Lone Wolf: A Rejected Mates Wolf Shifter Romance (Reach for the Moon Book 1) Read online

  Like I gave a shit.

  But that wasn’t what got their hackles up. My pack liked to talk about dominance like it was a fixed quality, that some wolves had it and some didn’t and that was the end of that. Well, I’d left Lupindorf and learned just how malleable that concept was. Dominance allowed you to psych out an opponent. Dominance let you push your will on those weaker than you, in theory to keep the peace and avoid every conflict between our snappish animals turning into a physical one. But what they didn’t know was that dominance was a lot like confidence—it surged and fell in response to your actions and your reception from others. I’d left this weird little hothouse I’d grown up in and become an unruly weed like everyone associated with Zack’s gym.

  Every day you walked in that door, you tested yourself against others, found out what they could do, what you could do, and every single one of them was a discovery. I’d learned a lot about me, about others, and particularly about wolf shifter men. I saw former school mates, men I’d seen at my dad’s council table, men who’d come sniffing around his door the moment I turned eighteen. I met their eyes and they came clustering in, a wall of masculine flesh, all so well muscled and taut, it took some effort to keep my hands to myself. But I did, and they took their long breaths in, getting my scent and Zack’s.

  “Who was he?” growled Aidan. Tall, good looking of course, with a shock of dark blond hair and hazel eyes, he’d been king of the school when I was still a student. It was odd to see that intense gaze turned my way this time, not to the popular girls that had hung around him.

  I smiled, feeling my teeth sharpen. “Just a hookup. Nothing important. Now, gentlemen, if you’d excuse me?” I spoke with a confidence I didn’t feel, pushing past them with an abruptness that made my heart race, old memories of what doing something like that to men who considered themselves dominant over me flooding my mind. But maybe because Mason was at my side, the group parted and let me go by without comment.

  Well, not entirely.

  “We need time to pay court,” Aidan said, eyes shifting from Mason to me and staying there, taking in the sweatpants and spaghetti string tank I was wearing like it was fucking couture. “Don’t think because you’re ensconced in the house, you get a leg up on the rest of us.”

  “The alpha’s not even dead yet. I haven’t had a chance to explain what happened. Show some fucking respect.”

  Well then, Mason always did have a way with words. My eyes slid sideways, just watching those big hands form fists, the wolf tattoos that ran up his forearms dancing as the muscles shifted. He wanted them to step forward, I could smell it. Sharp, acidic, it was a stink that filled my nose and coated my tongue. Grief, anger and…

  “The courting season will be announced once Paige has had an opportunity to see her father and settle in. Now, you’ve got what you wanted, so piss off.”

  I jumped when Mason slung an arm around my waist, steering me inside the house, the cool calm settling over me as soon as the door was slammed shut. But the men weren’t here when he directed me upstairs with his hand on the base of my spine, burning through the thin spandex of my top.

  I can’t, Paige!

  The memory of his shout rang in my mind until I pulled free, scaling the steps up to the bedrooms and stalking down the hall. My room was right next to Dad’s, and for a moment, I stopped and stared at his door, closed now. He wouldn’t be in there. They’d have taken him to the hospital out on White Road. Would he be lying on one of their beds, stiff, still, cold, lifeless? I remembered that was the way Mum looked. I swallowed and put my hand on the doorknob.

  “Paige—”

  “Have a shower and get changed. I’ve got it,” I snapped back.

  I heard rather than saw the long sigh. “I’ll bring up your stuff from the car.”

  “Thanks.” He paused on the step at my words, and I listened to the creak on the stairs before opening the door and walking inside to a museum piece.

  Nothing had changed in here, I realised as I looked around the room. It’d been cleaned, the same bedspread on the bed, but I could smell the scent of lemon washing powder and sun. My books had been dusted, my photos still in the same frames, my cupboards full of all the clothes I’d rejected when I left. Home, family, pack… They pulsed inside me, something I wasn’t willing to let in just yet. My head jerked around when the door creaked, something Dad refused to fix as it alerted him to any attempt of mine to sneak out. Mason filled the doorway, eyes meeting mine as he brought my stuff in, dumping it on the bed.

