The Tyrant Alpha’s Rejected Mate (The Five Packs Book 1)

I wake up with my left side numb, my face plastered to a wood plank with drool. The sky is lightening over the foothills. Down in the commons, elders are stirring. A baby cries.

I feel hungover as shit, but I haven’t drank a drop.

As mysteriously as it hit me, the compulsion has eased. I can leave if I want. I swing my legs over the side of the porch, crack my back, circle my shoulders.

Una is sleeping. She doesn’t say much when she’s awake, but she was mumbling and cooing all night long. Except for when she woke up and checked to see if I was still out here. My wolf woke me. He wanted me to make a move. He doesn’t realize we both got shut down hard.

Obviously, I said the wrong thing. I don’t claim to know how to sweet talk. I don’t have to, and I prefer to be straightforward.

My cock is hard as shit, worse than morning wood. I can scent Una from here. She smells drowsy and soft like she’s fresh from the oven. Her essence wafts through the cabin walls, through the gaps in the door and window frames.

When’s the last time we had the maintenance crew up here to check the insulation? We’re not so flush with cash that we can afford to heat the whole damn camp.

And she must get cold when the wind blows down from the hills.

She needs to be in our bed.

Reaching for us when she wakes up, hungry and demanding like she was for that too brief moment last night. If we’d been in a safe place—my cabin or up in the dens where I could sense an enemy approach—I would’ve had her riding my cock before I could fuck things up with my mouth. But my wolf and I are in perfect accord on one thing. Her safety comes above all else.

And we’re not gonna piss her off anymore than we already have. If possible.

I scrub my face. What the hell is going on?

She’s not my mate. I would know. I’m sure as hell not in love. I never have been. I fight. I lead. I don’t sniff after females like Tye.

If I were to fall in love, she’d be an alpha. A badass with big ol’ titties.

Una’s no badass. I mean, she’s all right. Even though she kind of went nuts there for a minute, she’s got good sense. For years, she’s kept the drama to a minimum and the other lone females off the radar. And I’m grateful for it.

Three things keep me up at night—Moon Lake moving to usurp our territory, Last Pack deciding to join the shifter circuit, and the lone female cabin.

If Moon Lake makes a move, we’re gonna lose males, and we’re not guaranteed a win. They stockpile human weapons, and they see nothing wrong with using them.

If the Last Pack starts fighting, we’re gonna have to find a new livelihood. Rumor says they can all flip-shift. Not any day at any time like me, but as a hat trick. Three times in a match would be all it takes to beat every single one of our males.

And if some drunk night when I’m away, Lochlan or one of his buddies decides to rally the unmated males, head up to the lone female cabin, and take what they want? What Eamon and a lot of the other elders have been telling them for years is their due?

Well, I put ‘em all in one place, didn’t I? Like fish in a barrel.

That’s why if I’m away, Tye or Ivo is here. And at the end of the day, they’re safer together with Una to keep an eye on them. She’s a good packmate. Keeps her head down. Does her work. She’s solid.

But she’s not my mate.

Yet, for some reason, all of a sudden, I want to fuck her so bad I can taste it. The mate bond is deeper than that, though. Right?

The bond is a flower, rooted in two souls, blossoming with the first onset of a female’s heat. Or some such shit. I don’t pay a lot of attention during worship.

I need answers. Which means I gotta go see the crone. Not my favorite thing. She speaks in riddles, and she always wants me to drink tea.

I clear my throat, and Gael trots over from where he’s been hanging out in the trees behind the outbuilding across the way. I’ve smelled him there for the past hour or so.

“Tye send you?” I ask him in a low voice. I don’t want to wake the females.

“I volunteered.”

I nod at his face. “You look like you got run over by a Mack truck.” His nose isn’t gonna be the same. Looks better now. It’s got character.

“Worth it,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Now I get served first at meals, don’t I?” He grins. A few teeth haven’t grown back yet. “My drumstick and leg days are over. It’s only breasts and thighs from here on out.”

I see he’s gotten chattier since his elevation in rank. That’s gonna be annoying.

I stand, catching the shawl before it falls. “I’ve got shit to do. Watch the cabin.”

“Okay.” He goes to make himself comfortable on the porch. My wolf growls.

This is our territory now.

“From over there.” I point back to the woods he was skulking in.

“Seriously?”

