Never His Mate: a Rejected Mates Shifter Romance (Claws and Fangs Book 1)

Well, Ryker. You said to take off the necklace and see what happens, I think to myself as I jump down from the last step on the fire escape. So what now?

Honestly, I didn’t expect anything to come of it except for missing the reassuring weight of Aleks’s fang against my chest. But, right when I’m about to scoff and maybe take a trip to Charlie’s even though tonight’s my regularly scheduled day off, something happens.

My hands flex, claws shooting out. I feel my canines lengthen, the muscles in my forearms, my calves, my thighs bulging for a moment until I can force back the partial shift. My wolf wants out. Not only that, but she wants to chase.

To follow.

To run.

Where? I’m not so sure, and that denial lasts for maybe five seconds before I realize she wants me to find Ryker.

And, holy shit, if I give her control, she can. She’s caught his scent, and she can follow the imaginary thread that ties us together. For the first time in almost a year, our bond is pulsing, Ryker calling me to him.

You know what? I’ve spent so long denying the call of the wolf that I just don’t want to anymore. Ryker wants me to come to him? He might not like the alpha who answers his call, but okay.

Let’s go, girl.

Somehow, I’m not surprised when my wolf brings me back to the park where I left Ryker. Even though my whole world seems to have shifted since I turned away from him, it’s probably only been about twenty minutes since I was sitting on the bench that I just passed.

He’s not sitting there anymore, but he didn’t go too far from where I left him. Instead of resting against the bench, he’s sitting on a patch of grass with his legs stretched in front of him, ankles crossed, hands perched behind him. His head is hanging back a little as he watches the sky.

“Full moon’s coming,” he tells me.

Thanks, Ryker. As if I need the reminder.

I follow his stare. He doesn’t say hi, I notice. Doesn’t rub it in that I’ve come back to him, especially since I really wasn’t gone for long at all. Still, even though I’m looking up at the blue sky—no sign of the moon, but I know instinctively where she’ll be later tonight—I can see him out of the corner of my eye. He looks over his shoulder, his gaze dipping to my chest. As much as I’d like to think he’s checking out my boobs, I know better.

He’s looking for Aleks’s necklace, humming to himself when he can tell that I left it behind.

I stiffen. Okay. Now he’s going to say something. He’s not going to let that slip by him without making some kind of comment, right?

Wrong.

I brace myself when he opens his mouth, absolutely stunned when all he says is, “You want to go for a run with me? My wolf’s getting antsy with the full moon coming soon.”

It’s a shifter thing. We have so much excess energy that one of the best ways to burn it off is with physical activity. Fighting, fucking… running. I guess I should be happy he picks that over the others. But the way he asks? It’s so casual. No dares. No challenges. Just a simple offer.

And I want to say yes more than I probably should.

“What, now?”

“Tonight. Tomorrow.” Another gaze skyward. “There’s time.”

Not much, but there is some time.

“Maybe later,” I tell him.

He looks back at me again. He can tell from something in my expression that, while he’s happy not to mention our earlier discussion, I’m obviously not willing to just drop it. I should. Rehashing it is only going to be a strain on me, but that doesn’t stop me. He had some kind of point to prove, telling me about the meaning behind Aleks’s fang. Well, he made it.

Let’s see what happens now.

His eyes dip to my chest again. “I take it you believe me now.”

“You kinda left me with no choice there, Ryker.”

He shrugs, then slowly climbs to his feet. His movements are still careful, as if he’s trying not to trigger me into bolting or something—or like he’s gone back to treating me like an omega. “Hey. All’s fair in love and war.”

“Yeah?” I snap. I have this irrational urge to prove to him that I’m as much of an alpha as he is. It’s the damn challenge, I know it is, but I fall for it every fucking time. “Which one is this?”

He smiles, but he doesn’t answer me. At least, not with words.

Instead, he reaches for the hem of his shirt. His intent is obvious. He’s totally about to take his shirt off.

And, yet, I still find myself demanding, “What are you doing?”

“Showing you something. You stopped me last time, so I picked a shirt without buttons this time. That way I can do this”—he pulls the tight black tee over his head before I can squeak out a protest— “before you get the chance to stop me again.”

