Her Wolves: A Rejected Mates Romance (Fall Mountain Shifters Book 1)

by G. Bailey

  “What did you do to annoy him this time?” Ragnar asks, suggesting I always annoy him.

  “Do I annoy him a lot?”

  “You’re annoying him simply because he can’t be everything he wants to be around you,” he answers.

  “And what does he want to be around me?” I ask.

  “I think we both know the answer to that. You’re not as innocent as you seem,” he counters, raising an eyebrow.

  “Henderson should forget about me. I’m not an alpha female, and I don’t want to stand in the way of whoever comes along to be one for you each,” I respond, even if it hurts to say that out loud. I’ve been thinking about it for so long, and it needs to be said.

  “What makes you think you’re not an alpha female?”

  “It’s very clear that I’m not,” I answer.

  He shakes his head and looks down. “Being alpha female is about being chosen by an alpha and nothing more. Nothing less.”

  “Alphas are chosen by the gods, be it female or male,” I reply. “The gods have not exactly blessed me.”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you?” he replies, then takes a long drink. “I call being alive as being favoured by the gods.”

  “I enjoy being just friends with you all. It will make it easier when I have to leave.”

  “Nothing about you leaving will be easy,” he replies, turning his gaze on me. “They say you have to let the things that belong to you go. If they are yours, they will come back.”

  “Who ever said I am yours?”

  He leans closer and presses a single kiss to my cheek, making my heart pound, and everything in the world disappears so it is like it’s only us. “Goodnight, Mai.”

  I wake up in the water. Deep, cold water surrounds me as I stare at the expanse of the sea in front of me. The sea pushes me around with every movement, hurting my sore body as I struggle against its power. I search all around me for some light, somewhere to swim towards as I panic, sucking in more water and choking on it. But there’s nowhere. There’s nothing but ocean for as far as I can see. The waves keep pushing me harshly in the sea like they want to rip me apart, and they might do just that. Nothing but the cold water surrounds me. I can’t focus on anything but my beating heart in my chest. Part of me wonders if I’m in a dream. Part of me wonders if this is some sort of memory. My blonde hair strangles me in the water as I’m pushed further and further away, and my hands grab hold of nothing but seawater in my struggle. Suddenly the sea goes still and I’m floating, staring at a shadow. There’s someone else there, someone just on the tip of my vision. I try to swim towards the shadow, but every stroke I swim, the shadow gets further and further away.

  Like I’m chasing a memory and just getting nowhere. Just as I’m about to get closer to the shadow, seeing the outline of a man, everything disappears, and the world goes completely black.

  I wake up with a chill in bed, covered in sweat, my damp hair stuck to my cheeks as my body shakes from head to toe. The dream felt so damn real...real enough it could be a memory of before I was twelve for all I know. Sucking in a deep breath, I have to calm myself down as I look up at the trees above, reminding myself where I am, safe in my room.

  Dreams like this have become recurrent in the last few weeks, and I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s caused them, and I never know why I’m in the sea or how I got there.

  I always feel so lost and scared. If it’s not dreaming about the sea or chasing shadows through a forest I’ve never seen before, it’s nightmares about Eleline. In my nightmares, she wins the challenge and I die. It’s like she’s haunting me now. I took her life, and I honestly don’t blame her at this point for haunting my dreams and invading my conscience. I climb out of bed on my shaky legs and grab some new clothes before going into the bathroom to have a quick shower. I leave my hair down and wet, listening to the sound of water drops on the hardwood floor as I get changed into my clothes. Finally, I pull on a long red cardigan, which I like to wear around the house.

  In the last few weeks, winter has moved into spring, and everything’s a bit nicer now that it’s not so cold outside. There haven’t been any new attacks from my old pack, and part of me wants to think that he’s forgotten about me and moved on. But I’m not that stupid. I know he hasn’t. And it makes me worry about what he’s planning. I’ll always worry. Panic and anxiety might be the main reason I’m not sleeping. The house is noisy, and I follow the noise to the kitchen.

  I pause when I see Valentine opening all the cupboards one at a time, slamming each one when he doesn’t find what he wants. He has no shirt on, and I search his muscular back for his moon markings, not finding them and wondering where they are. I stand there watching him quietly, seeing the anger and frustration pouring out of his every movement. Valentine is the quiet one, I’ve figured out. I see him every day, and I have absolutely no idea about him. I know nothing about him, nothing real and nothing from him. I know his past makes him reach for the bottle and that’s about it.

  Oh, other than his love for riddles and throwing stars, which he practises with drunk. I clear my throat and he pauses. He slams shut the cupboard he had open and turns back to me. The alpha looks wild in this moment, his hair messy and all over the place. His giant beard hides so much of his face, and I wonder for a second what he really looks like. He has an amazing body and soulful eyes, but a part of me itches to sneak into his room and shave all that beard off.

  I see some kind of man, something familiar in his eyes, and it always puts me at ease when anyone else would go running from a man like this.