My wolf rumbles. I don’t bother answering. Gael bends his neck and scrambles back to where he came from, holding up his jeans. I don’t see how pants can be so skinny in the leg and droopy at the waist. Kid needs a belt.

And I gotta take a piss. My wolf is fine with spraying all over the flowerbed, but I’m not an animal. I relieve myself in the bushes beside the cabin before I head home for a change of clothes.

After coffee, I rub one out in the shower. It feels wrong to think about Una, disrespectful somehow, but I can’t help it. She’s in my head. Her soft lips. Quiet whimpers. How hard she mashed her tits against my chest and how tight she wrapped her arms around my neck. She wanted it. She needed it from me.

I come hard, jizz splattering on the tile. I gotta splash a few times to rinse it all down the drain.

Fates, a few minutes necking with Una Hayes was the most intense sexual experience of my life. Given, I’ve never actually fucked a female, but I’ve gotten my dick sucked plenty, and I’ve been getting hand jobs from alpha groupies since junior high. And it’s fine. It takes the edge off. But it’s never been like this.

I’ve never wanted to be inside so bad before. And I wanted. Hell, I needed. And then I opened my dumb mouth.

But she’s not my mate.

Though I’m less certain of that each time I think it.

I’ve got good reasons for not getting my dick wet. It’d fuck with pack rank. Sucking cock is one thing—not much in the way of bragging rights there—but if I favor a female with my seed? She’s not gonna shut up about that. Cheryl would feel the need to put her back in her place. It’d be a whole thing.

And our relations with the other packs aren’t so chill that I can be rutting their females without certain expectations arising.

And also, I’ve never felt the need. Until now.

I want to take Una Hayes to my bedroom, watch her build a nest on my bed, fuss and straighten and toss sheets around. And then I want her to present. Call to me over her shoulder. Press her round tits with the saucer nipples to the mattress and hike that thick ass in the air.

I want my cock slick her with her cream. I want to dig my fingers into those hips, leave red half-moons in her pale skin as I drag her back to take me.

I want to feel how hot she is inside. How tight. How those muscles feel when they clench. When they spasm.

Oh, Fate. I gotta get out of here before I end up jerking off again.

I don’t bother with anything besides brushing my teeth. I throw on some shorts and a T-shirt and jog halfway to the crone’s cottage, working out the kinks in my muscles still lingering from a night on the ground. The morning sun has burned off the dew, but there’s a mugginess to the air.

When the woods thicken, I strip and shift, hanging my clothes from a branch. Immediately, my wolf scents Una. It’s stale. Days old. Disturbing.

It’s too faint for a human’s sense of smell, but to my wolf, it’s a neon arrow.

He follows his nose, up a mossy bank, through oaks with trunks wound in ivy, down into a gulch filled with a blackberry thicket.

What was she doing out here? It’s on the way to the crone’s cottage, but it’s not the direct route, and the stickers are impenetrable. Bushes are crushed where she tunneled through. There are tufts of bloody gray fur stuck to some thorns.

My fur ruffles, and I bare my fangs. Uneasiness roils my guts.

Something bad happened here. Fear still taints the air. And shame.

I don’t want to see, but I have to.

I crouch and wriggle down the path she made.

Did she come here to lick her wounds? It’s not a smart hidey-hole for an injured animal—no water, no cover from the elements, and all the damn thorns—but her wolf is not the brightest.

A picture flashes in my head of the little gray creature licking her hindquarters, ignoring me while I balanced on Gael’s carcass. Her indifference pissed me off and calmed me down at the same time. Despite my rage, I could still sense her fear. She was being daring. And her fear made me rein it in.

So maybe she’s not dumb, exactly. Maybe she’s the kind of brave that looks like stupidity from a certain angle. I’ve got more than a few fighters who are the same. They’re my best fighters.

The narrow passage she made opens to almost a burrow. The scents smack my nose. Heat. Slick. Blood.

Fuck.

My wolf licks the matted stems. He howls. He circles the nest, nosing everything, flustered. Upset.

It’s been strange lately, his feelings separate from mine, but in this, we’re of one mind.

This is wrong.

There’s a sense of loss. A memory that floats just out of reach. A word stuck on the tip of our tongue.

She was alone here, in pain and need, and where were we?

We want to fight someone, and there’s nothing but stickers and crushed berries collecting flies.

