The Heir Apparent’s Rejected Mate: The Five Packs: Book Two, page 1
THE HEIR APPARENT’S REJECTED MATE
THE FIVE PACKS: BOOK TWO
CATE C. WELLS
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright 2022 by Cate C. Wells. All rights reserved.
Cover art and design by Clarise Tan of CT Cover Creations
Cover photography by Christopher Correia of CJC Photography
Cover model Garrett Riley
Edited by Nevada Martinez
Proofread by Kayla Davenport
Special thanks to Jean McConnell of The Word Forager, Kaitlin S., Kate Knapp, Elisabeth Jarud, and Elizabeth Lawrence
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
ROSIE
Chapter 2
ROSIE
Chapter 3
CADOC
Chapter 4
ROSIE
Chapter 5
CADOC
Chapter 6
ROSIE
Chapter 7
CADOC
Chapter 8
ROSIE
Chapter 9
CADOC
Chapter 10
ROSIE
Chapter 11
ROSIE
Chapter 12
ROSIE
Epilogue
A Note from the Author
About the Author
1
ROSIE
“Oh, I got one, I got one.” My best friend Nia sways back on the log, corn whiskey sloshing in her mason jar. The fire spits orange sparks into the cold night air. “Would you rather fight a hungry bear shifter or a moon-mad wolf?”
“No such thing as a bear shifter.” I lean over the Dutch oven hanging on the tripod, stirring in time with the beat of the metronome I set on a tree stump. My arm is killing me.
“There was no such thing as a wolf shifter until the Great Alpha led us out of the closet back in the day.” Nia burps into her flannel sleeve.
“I wouldn’t fight either one. It’s a losing proposition. I’d run.”
Twenty more strokes until it’s Nia’s turn again. My biceps are gonna hurt like hell tomorrow. Dragon’s tongue boils down as thick as tar, and it somehow manages to smell like both ash and ass.
“You suck at this game, Rosie-cakes. You have to pick one.”
“No, I don’t. I’d feed the bear. Problem solved.”
“Quit looking for ways out of making a decision, dammit. Bear or wolf?” Nia raises her voice, and on the far side of the fire, our cousin Bevan startles and kicks his hind leg, nailing Nia’s mate, Pritchard, in the muzzle.
Both growl and scrabble at each other for a minute before they pass back out, Bevan’s pointy snout resting on Pritchard’s furry mound of a belly.
“Bear.”
“Wrong. A bear would tear you apart.” Nia swigs her moonshine. We’ve been at this since sundown, and it’s almost four in the morning. I don’t know how she’s still upright and intelligible.
“And a moon-mad wolf wouldn’t?” I drag the wooden spoon through the dank, black syrup. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
“That’s beside the point.” Nia scrunches her nose. “How much longer ’til my turn?”
“Ten strokes.”
“And then how much longer?”
“Until sunrise.” This is not the first—or tenth—time I’ve told her.
“This is bullshit.”
“Probably.”
“The witch is fucking with us.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.” I’ve been apprenticed to Abertha since I was seven, and I love her like blood, but she will prank you and waste your time for shits and giggles, no doubt.
“We get the buttons, though, right?” Nia asks for the hundredth time. Shifters in general are crap at delayed gratification, and Nia’s particularly challenged. That’s why I plied her with liquor.
“Oh, yeah.”
Nia’s glowing gold eyes meet mine. We grin in gleeful solidarity. We’re so close.
We’ve been angling for the buttons for years. Nia’s tried to lift them a dozen times, but the witch is crafty. She’ll switch tins and spell the buttons to spill from your hands. Like I said, she’s got an asshole’s sense of humor.
Tonight’s the night, though. We deliver this batch of dragon’s tongue, and the blue Danish butter cookie tin is ours.
“Three, two, one—” I count.
“Spoon me.” Nia holds out her hand. I slap the ladle into her palm and shake out my arms. Stirring a pot all night teaches you about muscles you had no idea you had.
I stretch my neck and twist to crack my spine. Sitting on a log all night teaches you that your entire ass can be numb, and yet you still have to pee. I make a quick trip deeper into the woods and work out the kinks in my legs.
When I come back, I steal a sip of Nia’s whiskey to warm my chest. She stirs in silence. I set the glass on the frosted ground and shove my hands up my jacket sleeves to warm my fingers.
It’s a new moon, and the smattering of late November stars fade as we get closer to sunrise. Beyond the fire, black walnut trees loom high overhead, punctuating the stillness of the night with a jarring thump each time the wind knocks an overripe nut free from its moorings.
In the foothills, wolves bay, their howls skidding down across the smooth lake.
“Do you wish you were out with them?” I ask.
Ever since Nia first shifted last year, I feel guilty when she stays with me instead of running with the others.
“Nope,” she says without hesitation. “I do it all for the buttons.”
She grins, her pointy incisors gleaming in the firelight. It’s a lie. I know she does it for me.
