Raula
And that's all the time he has for me. He snaps and turns back to his dais. I'm dismissed. Thrown back in the water with my head ripped off like a too-small fish, guts leaking, lungs still screaming for air.
Inside me, everything that makes me, that holds me up and keeps me going day to day, crashes to the ground and splinters. The pain is a gaping hole. An unfathomable wrong.
The connection between us is there, throbbing and alive, and he doesn't seem to feel it at all.
I wait for my heart to sputter to a stop. It can't endure. It isn't possible that it's still beating.
But it does. Thump. Thump. Steady and sure. As if nothing happened.
As if the universe hadn't told me, in the most basic of terms, that I'm less than nothing.
The silence in the great room is suffocating, and then chaos breaks out. There are catcalls and hoots and laughter. Ulfred snaps his teeth, and the pack lowers the volume until the derision and amusement is a dull roar filling the room.
"Get her out of here," Ulfred says to his beta. Blaez huffs strides over, and grabs my elbow. He marches me out, hauling me back to my feet when I trip, steering me across the open floor and down a corridor to the rear exit.
He kicks the screen door open and thrusts me into the dark. Before I can do anything, he turns walks back in, and slams the door on his way.
The night is pretty dark, and my life feels so small—I feel so small—but I'm not. I mumble that over and over as I stagger through the underbrush, aimless, heat itching at my skin, breasts full and aching, my wolf still mewling for help.
I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.
Where am I going?
I could leave.
I have money back at our cabin.
I have a phone.
I could live in the human world. I don't want to, but if I kept to myself, it could be tolerable.
The noise and the smells—My stomach turns, and somehow, that ignites a spasm between my legs, and it's so wrong, so disjointed.
I'm devastated, not turned on, but my innards have gone haywire. My wolf cowers and weeps.
Yes. I have my wolf now. That means I have another choice. I could go feral. Live on my own in the foothills.
Be alone. Always.
I've considered my options a thousand times. Some days, staying seems impossible. This is a shitty pack, but I was born into it. Shedding it would be like shedding my own skin. Wolves are pack animals. My friends are more than family. They're pieces of myself.
I don't want to leave them.
I can't go back to our house, either.
I stop, lean against a tree, and take in my surroundings. The woods are dark, and the night creatures—the bullfrogs by the river and crickets and owls—hush as I stagger through. I'm a predator, and that is such a joke.
I'm weak. Rejected.
I reach for anger, my plans, my blessings—the handholds I usually cling to when I can't take it anymore, but there's nothing there. Only grief and shame and stupid longing.
Mate.
I have no mate.
I let the wolf take my skin, and I whisper, "Go. Go." The shift is an agony, but I welcome the pain.
I can't escape what I am, but maybe I can run until it's nothing more than a speck in the distance.
Maybe there's a choice I've never seen before now.
A way out.
There are stickers in my fur. Our fur. There's a thorn in the pad of my paw. It hurts.
Everything hurts.
I'm hot. Burning up. Cramps seize my belly, twisting tighter and tighter. I'm swollen between my back legs. I'm tender there, aching and slick.
I want and I need and I hurt.
Ulfred. If I can speak, I can call. He'll come. He'll help.
There are no words in my mouth; my tongue is dry and coarse. I'm so thirsty. I'm dying from it. I need water. And Ulfred. He'll bring me water.
I whine and arch my back, raising my haunches. I have to. This is what I'm supposed to do even though everything is wrong. A branch scratches my side. The hurts twine—pricks, aches, a piercing longing that cuts and never eases, no matter how I shift my body.
I whimper, wriggling forward, but the prickles scratch my underbelly. I can't move anymore.
Where's my pack? Where are the others?
It's not right to be alone. We're defenseless here. Except for the thorns. They'll give us some protection until our mate comes.
And he will.
I need him. I howl, but the sound is thready. He won't be able to hear. I grope blindly along the bond. He's there. Not very far away. I can feel him. He's strong. Willful. Mine.
Come.
He jerks at the word, but he doesn't move. His wolf howls, and it echoes through the woods, faint by the time it reaches my perked ears.
Come now.
The heat is ratcheting higher. I can't wait much longer. I need him. I lay my muzzle on the ground and present. I'm ready. Past ready.
He can soothe this ache. He can unwind this coiling agony, this drumming, throbbing need.
But he doesn't come. His howl fades to nothing, and my guts heave, my throat convulses. I'm sick. It's sour and sharp in my nose, and I heave again and again until my stomach's empty. I turn my muzzle so I'm not laying in it. It's all I can do.
I'm facing a clump of blackberries now, and their ripeness cloys. Offends. I want my mate. I want Ulfred's sweet toffee, molasses, thick and sticky caramel scent. I cover my snout with my paws and press closer to the dirt.
The pain won't stop. It crashes into me in incessant waves—the pricking thorns, the agonizing heat, my spasming leg, and worst of all, the torn and jagged wound where my bond begins. How could he hurt us and not feel it? Something is terribly wrong. Unnatural. Out of order.