We want to go back to Una. Assure ourselves she’s safe now. No permanent harm done. But we need to know the truth.

She’s okay. She doesn’t want anything to do with me, and Gael is there. The patrols pass above the cabin on the ridge every quarter hour. Tye and Ivo are in camp. She’s as safe as she always is.

Not enough.

I agree with the wolf. We will fix it. Move her into the commons. And the other lone females, as well. But we need answers now. I need answers.

My wolf could give a shit. He wants Una. Fur or skin. Soft and warm. Quiet and watchful. Unbending. Shy. He wants her scrawny gray wolf with the nervous ears and quivering nose.

I need to talk to the crone.

Go back.

No.

The wolf snarls and howls, but when I don’t bend, he changes tack. He starts digging, furiously scrambling at the dirt, covering the stems soaked in Una’s scent.

Like we’re hiding a crime.

This isn’t right.

But he won’t leave until he’s obliterated the evidence of whatever happened here. And even then, I have to drag him away. He rages at me while I force his paws further from camp, step by step. It’s like dragging a semi.

Then, when we reach the crone’s, for some reason, he chills out. Una’s scent is all over. It’s like it’s coming from the garden somehow, and it isn’t laced with pain. It’s faint and mellow. Sweet.

We didn’t get here a moment too soon. The crone has an electric blue hatchback backed to her front door, and she’s stowing a suitcase in the trunk.

I shift, trotting over to help. She doesn’t need it. The witch has a wiry strength, and I doubt she’s as old as she acts. She hasn’t aged a day in as long as I can remember, and she listens to human music that sounds like it’s made by robots.

Still, you show respect to your elders. Especially to a female with powers.

She’s wearing linen slacks, a classy silk shirt, and gold in her ears and around her neck. Her hair is coiled in a slick bun, not the braid she usually wears.

“Visiting Moon Lake?” I know she’s got a side hustle over there. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’s got herself a cozy cottage in all of the pack lands.

She smirks. “Might be.”

“Did you plan on asking me?” It’s a joke. The crone doesn’t recognize my authority.

“Asking, no. Telling—” She pats my arm. “Also, no.”

“Who’s watching the cat?”

I’ve never actually seen the bugger, but I can smell him. He takes one whiff of me and bolts.

“My girls will keep an eye on them.”

“And who’s gonna keep an eye on your girls?” I know they come up here all the time. I figured it was fine. The crone herself is better protection than my scouts. But maybe I need to rethink that.

We’re almost a mile from the commons, and less than half that from the boundary of Quarry territory.

Strike that maybe. I definitely need to reconsider. At least rework the patrols so they crisscross the crone’s land.

“You will, won’t you?” The crone winks. “A real close eye on one in particular.”

Her amusement doesn’t amuse me, but I don’t let my displeasure show. You can’t dominate the crone. It was the one decent lesson my father taught me. He said witches dance between raindrops. Any male who thinks to control one doesn’t understand nature.

“That’s why I’ve come,” I say.

“I figured. I thought I had a day or two more. I should’ve left last night.” She sighs. “Well. You’re here. I’m busted. Cup of tea?”

“If you’re so inclined.”

Tea’s not my thing, but I’m not gonna be rude.

She leads the way to her front door, and once inside, she throws me a pair of athletic shorts before busying herself building a fire. I make myself comfortable at her kitchen table.

Like the crone, the cottage hasn’t changed from when I was young. My mother used to bring me up here. The females would go out to the shed for some female business, and I’d be left inside with a cookie and a glass of goat’s milk. My mother warned me not to touch anything, but she needn’t have. I felt then like I do now—like an alien on a strange planet. And all the shit could be poisonous. How would I know?

It doesn’t smell like pack in here. It smells like earth. Herbs. Dust and age and wood and sunshine. It confuses the nose, clings to your hair and skin.

If a predator was stalking me, he’d be able to get damn close before I clocked him. That’s dangerous.

I was always happy to leave after my mother had her cup of tea and chat with the crone. After I shifted the first time, she didn’t bring me with her anymore, and that was fine by me.

The crone disrupts my reminiscences by setting a plate with cookies in front of me. Oatmeal. Same as I remember.

She raises a gray eyebrow. “Your favorite, weren’t they?”

I nod.

