat and he’s dangerous.

There are ways.

The crone would know them.

“I can’t—” The words stick in my throat. I can’t be a mother. But I can’t make the choice not to be, either. I don’t have that power. I don’t want it. I’m scared, too scared for any of it.

I want my mother. I want her back.

“Can’t what?” Abertha asks, so very gently.

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