Where is he?
He's not here. He won't come.
My wolf doesn't understand. Grief overwhelms her. He must be dead. He must be trapped or hurt or else he would come. She is certain. She knows this in every fiber of her being.
Her heart breaks, and her heart is mine, so it doesn't matter that I know Ulfred Kessler is garbage, and that he's rejected us. I shatter, too, as I sweat and whine, haunches raised, ready, longing for a male in a way I never, ever have before.
***
I open my eyes, and sit up immediately, shocked by the unfamiliar surroundings. There is dazzling sunlight gushing through the open window. A large wooden open window. We don't have those in our cabin. The room is filled with a musky scent of expensive cologne. Human! It's only humans who take the extra mile to cover their natural scents with artificial ones.
Am I in human territory? But how did I get here?
I jump out of the enormous mahogany bed and stand on my feet. The bed is wrapped in all-white sheets and duvet, which are now disheveled because of me.
I am in a huge black T-shirt. It is rich in the musky scent of a male. Human? Wolf? It's confusing. I close my eyes and try to focus. There is no way I could have ended up in human territory. What happened last night? All I can remember is...
The rejection. The pain. The heartbreak. The heat...
Oh no!
The heat!
I couldn't have done it, could I?
I know how sexually desperate all female werewolves are when in heat. I was desperate enough for relief from any male, but... No way. I would be able to remember if anything like that happened. But I don't even remember how I got here.
I slowly slide my hand down there. I am as wet as fuck!
Shit!
If I mated with a human male, it could even be worse.
I might not know where I am or even how I got here, but I do know one thing for sure; I have to get out of here.
I walk to the window and look through. The ground is way down. I must be on a floor above the ground, but I can jump to the ground with ease. There is nothing in view except a compound of short grass and woods in the distance. I can run away without being caught if I am as quiet as possible.
I turn back to the bedroom that is twice in size as my room back at the lone females' cabin. The last thing I want is to meet whoever this person or werewolf is.
I pull the small metallic chair in front of the dresser and put it next to the window. I stand on the chair and now it is easier to step onto the window seal. I lift my left leg and step on the window seal, ready to jump.
"I see you finally awoke!" an unfamiliar male voice breaks through the silence. I halt and immediately turn to see a tall male standing beside the bed with a disregarding look. I couldn't have felt any more embarrassed because of the position I am in. I just stare at him with my mouth agape.
"You seem to have too much energy for someone who couldn't even open her eyes last night," he adds, his muscular jaw working like a machine at every word. What? That's a weird way to think of someone's jaw. What am I even thinking?
What happened last night?
"If you are going to jump out of that window, at least first have something to eat, you that you don't just pass out after landing," he says nonchalantly.
Desperate to regain my dignity, I remove my leg from the window and sit on the chair looking up at him.
He's too freaking interesting. His chest rises and falls, stretching the crisp white cotton of his shirt, and it's mesmerizing. What would it feel like against my cheek? Under my nails?
I lick my dry lips. I can taste the yumminess in the air. It coats my tongue, and I'm salivating. It's so. Damn. Tasty.
I inhale deeply, trying to shake off this weirdness, but now the lush, decadent scent is in my lungs.
No, this is wrong. Or am I confused? He is not my mate.
Excitement shoots through my veins, a flood of heat rising up and cresting, crashing through me.
I gasp, trying to maintain my composure. I still have the heat waves. That means I haven't mated yet. Thank God! I close my eyes in relief, but the heat goes on to scald my skin.
"You know it's dangerous for a female on. heat to be roaming the woods at night on her own," he says, his eyes fixed on mine. His chiseled jaw clenches, and then he pulls out his hands from his pants pockets. His hands are so big, especially those biceps, that I could sink in them...
What?
I shake my head and try to focus.
I blame it on the heat.
How would he know about my heat?
That means he is a wolf then. I sigh, at least he is not human. But if I don't recognize his face. He must not be a part of the Starry Banes pack.
"It won't be a better idea to go out on your own even now," he adds, his face stern as if he is lecturing me.
"You don't know anything about me. So you can't begin telling what's wrong or right about what I do," I find myself bursting, with all the anger and pain from the rejection of last night.
I shouldn't be on my own. I know that. But I also didn't choose this. It's not my fault that the moon goddess chose to give me an arrogant dick-head as my mate.
"Calm down, pretty face. I might not know anything about you, but I know that I shouldn't let you wander off without protection," he says, his voice seductively calm and composed. That's how my mate should have talked to me; calm and soothingly.
But he was only furious with me.
My chin shakes as I try to hold back tears, all the pain and wounds from last night catching up with me. I pull my legs to my che
st and bury my face in my palms, breaking into sobs. Before I know it, the big frame of the stranger is hovering over me, collecting me into his hands.