“What did my mother come here for?” We always left with a small brown bag. I had a child’s lack of curiosity. To be honest, I’m not really sure why I’m wondering now.

“Not my tale to tell.”

“She’s long gone.” Wasting sickness got her in the last wave.

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

It’s my turn to raise an eyebrow. “There are others?”

“Always.” She goes back to the fireplace to hang the kettle.

“You know why I’m here.”

“I do.”

“Is Una Hayes my mate?”

“Did you ask her?”

Did I? I definitely did. Didn’t I?

She said I wasn’t. She agreed with me that she wasn’t. I search my memory for the exact words. It’s never this hard with males. I hate semantics. “I don’t know. She said you fixed it. What does that mean?”

“At the risk of repeating myself—did you ask her?”

I grab a cookie and take a bite. It’s good.

“Is there a reason you’re busting my balls?” I say after swallowing. The crone laughs, and she comes to sit across from me. She breaks a cookie in half and begins nibbling.

“Besides entertainment value?” She leans back in her chair. “I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine first.”

“Fine. Shoot.”

“What do you remember about your first shift?”

“Pain.” It’s a strange question, but I’ve been asked it before. I shifted at nine years old. That’s unheard of, and wolves are nosy.

“What else?”

“Blood. Screams. I thought I went blind for a while.”

“Do you remember what happened before the shift?”

“Not really. It was a normal day.”

“Do you remember after?”

“Nothing. It’s a big blank. Where are you going with this?”

She smiles and rests her hands on the table top. For an old woman’s, they’re smooth and straight. “I’m going to tell you a story. It’s also not my tale to tell, but—” She lifts a shoulder. “Rules are made to be broken, right?”

I disagree, but I nod anyway.

“It’s hard to know where to start.” She sighs.

“How about the beginning?”

“’Beginning’ is subjective, isn’t it?” She looks to me for a response, but philosophy is not my thing.

She sighs. “I guess I could start with a sunny day, a young male playing on the commons, waiting for his friend. Or the night sixteen months earlier when your father snuck into the Fane cabin to take what he felt was his due from his lieutenant’s mate? She was in heat after all. And Fane was at a fight in Moon Lake.”

“You’re talking about Thomas Fane.” That’s Mari’s father, the last male my father put down for moon madness.

“I am.” She eyes me like she expects something. Eventually, I guess when I don’t give her what she’s looking for, she leans to rest her elbows on the table. “I’ll start on the sunny day. Una and Rowan Bell were braiding daisy chains. Rowan was watching her baby cousin Mari. Rowan wanders off home to get a snack.”

She tilts her head. I can picture it, but it’s not in my memory.

“Thomas Fane was getting wasted at the lodge. He was listening to his alpha, your father, brag about his conquests.”

My father was a righteous prick. This isn’t news.

“The alpha’s son—” She waves a hand at me. “He was throwing a ball as high as he could and still catch it, waiting for a friend.”

“I was waiting for Tye.” I catch a glimpse. Hiking the hard old pigskin I’d found in the woods into the blue sky, frustrated to be kept waiting.

“Thomas Fane had enough. He cursed your father and left. Stumbled home. And on his way, he came across a little girl and a baby in a basket.”

My gut knots. My memory offers nothing, but my wolf is alert. On edge. Like he knows what’s coming.

“Fane staggered over and punted the baby’s basket.” The crone sneers in disgust. “He would have stomped his own child to death if not for Una Hayes. She put her little body between Thomas Fane’s wolf and that baby, and she nearly died. She would have.”

Abertha pins me with blazing eyes.

“Except?”

“Except for Killian Kelly. The alpha’s nine-year-old son. He raced to the rescue, and on his way, he shifted for the first time. His wolf was a beast. He rent Thomas Fane limb from limb. It took Declan Kelly and three enforcers to drag him away from the corpse.”

“Bullshit.” That’s the kind of story that gets told at every bonfire. I’ve never heard it before. And I sure as shit don’t remember it happening.

“If the pack knew you shifted before your heat, you’d have a target on your back. Your father knew this. The others wouldn’t wait for him to die to challenge you. And you might have a beast inside you, but in human form, you were seventy pounds soaking wet. Eamon or Dermot or anyone with ambition could’ve easily beat you so many times, no one would’ve looked at you and seen a possible alpha. You’d be out as a contender before you could grow a beard. So your father swore his enforcers to secrecy, and it was never spoken of again.”