  This was the stuff of my teen dreams—Mason Klein in my room in an empty house. He had to know what I was thinking, catching a whiff of my scent, something only male shifters could do. Did he detect the sadness and the pain as well as the arousing thrill? It was a knee jerk reaction that had been conditioned into me throughout my adolescence, but this time, he didn’t scurry out like the rat he was. No, he placed the items down with undue slowness, then turned to face me.

  It’d take three steps for him to close the gap between us. He knew it and I knew it, because we both sucked in air, as if that was enough to stop us. My fingers twitched, remembering the feel of that soft hair between them like it was yesterday, and his eyes jerked down to note the movement. His nostrils flared, his brow creasing as he watched and listened to the faint sound of my fingertips rubbing together.

  If I was dreaming, this would be the moment he remembered what it was like, the feel of his hot mouth on mine, the dark stubble of his jaw scraping across my skin as he fought to suck down every stolen taste he took of the alpha’s daughter. He’d remember the thrust of his tongue, tangling with my far less experienced one, dragging sensations from me I’d never really known until I left town, but then just registered as a deep throbbing between my legs, one I felt right now. He’d shove that thick thigh between mine, drag me onto it, force the pressure right up against my—

  “Have a shower, Paige,” he said instead, all cool, calm, and collected. I smiled to see the beta mask resituated so thoroughly. “Meet me downstairs in your father’s office when you’re done. We need to talk.”

  And with that, I was dismissed, the soft click of the door my only goodbye.

  Chapter 4

  So it’s bad to admit I rubbed one out in the shower, right?

  My body, my mind was a riotous mess when I stepped under the water, and the heat helped relax my muscles but not much else. None of what was happening was unexpected, except it was. Dad wasn’t a young man, but dying? We had more time, I’d been sure of it. Time for me to come home of my own volition, to show him what his little girl had become. I slammed a hand down on the white tiles, claws forming to scratch at them as I gasped. I’d had it stolen from me, the reconciliation, that moment when my dad saw me and not his heir standing before him. When he finally told me—

  Mason… The guys… I insisted, redirecting my thoughts sharply. In my mind, I was running the gauntlet again, but this time, I was using that time honoured technique for managing anxiety—imagining them all naked. That wouldn’t have been hard to achieve. Shifters aren’t as funny about nudity as humans are. If I’d asked for it, if I’d requested them all to strip down, even Mase, there was a fair chance they would have. To show me what I was missing if I didn’t pick them. To show me what they had to offer.

  I was compartmentalising, dissociating. Well, that was what Zack called it. I packed up thoughts and feelings and boxed them away for later, much later. Mase was gonna give me the deets when I went downstairs, then he’d take me to the hospital. I’d find out exactly what had happened in my absence, everything I’d missed. I’d see my dad lying there… I shook my head under the water, grabbed the soap, and began working it across my body.

  It became them, their hands skating across my skin. I didn’t want the contenders per se. Well, none but… However, I replaced the actual guys with a faceless bunch of muscular bodies. Yeah, I could get behind that. Zack had told me one day, when he was psychoanalysing me again, that the thoughts
we give energy get bigger, more powerful inside us. He’d meant the scripts I’d learned from growing up in this pack, but I’d twisted that idea to my own ends. Because the soap slipped between my thighs, the foam made my fingers skate over my folds, giving me friction but nowhere near enough. Because as my nails raked the tiles, as I worked myself up, quickly, efficiently, I blanked my mind. For a few hot moments, I could feel all those hands, those teeth, that skin against mine, and it yanked me out of here, away from my problems, to just feeling.

  Then it was him pushing his way through all those bodies, a wolf where everyone else was a pup. He shouldered his way through the pack until his body pressed against mine, filling me with that scent of smoke and moss. His mouth brushed mine, his stubble scraping, then his teeth as he took my bottom lip between his. I knew that taste, sharp and sour from a beer as it’d been last time, then all him, and my tongue flicked out to capture and savour it.

