Discarded by My Mate, Claimed by My Brother

9-1

KATHERINE

There’s little to no comfort in a winter forest, even as a wolf, with a system built to survive harsh climates and fur that insulates your body from the cold. There is absolutely zero comfort when that forest is not simply snow-wrapped, but caught right in the middle of a snowstorm.

I’d run from the pack house seconds after Karen had dismissed me. The humiliation and the anger were all too much. I couldn’t stand being in that place a second longer. I hadn’t even said goodbye to my Dad. I couldn’t be the reason for another fight between them. I wouldn’t put him or their marriage through the wringer again.

The worst part was that a sliver of me believed her. It was the part of me that was still scared of her, still scarred by her bullying and mistreatment, but it refused to go unheard.

They’ve done so much for you, and they didn’t have to. You had the chance to finally give back to the pack that adopted you, and you failed.

I didn’t fail. The Goddess knew I didn’t – my mate didn’t want me, he loved another, and had never made room for me or our bond in his heart.

It was a little hard to tell this to the little kid in me who desperately wanted a mother’s love again and would’ve done anything to get it. Even from someone who clearly hated her.

I’d been walking in my wolf form for … it had to be at least a good couple of hours, now: yet, I was sure I hadn’t really made it that far. I was still in Lone Moon territory. I sort of recognized the trees and the landscape, even if it was hard to see through the snowstorm, with all of the snowflakes blurring my sight and piercing my eyes. My paws constantly sank in the still-soft carpet of snow and between that and the harsh cold, every step was quickly growing harder than the previous.

I gritted my teeth and forced my body to move.

I would not give up.

Lucian had left me stranded, and Karen had kicked me out, but I would not give up and give them the satisfaction of seeing me gone. No, I’d come back to bite both their asses.

I had not survived my pack’s m******e to give it up to a couple of assholes.

I wouldn’t…

CRACK!

All rational thoughts vanished from my mind as a sharp, blinding pain took over, making me howl and wail. My leg… my leg was burning, it was on fire, it…

I looked down and almost fainted.

A wolf trap.

I’d walked right into a trap, and now its sharp, heavy iron teeth were digging into my skin, into my broken bone, and the white of the snow was quickly turning crimson, smoke rising from where my warm blood met the ice-cold snow…

Keep still. Don’t move. Call for help. The rational part of my brain, the one who still remembered the training for this kind of situation, begged me… but the animal had already taken over, and I couldn’t help but thrash and move and wail and desperately try to get myself free, even if I knew I was just hurting myself more …

Well, well, well.

All of a sudden, an enormous, imposing black wolf, with eyes as red as blood, stepped out of the woods, baring his fangs at me as if in a vicious grin.

That sight made me go still and cower in fear. I didn’t even know why. It wasn’t my first time facing a Rogue.

But somehow … somehow, that wolf stirred a totalizing, atavistic fear in me – a fear enough to make me an easy prey.

I’m screwed.

That was the first, and only thought, my brain could formulate as two more wolves emerged from the swirling snow – one brown and one white.

Three Rogues, all of them looking more than ready to s*******r me, their eyes gleaming with predatory hunger. These two looked starved, to the point where I could count their ribs – and, any other day, they would have been an easy win.

Not today, though.

Because they were hungry, desperately hungry to the point of hunting their own kin, and I was in no condition to fight them. I was locked in a trap, losing blood by the minute.

I was completely, utterly screwed.