“My father would have told me about it.”

“Would he?”

The kettle whistles. The crone rises to take it off the fire.

I don’t think about my father much. He was an asshole. He started me sparring at five and let the males a few years older whale on me. He got off on watching me come back and take them down. He thought he taught me how to recover, and in a way, he did. He put me on the ground plenty before he put me in the ring.

He was always clear that I was to succeed him as alpha. His seed was the strongest. I was his trophy. His belt.

You don’t explain shit to a belt. So, yeah, maybe he wouldn’t have told me.

“How do you know all this? You were there?” The crone avoids the commons like the plague, and everyone is cool with that.

She comes back to the table, setting mismatched tea cups in front of us both. I give her a nod of thanks.

“I see all.” She rounds her eyes, and then she snorts. “Your mother brought you and Una up here afterwards. You were almost dead. You both were.”

I’m surprised my father let her. He was big on rubbing dirt in it.

“Fane didn’t get the chance to leave a mark on you, but your wolf tore you up.”

“He’s a monster.”

The crone uses her spoon to strain the tea bag and then sets it on the saucer. I follow suit and put my thumb through the wet sack. Now there’s flakes in my cup.

“There wasn’t much I could do but treat the pain. There were a few days—” Her eyes grow distant. “We didn’t think you’d make it.”

“But I recovered.” I always do.

“You did. But you weren’t the same.”

“First blood changes a male.” It is known.

She shakes her head. “No, that’s not what I’m talking about. You weren’t the same as other wolves anymore. It was as if to let him out, you had to consume him. Become one with him.”

“The wolf and man are one.” It’s such a common saying, it’s out of my mouth before I think.

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t bring that bullshit into my house. That’s just how backwards folk justify behaving like animals to each other.”

“Don’t tell the elders that. They’ll burn you at the stake.”

She snorts. “Not a single one of those mouth breathers could catch me when they were in their prime.”

“No doubt.” I’ve seen her wolf. She’s sleek and silver, and she’s got uncommonly sharp fangs.

“What I’m trying to say is that I thought it’d undo. Repair in good time. I thought the Fates would prevail. But I was wrong. You aren’t like other males.”

“Yeah. I’m a flip-shifter.”

“I’m not talking about that. You’re—” Her face scrunches like she’s searching for the right words. “You’re getting in your own way.”

“Yeah? Maybe so, but I’ve done all right so far.” I abandon the tea and lean back.

“Have you?” The crone sinks back in her chair, mimicking my posture. “Is everything right?”

What kind of philosophical bullshit is that?

“Listen, I came with a question. Are you gonna answer it? Is Una Hayes my mate?”

“You honestly can’t tell.” Her brow creases. There’s pity in her gray eyes. “Yes. She was.”

Every muscle tightens, and I push back, the chair screeching on the hard wood. “What do you mean—was?”

“Sounds like she told you. I pulled the mate bond out of her.”

I bound to my feet. “You what?”

My wolf is choking my voice. The words come out a garbled growl.

The crone doesn’t move. My rage fills the room, clogs my own nose, but she’s unaffected. She takes a slow sip of her tea.

“You knew this. She told you she was your mate. You rejected her. She told you I fixed it. You must have found her nest in the woods. I can scent traces of her heat on you. You know all of this. But you’re deaf to it. Because you are getting in your own way.”

My clenched fists shake. Fur has sprouted up my spine, and my bones are stretching, my muscles swelling.

“Your wolf recognizes his mate,” she says.

“I am my wolf.”

The crone tuts. “Don’t start lying to yourself now, Alpha. Your wolf and you are like that mutt Eamon lets his mate keep in the backyard. You coexist.”

“Why didn’t I feel the bond when she shifted?”

“Do you let yourself feel anything?”

I do. Every nerve in my body is screaming. I have to wade through the thoughts whirling in my brain.

“You pulled the mate bond out of her?” I spit the question through elongated fangs.

“What would you have had me do? You scented her nest. She was in pain.”

“You had no right.”

She laughs, and it is bitter. “Don’t talk to me of rights. Una claimed you, and did you stop for a second to consider someone else knew a truth you didn’t? You’ve grown arrogant, Alpha. You think you can’t move this pack forward because they’re too stubborn, but pup, you need to attend to the mote in your own eye.”