“Do you think it’s strange that I want a tin of old buttons so bad?”
It’s an idle question. I don’t much care about being strange. I’m the witch’s apprentice, and the consensus among the scavengers is that I’m not nearly strange enough. I’ve got no natural talent for curses, mischief, or communing with the dead. If it were known I work for buttons, though, my reputation sure as shit wouldn’t improve. The others would think it’s worse than working for pay—all the indignity of labor and none of the cash.
“We, Rosie-cakes. Are we strange for wanting a bunch of old buttons so bad?”
That’s Nia. My girl. My ride or die, as the humans say.
The metronome slows down. I lean over and reset it.
“Just out of curiosity—why do we want ‘em?” Nia asks, switching the rough-hewn wooden spoon to her left hand to shake a cramp out of her right.
“You don’t know?” We’ve been after them forever.
Nia shrugs. “Don’t need a reason for a caper.”
That’s true enough.
“It’ll sound weird,” I say.
Nia snorts. “We waited for the night of the new moon, buried quartz at the four directions, poured a pint of liquor on the ground—such a waste, and I had to rub Old Angus’ back for that.”
We both shudder.
“Then we built a fire of cherry wood—and let’s not mention what I had to do for the cherry wood—and stirred this shit at the precisely prescribed tempo since the moment the last sun’s rays set. Rosie. Girlfriend. We’re past weird.”
She has a point.
“Abertha’s been collecting buttons since she was a pup. That’s how scavengers paid her when she was young. Some of the buttons were my mother’s.”
“Oh.” The sound is a soft commiseration. Her mother also went on a walk and didn’t come back. Happens a lot in the Bogs where we live. “We’ll get ‘em then. You know I’ll always have your back. Except against a bear shifter. That’s just stupid.”
I sniff. My nose is runny from the cold.
There’s a moment—just a split second—when Nia smiles, lop-sided and earnest, and I can picture her like she was when we were pups—before the piercings, before she cut her black hair short, before she shifted for the first time and her claws never fully retracted again.
I see the girl who wanted to be a ranked wolf when she grew up. The girl who believed that was possible.
We’re grown now.
We know that life in Moon Lake Pack is a game, and it’s rigged, and while we mean our promises, we don’t often get to keep them in the long run.
The gold in Nia’s eyes dims. I’m bringing us down. No call for that. Morning is an hour away, and reality’s gonna take a crap on our day soon enough.
“Okay, I’ve got one.” I clear my throat. “If you had to get stuck half-shifted for the rest of your life, top half wolf or bottom half?”
“Easy. Top half. I’m not giving up human sex or wolf eatin’.”
“Is it really that good?”
“Which?”
“Either.”
“Yeah.
Her eyes are back to shining.
“Cadoc Collins or Brody Hughes?”
My heart goes thump, and without warning, warmth spreads through my chest like spilt tea on a tablecloth. My chilly toes in my boots, the icy tips of my ears—they’re on fire.
Thank goodness I’m sitting in the shadows. I know I’m bright red. I’m the world’s worst blusher. Best blusher? Whichever, it has to be some kind of medical oddity. Skin shouldn’t be able to get the shade of a poppy in full bloom. It’s not natural.
Anyway, I’m not answering the question. “P-Pass.”
“You can’t pass.”
“You don’t make the rules.”
“I literally do.” It’s true. She does. She always has. She’s the shot caller. I go along.
“I couldn’t possibly choose. There’s no difference. Khaki pants. Dress shirt. Boring hair.”
Nia raises the eyebrow with the hoop. She must hear it in my voice—whatever it is that’s making me squirm in my sweater. Is it talking about males in general? Or saying the names of these males in particular, out loud, like they’re the same as Bevan or Pritchard or any other every day, ordinary packmate?
All I know is I was hanging out by an old Airstream trailer in the middle of the woods, making a potion with my best friend and freezing my ass off, but now my face would sizzle if you flicked a drop of water on it.
Maybe it’s the moonshine. I did take a decent-sized gulp, and I’m not a big drinker.
“Pick,” Nia says.
“I decline.”
“Come on.” She squints into the shadows. Yeah, she knows something’s up.
What the heck is up? Indigestion?
“Nope. I can’t do it. They’re the same guy.” I’m lying, and I don’t know why.
Brody and Cadoc are cousins, and that’s pretty much all they have in common.
Brody oozes. Smarm. Entitlement. Human hair product. He won’t make eye contact with a scavenger. If he absolutely must, he’ll address the spot directly above your head.
Cadoc, on the other hand, exudes. Confidence. Innate authority. Strength, command, intelligence. Superiority.
He genuinely doesn’t notice us. He’ll give us a benevolent nod or a casual chin dip when he walks into a room, but I’d bet all the buttons in the tin that he doesn’t actually know a single scavenger’s name. Bet he couldn’t pick any of us out of a line up, either, and we’ve been going to school together for twelve years, fourteen if you count kindergarten and nursery school.
