Stay Away from Me

Lilian Rodriguez has perfected the art of being invisible. Glasses she does not need, earphones permanently in, a quiet smile that asks nothing of anyone. In the Silver Angel Pack, where everyone can smell strength, nobody looks twice at the girl with chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast and an old song running in her headphones. That is exactly how she likes it. Warrior blood runs in her family, but Lilian buried that part of herself along with the cousin she lost, and she has no intention of digging up either one.

Then a scent in a crowded parking lot stops her heart. Her wolf screams one word she has waited her whole life to hear: mate.

The problem is whose scent it is.

Abbott Davis is everything the pack adores. Golden, magnetic, the future Alpha, with the prettiest girl in school on his arm and his pick of any Luna he wants. When the bond roars awake between him and the nobody in glasses, he does the unthinkable: he looks her in the eye and rejects her in front of everyone. An Alpha, he says, deserves a Luna of matching rank. Lilian has heard that arithmetic before, and she refuses to do it. She accepts the rejection with three flat words, turns on her heel, and walks away with her spine straight, leaving the golden boy staring after her in disbelief.

That should be the end of it. It is not the end of anything.

Her wolf still howls for him at night. His control cracks every time another male so much as glances her way, and the growl in his throat keeps betraying him. He tries to scare her off, then to win her back, then simply to be near her, and Lilian discovers that hating Abbott Davis would be a great deal easier if her heart would cooperate. The pull between them burns hotter with every day they pretend it is not there. Slow, maddening, and impossible to hide from a pack that misses nothing.

Then the border lights go up.

Rogues are moving like they have a leader, and the leader carries a name the packs hoped to forget. When raiders strike close to home, Lilian is taken, and the boy who threw her away tears two territories apart to get her back. What the war shows everyone instead is what the packs always underestimated: the shy nobody fights like the warrior she was raised to be, and she does not need anyone's permission to stand between her people and the dark.

Now Abbott wants forever, and Lilian holds every card. If he wants her, he can court her the old way and earn back every inch his pride threw away. The pack is watching. His wolf is begging. And Lilian is done begging anyone.

A rejected-mates werewolf romance about the most dangerous thing two proud wolves can ever do: stay. Full of slow-burn longing, sharp banter, and a love that keeps its doors open and its promises, this is the story of a boy who said stay away from me, and the girl who finally, on her own terms, says stay.