“I didn’t come for a lecture.”

“You came for me to tell you what Una already did. Why take my word over hers?”

My back teeth clench so hard they ache. “You do not have the right to take my mate from me.”

“You have no claim over something you so carelessly threw away.”

“Put the bond back.” I instill each word with alpha command.

“I don’t know how.”

My wolf howls, shaking the rafters, making himself known.

The crone narrows her eyes. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t do it.”

“Put it back!” I slam the table. The tea cups rattle, and a crack appears in the solid wood.

“I can’t, but I’ll make you an offer.” Her lips curl. “I’ll take the bond out of you, too.”

My hand flies to my chest. It feels no different. There’s no pulse, no burning fire like the mated males describe. There’s—silence.

“I assure you, it’s there.” The crone calmly sips her tea. “You can’t feel the blood coursing in your veins, either, but it’s there all the same.”

“No.” The suggestion itself has my claws drawn.

“The bond can only bring you misery. Una doesn’t want you now. And you won’t force her.”

Rage surges through me, and the crone is wrong. I can feel my blood—it’s burning. “I am not my father.”

“No, you’re not. So since you don’t want her, let her go. Let her be happy with someone else.”

“Who?” It’s a snarl.

She waves her hand. “Relax. I’m talking theoretically.”

“You’re playing Fate.”

“And you don’t, Alpha?”

We are silent a moment, glaring at each other as I force my wolf down, compel the rage to abate. The crone is a canny adversary. You don’t go into the ring in a temper.

“There’s no way to reverse what you have done?”

She crosses her legs and smooths her slacks. “I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t know how.”

“You have cost me my young, witch.”

“You cost yourself. It’s your head that’s stuck up your ass.” My wolf rumbles, and she hurries to add, “And we don’t know that for sure. You could always, I don’t know, woo her. The moon works in mysterious ways.”

“Woo her?”

“You know. Dates. Flowers.”

“That’s human shit.”

She shrugs. “They do it at Moon Lake.”

I slowly exhale. “You have done me a grave disservice.”

“Maybe,” she says. “Or maybe I’ve done you a great favor. Go back to camp. Train your fighters. Let a female lure you to her bed. Nothing has to change.”

It’s the first lie she’s told me.

I glance out the window at the packed car. “You’re leaving?”

“I am.”

“Stay gone.”

“You’re exiling me?” She arches an eyebrow.

“I’m advising you. You can come back when my mate’s belly is round with my young.”

She laughs and moves to clear the cups from the table. “You always were confident.”

“I have always had cause to be.”

The crone pauses and cranes her neck to search my eyes. It’s the closest to a bent neck I’ll ever get from her. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what?”

Her brow furrows. “I don’t think I should tell you. I don’t want to get in the way of the Fates.”

I snort. “Crone, you’re full of shit.”

She shrugs. “It’s hard to know what’s helping and what’s meddling. There’s no rule book.”

I have no clue what she’s talking about. There are rules. I made them. And folks don’t need help or meddling. Nine times out of ten, they need a swift kick in the ass.

I don’t think this conversation is going anywhere, though, and my wolf and I are agreed that we’ve been too long away from camp.

“Stay gone,” I tell the crone’s back as she turns on the faucet to rinse our dishes.

“I do what I want,” she tosses over her shoulder.

I know when to tap out, so I toss my shorts on a bench, head out the door, and let my wolf take our skin.

I’m done with this vague, hippie shit. I am going to get my mate. My body warms. A faint, strange pulse tick tocks in my sternum.

My wolf raises his snout as we race back to camp, and I swear words ring in his howls.

Took you long enough.

I’m almost back to camp when another scent stops me in my tracks. It’s rich. Delicious. I bound off through the underbrush, and it doesn’t take long to discover the source.

Darragh Ryan is hauling a fresh kill on his shoulders. A buck. Eight points.

Before I shift, my wolf leaps up and snaps a chunk off the haunch. So fresh.

When I rise to two feet, I wipe blood from my mouth. “What are you doing down here?”

Darragh’s twisting his neck to check out the damage. “Did you really have to? Couldn’t wait for me to dress it for you?”

“You don’t do it for me. You do it for Mari.”