  “You should be asleep, little wolf,” he says, his voice a warning laced in a kind tone. I’m sure this is how the sheep get lured into a wolf’s den. Shrugging my shoulder, I walk into the room, feeling his eyes tracking me. I know exactly where the other alphas hid the booze they like and don’t want Valentine to have. I walk across the room, and I open the cabinet under the sink and pull out the large box with several bottles of whiskey. There’s one good thing about being trapped in this house pretty much all of the time, I got to know and see every single bit of it. I pull out two bottles and hand one to him.

  “I’ve never gotten drunk, but I’m inclined to tonight because sleeping is not happening,” I tell him, knocking my bottle against his.

  He looks dumbfounded for a long time. He stares at me and then suddenly a big smile lights up his face. “All right, then. That is something I can definitely teach you to do.”

  “Good,” I say with a smile.

  “I’m certainly not the fighter like Silas, and fucking hell, I’m not the kind one like Ragnar or smart like Henderson,” he tells me, pausing to run his tongue over his bottom lip, and I track the movement with my greedy eyes. “But getting drunk and being a bad influence, that is definitely my arena.”

  I follow him out of the kitchen, through the entrance hallway to the living room where he collapses on the sofa, spreading his large legs out at one end of the sofa. I curl my legs underneath me before unscrewing the top of the bottle. The strong smell is absolutely revolting as I get the lid off, but it has a sweet, musky undertone that I can deal with. Valentine is already downing his drink, and I take a sip of mine, coughing a few times as the burning liquid goes down my throat.

  Valentine chuckles. “Take it slow, little wolf.”

  “Technically, I’m not a wolf shifter yet. I’m still locked up.”

  “Silas is an asshole. Sorry about that,” he replies with a grin. I keep taking sips until the warm buzz of the alcohol takes over. Feeling very bold with the alcohol in my system, I glance at Valentine Fall. The mysterious mess of a man I feel drawn to for no explainable reason.

  “Do you ever sleep?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer for a while, taking a much longer sip like he needs it. “No,” he replies. “I don’t do much other than drink enough to get past my wolf’s blood, which burns away the buzz, then I pass out. Then I’m back to finding more drink to block out memories... Sleep doesn’
t come easily.”

  “What happened to you?” I blurt out.

  His forest green eyes find me. “How long have you wanted to ask me that?”

  “Since we met.”

  He shakes his head and rests it back, and I have no idea if he is going to tell me or not.

  “You can tell me as I drink this, and most likely I’ll forget everything you say tomorrow, so it’d be like just talking to a wall,” I tell him before taking another long sip to make my point.

  He shakes his head. “It’s painful how much you remind me of someone. Makes it more difficult to have you here.”

  “Who do I remind you of?” I ask.

  “Just someone I lost,” he replies through gritted teeth.

  “Is that the reason you drink? Is that the terrible thing that happened?”

  “No,” he whispers. “Well, it’s one of the reasons, but not the worst. One of the reasons is that looking at you is like looking at a ghost that I can never truly possess.”

  “I don’t think you’re meant to possess ghosts. I think they’re meant to possess you,” I reply, trying to make light in the tension-filled room. He tilts his head to the side, his eyes boring into mine. The tension seems to build up, making me nervous to even blink.

  “This woman I would have fought the world to possess as mine. My brothers would say the same,” he answers me. For a second, I feel almost jealous of this woman. She has their hearts, that much is clear, and I haven’t even met her. That’s why they all look at me strangely sometimes. It’s most likely why they are training me and treating me so well. I remind them of someone they lost. I don’t even know this person who obviously isn’t here anymore.

  He takes a long drink again, and I wrap an arm around myself. “Tell me about her.”

  “I suppose it could do no harm.” He lets out a long sigh. “She was smart, curious and so beautiful it was almost like the gods made her in the image of themselves. For some insane reason, she liked hanging out with me and my brothers. When we were struggling with everything, she was there. She was always there for us.”

  Valentine looks at me, so I nod and take another drink before he continues.

  “It was more like a family relationship at the start when we were younger, but then we grew and I noticed her as more than the girl we treated as pack. It became more. We wanted more. And I think she did too. None of us ever really said that to each other, but the attraction and deep feeling were just building.”

  He explains this to me with a soft chuckle. I don’t dare interrupt him, break him out of the memories he has. “And just when one of us could have been brave and actually said that she was just like that to us…”

  His drifting off says it all. “I’m sorry. What happened to her?”

  “Something we had all been running from here,” he answers, not really telling me anything at all. He stares at me for a second too long.

  “Do I really look like her?” I ask.

  He nods, but he doesn’t answer with any words. The way he looks at me makes me think I’m missing some part of a story I don’t understand.

  “Tell me, little wolf, what are your plans for the future? What are you going to do when you move out of this house?”

  “You’re the only one who actually talks like I’m moving out,” I reply.

  “Are you not?” he asks with a teasing smile.

  “Yes, I am. I want a life. I want a life where I’m not a foster kid or a rejected mate and just want to be me,” I tell him the truth of how I feel. “For once, I want to not stand out. I want normal.”

  “Normal, huh?”

  I nod before taking a long drink. “Can I ask what happened that made you like this? If it wasn’t losing this girl, what was it?”