Swallowing that almost-squeak, I turn it into a scowl. “You’ll take any excuse to start stripping in front of me.”

His eyes seem to spark beneath the sunlight. “Any fucking excuse. But I think I’ve got a good one,” he says, tapping his chest.

What the…

At first, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking at. His chest is so sculpted, it looks like it belongs in a museum as the work of one of the masters. Though he’s an alpha, he’s completely hairless. His arms have black hair like his fur, but his chest is completely bare.

Well, except for⁠—

No.

No, no, no.

Maybe.

I blink.

Now, shifters heal almost as quickly as vampires. While Aleks had to replenish with six bags of Charlie’s blood after his fight with Ryker, if he’d actually fought back, Ryker would’ve just needed a little time to recover. We have great regenerative properties. Someone can stab me, and unless it’s with a silver blade, I’ll be one hundred percent by morning. I won’t have a single mark, single scratch, single scar on me.

It should be the same for Ryker—but it isn’t. Or, at least, one time it wasn’t.

Because that’s what I’m looking at. That’s what’s there.

A scar where there really, really shouldn’t be one.

Forming a circle around his left nipple, I see five perfectly spaced, perfectly even scars that would indicate where his heart is. And unless he goes around pissing female shifters off on purpose so that they’ll threaten to tear the heart right out of his chest, I know exactly how he got those marks.

I know when. I know who.

And I know that those marks should’ve been healed a year ago.

“What… where did you get those?”

“Don’t you remember, sweetheart?”

Oh, I remember all right.

“Why are they still there?”

“You gave them to me. I kept them.”

The only way to preserve a scar like that is on purpose. It’s a weird male thing, usually. When they want to show off some wound, like say from a particularly fierce fight they got into, a special blend of silver and some other herbs slapped into the mark will create a reminder. They call it a shifter tattoo, and most females go crazy over those types of markings, no matter how crude they are.

But this one isn’t crude. In fact, it almost looks like⁠—

No. He wouldn’t have. No way.

It’s impossible.

Isn’t it?

I goggle up at him. I won’t know unless I ask him. “But why?”

His smile widens. I’m not so sure why, since I feel like I’ve just had the earth pulled out from under me for the second time today. He’s smiling. I’m probably staring at him in ill-disguised horror.

He taps his chest again. “When you figure out the answer to that, then you’ll know exactly why I’m not going anywhere until you say yes.”

I don’t go back to the apartment after I leave Ryker in the park the second time. I tell myself it’s because I’m not ready to see Aleks again, but that’s the thing when it comes to being a wolfish lie detector: I’m not so great at lying to myself, either.

I don’t go to Charlie’s, mainly because I know for sure that that would be the first place that Aleks would go to look for me. Since I’m off tonight, I didn’t bother taking my phone with me earlier. I left it on my charger, and I’m glad since it means that without it—and without Aleks’s fang—I’m basically off the grid.

Only basically, though, because if I can feel my way back to Ryker, it has to be the same for him. He can follow me all of the way across Muncie, especially since Aleks’s fang is back at the apartment. When he doesn’t, I try generously to think that he’s respecting my obvious need to be alone.

And then I pull my head out of my ass and realize that this is just the next part of his obvious challenge.

I’m an alpha. Staying away from him is a coward’s move, and we both know it.

I’d like to believe that I would’ve held out. Call it being determined instead of weak, I could’ve spent the evening walking around town, daring any vamp with a death wish to confront me now that I’m not wearing Aleks’s fang any longer. A dirty fight would help take the edge off the clawing need I’m feeling.

Fighting or fucking, it’s the wolf’s way.

The approach of the full moon’s not usually this rough for me; Ryker’s casual reminder that she’s coming is making it worse. I don’t even have to hear my wolf’s constant, keening whine for its mate to know exactly why I’m struggling. No matter which way I walk, she keeps trying to re-orientate me so that I’m following that same invisible tether from before.

And maybe I know what’s going to happen if I do, but I finally give in.

I almost expect it when she leads me right back to the park.

