The Five Packs

I keep my head down. In this backward pack, females rank low, and my bad leg makes me damaged goods. It doesn’t help that I’ve never shifted. I don’t mind the late-20s single life, though. No one’s paying any attention as I build an illicit farmer’s market empire. My roomies and I are doing it for ourselves, and if life under Killian Kelly is stifling, at least it’s predictable. We can deal. But when biology finally kicks in, I lose my mind. I claim our alpha as my mate. And he rejects me in front of the whole pack.

Fate made a huge mistake when she mated me to Cadoc Collins. He’s the heir apparent. I’m a scavenger. My people are so low in this pack, we don’t even rank. I should have known better, but for one night, I let myself forget the facts of life in Moon Lake. Cadoc Collins might be powerless to resist me, but he’s not going to claim me, either.

Mari doesn’t understand what she doesn’t know. She’s naïve, soft, and way too young and sweet for a life of self-imposed exile. She’s a grown female who sits in trees, reading books, and wears party dresses to garden. Everything she owns is pink. Her wolf is probably pink. She can’t handle the real world, and she sure can’t handle my wolf. No one can.

He had his chance. He blew it, and I’m out of here. I’m at the bottom of the pack. I’m female, I have no family left, and everywhere a shifter is supposed to be hard, I’m soft and round. There’s one bright spot in my days—Alec Cameron. He’s hard in every way—so distant that he’s ice cold—but once in a while, he gives me a nod, and we sneak off to the woods. He’s not cold, then. Not at all.

My mate called me weak and walked away. Annie I try not to think about mating the wild wolf from the Last Pack. It happened. He left. The witch sorted me out and life kept going. I’m anxious all the time—every moment of every day—but I’m not worried about him. He hates me, and he’s not coming back. He made that perfectly clear. I should have worried. After all, everyone like me knows the first rule of anxiety—if you don’t worry about something, it will happen. And the mate who left me is now trespassing on my pack’s territory, and this time, when I run, he chases. Justus My mate is damaged.

In my pack, I’m a cautionary tale, the female who made her mate wait too long and drove him into rut. After that terrible night, Trevor was exiled, and I became a lesson to others that Fate always wins. Fight, and you’ll lose. But maybe I don’t want my life to be a lesson to others. Or a tragedy. Some wounds can’t be healed, but what if I tried? Would Trevor try, too? Or would he run again from the female who turned him into a monster?