  “My brothers will kill me for talking to you about our past,” he sadly laughs while I wonder why they are so adamant about keeping their secrets. “Part of me wants to do it just so Silas can beat the crap out of me and I could pass out for a few hours. Much quicker than this shit.” He holds up his bottle, and I grimace at him. Part of me is worried for him, part of me knowing that he’s crazy enough to actually do that. “All right. It’s been hard to become alpha of this pack, hard because we had a pack before and we couldn’t save any of them.”

  “Your whole pack died?” I whisper. In that moment, it takes me a second to understand them all so much better than weeks of being with them. I understand them on such a deeper level than I ever have before. Alphas losing all their pack. I can’t even imagine. I can’t imagine how they stay here and are so happy or how they even built up another pack who became who they are. Eventually, we end up staring at each other for a long time as he lets me process and doesn’t answer my rhetorical question.

  “Surely a few survived whatever happened?”

  “They’re all gone, all of them, Mai. There was nothing we could have done to stop it.”

  “How old were you?” I ask.

  “Thirteen,” he replies.

  “Then you couldn’t have been expected to stop it and save your pack. You were a kid,” I tell him, reaching over and placing my hand on his arm. He freezes under my touch, even though he feels boiling hot. His eyes crash down on mine with a passion I can feel with one look.

  “Thirteen or not, it was my job. I should have protected all of our pack.”

  “No one could blame you for not being able to do that at thirteen. You know thirteen-year-olds can’t run a pack, let alone save everybody from whatever happened,” I gently say.

  “You don’t understand. We were born to save them,” he answers, and I furrow my brow, trying to work that out.

  “What the hell does that mean?” I ask as he shakes my hand off his arm and stands up, but I get tired of being left in the middle of a conversation with half answers. I put my bottle down and block his path as he tries to walk out.

  “No,” I firmly state. “I don’t know why you seem to think it’s okay for you to just walk away from everything, drink to forget like you don’t have a pack who need you right now to protect them, but I’m here to say it’s not cool. I just asked you a question, and you should have answered. If you are absolutely certain you want to host a one-person pity party where you have no friends and no life, then fine. But you will actually answer my question, not be rude. I’m tired of being ignored by everybody like I’m a goddamn child.”

  Valentine steps closer to me, crowding my space as he looms over me. “You know, it’s very dangerous to challenge an alpha like you are right now.”

  “I’m not like the others. You won’t hurt me.”

  His hand reaches out and wraps around the back of my nape, pulling me towards him until our bodies are lined up and I feel all of him. He holds me there for a second, breathing heavily and smelling of that god awful whiskey. “Tell me, why do you think I should let you get away with challenging me?”

  “Because I’m like you,” I reply. “I’m broken.”

  My eyes drift down to his lips and back up to his eyes, forcing myself to focus on anything other than the desire to lean closer and press our lips together. To find out what he tastes like.

  “Being rejected doesn’t make you broken,” he counters with a slight growl, but I don’t feel threatened at all.

  “Whoever said it was because I was rejected that made me broken?”

  He stares down at me like he can force the truth of my past out into the open. “What did they do to you, little wolf?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” I reply.

  “Actually, yes, I would,” he answers. “I want to know everything about my little wolf so I can destroy any threat.”

  He stares down at me for a long time while I don’t answer but feel like I can’t breathe. Swearing to protect me is one thing, swearing to destroy the monsters of my past is a whole other. I reach over and take the bottle from his hand and gently pull it back from him.

  “As long as you keep drinking this, you have no future or trust from me,” I firmly tell
him. “Your excuses for destroying yourself are just that, excuses. Trust me, if I can get up every day despite my past, then you can do it. We can do it together.”

  His hand slowly pulls away from the nape of my neck, stroking his long fingers through my hair, and he pauses. Valentine leans in and takes a long sniff of my hair, breathing in my scent and making my legs shaky with an unspoken need that I know he can scent. He may be lost. He may be so different from anybody I’ve ever met before, but my body reacts to him all the same.

  The attraction between us is undeniable. Then his lips find mine. Just a brush of his lips, almost like it didn’t happen, but I feel it. A strong buzz shakes through my body, and I lean forward.

  He stumbles back after a few seconds, not a drunk stumble, almost like he can’t believe he just did that. I stare for much longer than I should as he backs out of the room.

  “I see how broken you are,” he says, not looking at me. “And people like us, we don’t just get to move on.”

  “Yeah, we do. We do because we were tested, and we survived,” I say to his back, and he pauses in his attempt to leave. “I’m not going to give up on you, even if you give up on yourself. I’m going to show you how to move forward. I’m going to help you.”

  “No one, not even you, can help me,” he replies and leaves me alone in the empty room, a bottle of whiskey in my hand. I lift the bottle and stare at it for a long moment before throwing it across the room, watching it smash into pieces against the wall. I’m getting rid of all the alcohol in this house because I am determined to fix Valentine before my past catches up to me.

  “You’re slow today.” Silas clicks his tongue, narrowing his eyes on me. “Too slow. You’d be dead ten times over if your old alpha was here.”

  I swing around in anger, and Silas jumps out of the way. His blond hair is softly swept back and distracting as he casually runs a hand through it. “Stop bringing him up to piss me off.”