In Muncie’s urban setting, Ryker’s wolf is drawn to the only spot of greenery. And maybe if I hadn’t been wearing Aleks’s fang the whole last year, mine would’ve been, too.

I thought it was the chamomile that made me relax, that helped me get attuned to the city. Could’ve been.

Doubt it.

What I don’t expect, though, is that I actually find his wolf. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Ryker in his shifted form, but I take a few moments to appreciate it all the same. Alphas are just built differently than most wolves. He’s big—that’s the shifter size—but his legs are powerful, his muzzle pointed, his amber eyes intelligent.

As he swings his snout my way, I don’t just see a knowing look. I see relief.

It’s my turn to smile at him.

“I thought I’d take you up on that run,” I tell Ryker.

He cocks his head. Shifters don’t speak when they’re in their beast forms, but I can tell from that simple gesture that he’s asking me if I’m sure. Because, at that moment, I think we both understand that, if I join him for a run, if I strip down to my fur before shifting back to skin, that with the full moon so close… what happens next will be inevitable.

And it is.

We’re wolves.

We fight. And we fuck.

And even if I’m never his mate, I’m willing to give that up for just one moment in time with Ryker.

“Yes,” I whisper. “I’m sure.”

I’m not accepting him as my mate, but I’m accepting him if only for tonight.

We run. And we run. On some level, we’re just free to be our wolves, eating up the ground, running together while also racing each other. Sometimes Ryker’s in the lead, sometimes I am, but we never get out of sight of one another.

It doesn’t take long for him to realize that he can’t catch me unless I want to be caught.

We also don’t forget that we’re in a Fang City. As if our wolves are leading us somewhere safe, somewhere private, they take the lead, pushing us through the park, down empty side streets, and past some quiet residential roads. I almost expect to be guided toward the mountain, but as much as my wolf just wants to be with her mate, she’s still a part of me. And going back to Accalia? No. No way.

So we don’t. Ryker bumps into my side, trying to steer me one way, but I snap at his ear before choosing a different path. With the moon closing in on us, shining her light on my pale fur and his midnight-colored scruff, my nose is more powerful than ever. Over the fuel and the exhaust, the garbage, the humans, the vamps… over all of it, I catch a hint of mud and water and trees and tear off in that direction.

Ryker races right behind me. When he pours on a burst of speed, overtaking me, I guess that his wolf has finally picked up on the same scents.

Forest.

Earth.

Trees.

It’s a wooded area, more densely packed than the park where Ryker spent the afternoon and early evening, and on the outskirts of Muncie. If we hope for any type of privacy—and, with my wolf riding me to just do this already, getting some privacy isn’t really a dealbreaker for me right now—this is the best spot that we could’ve chosen.

I’m a shifter. Even before I realized that Ryker was mine, I always knew that I’d have a mate one day. Whether they were a supe or a human, I didn’t care, but if they wanted me, they had to tangle with an alpha female.

So renting a hotel and having some sweet guy deflower me on top of a soft queen-sized bed? Yeah, right. Even the idea of a fumbling, grasping, underwhelming one-night stand in my room at the apartment would never be quite right.

Wearing only the moonlight with the grass at my back and dirt in my claws?

Sign me up.

Once we cross into the woods, it becomes real. My heart is pounding almost as loudly as my pads hitting the packed dirt between patches of wild grass, but I’m determined. It’s another alpha quirk, I guess. Once I make up my mind, nothing can change it.

Except, it seems, a stubborn alpha who swore he’d get me to say yes.

I try not to think about that as my wolf stops short. If she thinks this is the right place to entice her mate to fuck, I’m going to go with her because hell if I know what I’m supposed to do on my own. She’s taken me this far, my wolf and my instincts, and if Ryker rejects me here and now after everything he’s said and done these last few days, I might just rip his heart out for real this time.

Ryker has continued to run, but his wolf throws on the brakes when he senses that I’m no longer behind him. By the time he wheels around and backtracks his way to me, I’ve already shifted, trading my fur for skin.

His wolf gets one look at my naked human body and lets out a howl.

Is that a good howl? I fucking hope so.

I’m shivering. My skin is so hot, it feels like I have a fever, so I know that the chill from the woods has nothing to do with the minute quakes. No, that has everything to do with how an apex predator is looking at me like I’m Sunday lunch.

Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe I’m being too forward. I’m an alpha, so naturally I would take the lead, but Ryker’s an alpha, too. Maybe that’s why he chose Trish. She wouldn’t just throw herself at him naked like this, would she?

Well, no. Remembering the rumors I’ve heard about Trish Danvers, she basically did, so maybe this is one way to seduce Ryker Wolfson.

Luna, help me⁠—

Before I can shift back to my fur and run away like my tail’s on fire, Ryker shifts back to his two-legged shape.

For the first time, I get a good look at him in his skin. I’ve seen his chest and, as mouth-watering as it is, it’s nothing compared to the rest of him. I always thought he was a big guy in his clothes, but now I see that I was right. He’s built huge everywhere.

And I mean everywhere.

I look at the club jutting out from between his legs and start to have second thoughts. That thing is supposed to fit inside of me? You’ve got to be fucking kidding. I’m not even so much worried about the length as I am about its girth.

It’s massive.

He’s already hard, so even if I can pretend like this wasn’t on both of our minds, that erases any doubt that he didn’t understand my wolf’s not-so-subtle signals. But he doesn’t reach for me. Instead, he stays back, his eyes locked on my face.

How nice. I stare at his dick, and he’s gracious enough to keep his eyes up here. The one time I want a packmate to see me naked and actually see and he couldn’t care less.

And then, as if he’s hit his limit of being a respectful kind of guy, he turns on his high beams and scans me hungrily, eyes taking in every inch of my naked body. Like he’s memorizing it.

“Fucking gorgeous,” he whispers reverentially. “I knew it.”

That makes me feel a little bit better about myself. “You like it?”

“I love it.”

I turn around, showing off my ass. Just in case, I give it a little wiggle. It just feels right. “How about this?”

Peering over my shoulder, I watch as Ryker lifts his hand, wiping at the corner of his mouth.

Holy shit. Is he drooling?

I… I think he might be drooling.

His voice comes out like a croak. “Even better. But you know what I’m dying to see?”

I lift my eyebrow, hoping my expression makes me look like the fucking seductress I feel like. “What’s that?”

He swallows the lump in his throat. His big paw reaches down, giving his erection a slow, easy stroke, almost as if he’s afraid that he’ll go off if he adds any more pressure than that.

“Knees,” he rasps out. “On your knees.”

I expected that. While shifters mate in as many positions as humans do—double, actually, since some of the more kinky wolves will mate as their beasts—going at it with the female on her knees, her male taking her from behind… well, it’s a classic for a reason.

On my knees. It’s not an alpha command, though it easily could’ve been, but that’s not Ryker’s style, I’m discovering. He wants me to choose.

Thing is, I don’t think I’ve had a say in the matter since I was fifteen.

Just once, I promise myself. Just to get it out of my system.

I drop down on all fours, turning slightly so that he can’t help but focus on my full moon instead of the Luna shining down on us.

“Like this?” When Ryker makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat, I laugh. “I’ll take that as your yes. Come on. Come over here.”

He doesn’t move. I can tell it’s taking everything Ryker has to keep his distance, but he’s doing it for me. Because it’s my choice—and because, one way or another, there’s no going back after this.

There’s no taking it back, either.

“And you’re sure? You’re really sure?”

“Don’t I look sure? I’m on my fucking knees for you, Ryker.”

“Yes.” Another croaking sound. “You damn well are.”

The unsaid but why hangs between us.

It hits me then why he’s so unsure. And, I guess, it’s my fault. If I believe him—and I don’t want to, but I’m starting to—then he’s spent a year looking for me. A year wanting to take me as his mate. Whatever his reasons for it, there’s no denying it.

And then all I’ve done since he’s found me is tell him that there’s no chance he can have me.

But I’m not offering to be his bonded mate. If only just this once, I want to feel him inside of me. I’m not even all that apprehensive about his size. Shifter males are usually hulking beasts compared to their more delicate counterparts. It’s how we’re made. If my five-foot mom can mate my six-five dad, then I can take Ryker.

Probably.

Hopefully.

Claws crossed.