Page 46 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

To make you suffer. To kill you. Run now while you have the chance. Before it’s too late.

The voice keeps up her ranting, but somehow, it feels almost…obligatory. Like even she wants to know what happens next.

If I were in my skin, there’s no way I’d be going along with this without a fight. I’d be curled in a ball or tearing through the undergrowth.

But I’m not me. I’m my wolf, and whatever they say, the man and the beast definitely aren’t one and the same. My wolf is a hundred times braver than me.

“Ready, sweetling?” Justus asks, cracking his neck to finish his morning warm-up. “I’ll catch you something to eat along the way. How about a fresh fish?”

My wolf wrinkles her nose. She’s not a fan of fish.

“I tell you what—in a few hours, we’ll pass a supply cache. There should be flint. If you can hold out that long, I’ll roast you a bird.”

My wolf rumbles happily.

“Or a snake. Whatever comes to hand.” He smiles.

My wolf’s rumble turns displeased. His smile widens. “All right, then. I’ll catch you a plump, juicy bird.”

She rewards him with a yip, and excited by the prospect, she confidently takes off southward.

He whistles before he scoops her up, so she isn’t startled. “Not that way, pip. We’re headed north.”

She yaps at him for awhile so that he knows she knew that, but he should have told her before she set off half-cockedanyway, and she’s hungry, and she doesn’t need him to carry her, but she’ll let him for now.

Every so often, he murmurs soothingly. “All right then, pip. Just as you say. Not long now. We’re making good time.”

He’s so different than he was when we mated, but what did I know about him, really? All I had to judge by are those horrible moments beside the river that I’ve tried so hard to scrub from my memory.

At Moon Lake Academy, we learned in science that a memory forms when your thoughts travel a particular neural pathway over and over again. I figured if I didn’t let my brain do that, I could cut the thread, and all the bad things that happened in the past would float off into oblivion, but it didn’t work. I’m so careful not to remember, but the bad memories loiter right at the edge of my awareness as if they’re locked in orbit by the gravity of what happened.

I don’t want to relive my mating. I refuse. But was he like this at all back then?

He was almost feral, wasn’t he? Rough and cruel and single-minded. He hurt me. Took what he wanted.

My head aches, and my wolf squirms.

“Restless, eh?” he says and sets her gently on her feet.

She dashes ahead. The landscape is changing. We’re following a deer path through meadows dotted with clusters of scraggly pines that rise from sprawling thickets.

She darts around a bush and hides, peeking behind to watch Justus. He hikes past, unconcerned, ignoring her and continuing northward. She lets him get a few yards and then races after him.

He strolls on, glancing down at her, bemused. “You’ve got a lot of energy for a wolf who slept rough,” he says approvingly.

Does that mean he isn’t accustomed to sleeping in a dirt dugout? Doesn’t the Last Pack live in dens?

The question spurs a dozen others. The textbooks made it sound like Last Pack spends most of their time as wolves, but Justus hasn’t shifted yet, except for his ears and fangs. Why is that?

And how does he keep his ears pointy? The low-ranking kids at Moon Lake would do that, too, wearing a tail or claws or chest fur while in human form. It was frowned upon, but I think the powers-that-be kind of liked it, too, since it gave them another reason to sneer at the ones they called “scavengers.”

And why is it that Moon Lake pretty much forces its low-ranking pups to go to the Academy, as well as pups from Moon Lake, Salt Mountain, and North Border, but they leave the Last Pack alone?

Are they really as uneducated as everyone says? When we played “Last Pack” as pups, we’d always grunt and speak in monosyllables. Where did we get that idea? Justus is just as articulate as any Quarry Pack male. Maybe more so, honestly. We were probably imitating our own males with the grunts.

I’m still terrified—about ferals and his pack and what if something happens to him and I’m left alone—but for the first time in maybe forever, I’m also curious.

It’s a good feeling. Different. But good.

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