  “Paige?” A couple of knocks on the door had my eyes jerking open, flicking over to the door knob, but it stayed still. “Don’t think you can hide in there. We need to get this done.”

  I heard the growl in Mase’s voice, felt the sharp tone of reprimand on my skin as my fingers moved.

  “Paige?”

  I pressed my arm against my mouth to stifle my moans, but with his hearing, he probably knew what I was up to. Could smell it too. I heard the faint sound of him shifting on the other side of the door, his low sigh, the slight creak on the door as if a body leant against it. I closed my eyes again and remembered what that had felt like, when it was my body he leaned into. I felt the claw of his fingers, the way he yanked me tight against him, his eyes going silver as his beast rode him hard.

  Just like I’d hoped he’d do me.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs in ten,” came his much more muted voice, right as my hips jerked, as my pants filled the air. My body twitched with a short, sharp orgasm that rushed in and then left just as fast, leaving me just aching for more. Then reality shoved its way forward moments later. I opened my eyes, staring blindly at the tiles, at the water running down them, at my own shaking hands.

  What the fuck was I doing?

  I grabbed the soap and started again, washing myself as quickly and efficiently as I possibly could, paying special attention to cleaning my fingers thoroughly.

  It didn’t matter. After I’d dried off, plaited my hair back from my face, and put on clean sweats and a long-sleeved compression top, I padded downstairs to Dad’s office and Mase was waiting, sitting in the chair he customarily did, opposite to Dad and on his right side. His eyes slid down my body, a quick automatic thing he corrected swiftly enough, forcing them to stay with my eyes. But when I went to sit down on the other side of him, his hand whipped out and grabbed the one I’d been using to get myself off unerringly, drawing it, and hence me, with it. He brought the fingers to his nose and breathed in deeply, no doubt past the scented soap and body lotion and perfume I’d slathered on before staring up at me. I yanked it back, tilting my head at him before sitting down in an ungainly sprawl.

  “You wouldn’t bring me back here, not unless it was bad, real bad. So tell me what’s happened.”

  Chapter 5

  “You’re just going to pretend—”

  “Yes,” I replied sharply.

  “You were—”

  My eyes jerked up, and I met his head-on, pausing for a moment to watch the inevitable look of surprise spread across his face, and bing, there it was. I held his gaze, the second most dominant guy in the whole pack. I held it and kept it without too much effort. When I was ready, when I was done watching his jaw lock down, the muscle quivering slightly, I dropped my eyes, looking across at Dad’s desk. Big, beautiful, and carved from a richly polished mahogany with a million little mysterious drawers and cubby holes, it’d been a whole other world to me as a child.

  “I know you believe a woman’s pleasure belongs to her suitors or her mate. I know you don’t like what I was doing, but I’m tired, worn out, and needed to blow off some steam before we go to the hospital. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “And the guy you came here stinking of? He does?”

  “Zack,” I said, meeting Mase’s hot gaze for a moment, then looking away again. “And yeah, he does. He took me under his wing when I got to the city, helped train me, helped me shake off some of the small-town bullshit I inherited from here.”

  Mason paused at the sound of the man’s name, his jaw tightening. “I just bet he did.”

  “He encouraged me to find my pleasure where I wanted, didn’t try to constrain me in any way. Didn’t tell me what to do or get jealous or hem me in.”

  “So he didn’t give a shit about you.”

  “Maybe. Maybe he just knew if you love something, you gotta set it free, and if it comes back, it’s yours.” I grinned toothily at the cheesy cliché, but I knew what we were doing—fencing rather than dealing with the hard truths, as per usual. “It doesn’t matter who I fucked or didn’t fuck—”

  “It will if he comes here.“

  “I need to know what happened with Dad. The kind of fucking bullshit that this place runs on, all of this…posturing and crap, Dad trumps that. What happened, Mase? Last chance, or I just get in my car and go to the hospital and find out myself.”

  I watched him pack all that tall, dark, growling beast up behind his human façade and settle back in his chair.