Mari’s the mate he avoids claiming by living feral in the foothills. He says it’s ‘cause of the age difference—he wants her to have the chance to grow up before taking on his old ass—but it’s something else. Don’t know what, and since he keeps shit secure in our western territory, I don’t care.

“She doing well?” Darragh schools his weathered face like he ain’t transparent as hell.

“She is.” I don’t mention her squeal when she caught sight of my cock last night. That wouldn’t go over too well. “What are you doing so close to camp?”

“Cutting through. I was following my nose. Took me out by the old dens.”

“You smelled that buck all that way?” It’s big, but it’s not that big.

Darragh shakes his head, and his salt-and-pepper beard brushes his equally hairy chest. “Something else. Something unfamiliar.”

My adrenaline kicks up. “Like what?”

“Dirt. Leaves. Pine needles. Not ours. From another territory. Baking soda.”

“Like hunters covering their tracks?” It’s rare, but occasionally humans are stupid enough to track an animal onto our territory.

“Yes, but I didn’t scent human.”

“Wolf?”

He shakes his head. “Once I got out there, all I smelled was this fella here.” He resettles the buck’s weight.

“Should I send a patrol out?”

Darragh snorts. “I don’t know. You willing to waste good training time based on the overactive imagination of a wolf almost gone feral?”

“Hey, patrols are cardio.”

“True enough.” He sighs, his gaze turning toward the direction of the old dens. “I think it was a fluke—some strong scent carried on a strong wind. I tracked this big fella a few hours, covered a lot of ground, didn’t scent anything out of place.” Darragh pats the deer’s haunch. “I’ll bring this down later. Let Old Noreen know to expect it.”

“I will.” I clasp Darragh’s hand and fake like I’m going in for another bite.

“Fuck off, man.”

I chuckle. I made him flinch. I miss Darragh around camp. He taught me a lot of what I know. “You know we keep a seat open for you in the lodge.”

“So you tell me.” He jerks his chin and strides away, blazing his own trail through the thicket on a path toward the ridge. Anyone who saw him would mistake him for a member of the Last Pack. Long, snarled hair and beard, claws that never quite recede, ears that come to a point.

If he doesn’t come out of the hills soon, he might not ever be able to. That’s his choice, though. Every male is entitled to his own. I don’t know how Mari handles her heat with him gone, but she does. It’s a messed up situation, but they can do as they see fit—and if they don’t want the rest of the pack to know, I’m not a gossip.

I shift back to wolf and lope back to camp. First, I swing by the lodge and tell Ivo to take a group up and comb the northeast quadrant, and then I head straight for Una’s place.

Gael isn’t where I left him. Jaime’s there. He’s wandered up on the ridge behind the cabin, squatting on a rock, playing on his phone. I leap and knock it from his hands while I shift back to my skin.

“Where’s Una?”

Jaime scrambles to his feet. “Down there.”

“No, she isn’t.” I smell Mari. Annie. Kennedy. That’s it.

“I swear, Alpha. I’ve been here an hour. No one’s left.”

“Where’s Gael?”

“Lochlan wanted him in the gym to spar with Finn. He sent me to take his place.”

What the fuck?

Jaime bends to get his phone, but before he can, I stomp it with my heel. It cracks. Doesn’t make me feel better.

Where the hell’s my mate? And what the fuck is Lochlan playing at?

I trip down the incline, cross the deck, and fling open the female’s back door. There’s a scream. I take a breath, slow my roll down the narrow hall. Una’s not gonna like it if she comes home and her place reeks of female fear.

Mari and Annie are huddled on the couch, Kennedy standing in front of them in a defensive stance. They’re all baring their necks.

“Where is she?”

“Don’t tell him,” Kennedy says at the exact same time the other two sob, “Chapel Bell.”

I roar, the wolf coursing up my throat. I swallow him down. There will be time for rage. Later. After I have my mate in hand.

There’s a footstep behind me. The females peek up. Jaime clears his throat.

His scent is in my female’s space.

Oh, hell, no.

I barrel out the way I came in, seizing Jaime and hauling him out the back door, hoisting him into the sunflowers growing around the deck. There’s a satisfying crunch.

Guess there’s a little time for rage now.

What the fuck is Una doing in town? Who is she with?

When I get my female, I’m tying her to my bed.

No wooing.

I am alpha.

She is mine.

And all this bullshit is gonna stop here and now.