It’s not a complaint. No scavenger wants the future alpha to know him by name.
I personally don’t care that last month, when he dropped his pencil in Art Appreciation, and I handed it back, he said, “Thank you, Ruby.” Ruby’s a lot closer than I would have expected.
“They’re total opposites.” Nia keeps going. She senses weakness. “Brody wants to drive us out of Moon Lake like vermin. Cadoc would like us to be a little more discreet as we shame the pack with our mere existence.”
She does her fancy human lady accent for “a little more discreet.”
“See? Why would I pick either of them?”
“Because you have to. Biological imperative. Propagation of the species. We’re endangered, you know. It’s your duty.”
“Can I pick the bear shifter?”
“No. Play the game, Rosie.” Nia sighs and goes double-handed on the spoon. The dragon’s tongue must be almost too thick to stir. Abertha says that’s what we’re going for. “The consistency of hashish,” she said. I had to ask Uncle Dewey about that. He got all misty-eyed and told me it was like taffy.
“Nope. I don’t want either. Neither would claim me. I’d be stuck like Drona.” My older sister’s mate is a ranked shifter. He visits her when he wants some ass, impregnates her periodically, and otherwise lives his best life with a mid-rank female in a nice big house in the Estates on the other side of the lake.
“We’re not talking about shacking up.” Nia grimaces. “Fuck that noise. We’re just talking hot monkey sex.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“When the monkey shifters come out, I’m gonna tell them that you said so.” Nia cracks herself up, dissolving into a gale of giggles. I don’t think she slept much yesterday in school. She’s getting punch-drunk.
“Come on, Rosie. Pick. Pick or I stop stirring.” She lifts the spoon dramatically.
“Fine. Brody.” I can’t say Cadoc. The name won’t come out of my mouth.
“Wrong!” Nia’s face puckers in disgust. “For fuck’s sake, why?”
Why? Shit. Why, why, why—
“I prefer blonds?”
“Bull crap.”
“I like bad guys?”
She gives me duck lips. “No, you don’t.”
“All right, then. Cadoc.” Hot pinpricks dance across my skin.
“Why?”
I heave a sigh. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
“Come on. Entertain me!” She raises the spoon like a scepter. Fuck.
“Put it back in!”
She rounds her eyes and lifts it higher.
“Okay, okay. Fine. He—he talks nice.”
Her mouth falls open. The spoon’s still high in the air.
“Dammit, Nia! I do not want to spend another night doing this next month.”
She flicks her pointy ears like she’s shaking off fleas and goes back to stirring. She’s gone pensive. It makes me nervous.
“How does Cadoc talk?” she asks.
“You know.”
She blinks. “I have literally never paid attention when he speaks unless it’s a command, and then, to be honest, I just do what other folks start doin’.”
“Well, if you paid attention, you’d know.”
“Do you mean he uses big words and shit?”
He does. All the nobs talk like educated humans around the instructors, but Cadoc and his crew do it all the time. That’s not what I mean, though.
“He says ‘please’ and shit.” I toss a shoulder like it’s nothing. It is, and it isn’t. It’s a cheap thrill when the alpha heir says “thank you” after you hand him a pencil. Like Fate herself is deigning to notice you.
I’m expecting Nia to roast me, but she seems mystified more than anything else. “That’s really all it takes for you?”
“No, but for the purposes of this game, and to shut you up, yes—a please is all it takes.”
We both sit with that for a minute.
Eventually, Nia says, “You know, I don’t think Pritchard’s said ‘please’ once in his life.”
Her mate is sprawled on his back, paws up, big ol’ balls dangling in the dirt, tongue lolled. Nia sighs.
Poor Pritchard. He means well.
“My turn,” I say. We need a change in conversation. “Would you rather—”
“I don’t want to play anymore,” Nia interrupts, her shoulders slumping. That’s how she gets when we get on the subject of Pritchard. He’s not the mate she would’ve picked for herself. They say Fate doesn’t make mistakes, but Nia and Pritchard are pretty clear evidence to the contrary. “How much longer?”
I squint toward the east. A gray gloom is rising beyond the glittering glass and metal Tower where the high-ranking five families live. “Maybe twenty more minutes.”
“And then what?”
“We lock it in the trailer and let it cool.”
“And then?”
“Tonight, we grind it to powder with a mortar and pestle, and then we deliver it to a dude named John at the loading dock behind the hospital by the end of the week.”
“Don’t the nobs inject dragon’s tongue?”
“Yeah. Apparently, the hospital will mix it with human chemicals and put it in vials with labels and barcodes and shit. Make it look official.”
“They don’t smoke it?”
“Nope.”
“Wild.”
It is. The ranked wolves do almost everything the human way, though. If we did it in the dens, they want no part of it. They’d turn their wolves into house pets if they could. It’s a tragedy, and they don’t even know it.