  “He had a stroke, Paige. I found him early last night. He’d hit the emergency button in the alpha’s bedroom, the one that lets us know if there’s an attack or something. His speech was slurred, his face was all… You’ll see. By the time the ambulance arrived, he was in a coma. He still is. There’s not much to see.” He paused, looking down at his hands. “He’s in a hospital bed, covered in tubes to keep him breathing. I’m sorry, Paige.”

  And it was true. We drove up, walked down the halls, a nurse getting up to stop us until she saw Mase and realised who I was. I froze in the doorway, taking in the glaring lights, the sterile white and steel surfaces, the steady whoosh of the respirator, the ping of the vital signs monitor. And there, under a pile of pale blue and white blankets, was Dad. At least, I thought it was. I crept closer, feeling the same trepidation I’d felt as a young girl, creeping into his room when I was having a nightmare, though this time, it was multiplied exponentially.

  My shower antics seemed hollow and ridiculous, as they often did when I felt like my back was against the wall. Reactive rather than deliberate, Zack always said. But he also told me to meet any challenge head-on. I forced my feet to move, one after the other, until I sank down into the chair placed by his side. I reached out carefully, cautiously, allowing only my fingers to touch a hand that seemed gnarled now, knuckles swollen, skin heavily lined with age.

  “Dad…?”

  I didn’t say the word, it just came out on an exhale, the barest of whispers. This was not my father, that idea took root quickly, my brain firmly, solidly rejecting the reality before me. My father was alpha, held this town through will alone, strode into meetings, barked out sharp, succinct orders, expecting to be obeyed, and he was now…this? This was someone so much smaller, older, weaker. I didn’t know who it was, but it wasn’t Dad. I frowned, my fingers grabbing his and squeezing, probably too hard. Weakness didn’t work well in the pack, and for the first time in my life, I felt a rush of something completely alien—protectiveness. People would see this, see him down, see me having just returned, and be ready to make a play, a major play.

  “Get the family together. We need to meet tonight,” I said to Mase, but I didn’t look away from my father.

  “Done. I started calling them straight after I called you. They’re just waiting for my call.”

  “Have everyone in the house by nightfall, especially any of the girls or unmated women, or anyone you think is likely to be a target. They move into the compound.”

  “You think someone’s going to try and force a bond?” I watched Mason stiffen, eyes
beginning to dart around the room, as if rogue ‘suitors’ would jump out from behind the curtains.

  “That doesn’t work. You have to want someone on some level to form a bond, that’s something I learned. I just don’t want any of my cousins getting attacked by any ill-informed mouth breathers and being hurt.”

  “I’ll get the enforcers onto it, get them to pass the word around.”

  “And you better tell them you’re stepping up temporarily too.”

  “No.” Mason’s reply was sharp, definite. “No fucking way, Paige, I can’t—”

  I watched the fear, the anger, the animal need to escape a trap rise and rise inside him. That fear of being connected to me.

  “No one’s going to force you to take a mate. We’ll explain that this is a temporary situation, that you’re stepping up until this is sorted. You have to until we work something else out.” I stared into those hot, angry eyes, already bleeding to silver, his fangs dropping in the face of a threat. “Mase, no one can beat you. That’s how you’ve held this position for so long.” I looked back at Dad, embracing that cool tone he often used when he didn’t want excuses, just results. “It’s only temporary, Mason. I promise I won’t lay a finger on you other than what’s necessary. It’s just to provide a united front.”

  “Fucking high-handed Spehrs…” I heard him mutter.

  “Yeah?” I snapped back. “Well, you fucking Kleins seem pretty determined to serve under us.”

  Silence stretched out between us, filling the room, dampening all sounds until…

  “I’ll make the calls.”

  “You do that.”

  And while he obeyed my order, I held my father’s hand, felt the thready pulse under my fingers, watched a machine force him to keep breathing. I’d thought I had time and I was wrong, so bloody wrong, and now there was nothing else I could do but wait. Wait for him to take his own breaths, rip the cannula out of his hand, and start roaring to be taken home and given a big feed of bacon and eggs. Wait for my dad to open his eyes and take up the mantle of alpha again, before we were forced to.