The Fierce Wolf's Lowborn Mate

I decided to trade in my shifter in the time it took him to send four texts about dinner.

Half a year ago, this same shifter looked me in the face and told me I was revolting when I cried. Asked me, smiling, what had ever made me think I deserved him.

And now:

Dorian: [It was one scratch. You actually went to a clinic?]

Dorian: [I'm hungry. Come home and cook.]

Dorian: [I can't even eat right, living with you.]

Dorian: [You really do keep me badly.]

I read them in the waiting room at Cedar Street Clinic, a fresh row of stitches climbing my forearm. His, technically. He'd left the marks. I'd come alone to get them closed.

The nurse pressed the tape flat and clicked her tongue. "That deep, it'll scar. You'll feel it every time it rains." She nodded at the claw marks. "Your shifter ever actually finish his socialization training?"

"He did," I said. "Top of his class."

She didn't laugh. I didn't blame her.

I looked at the last text again. You really do keep me badly.

So that was the story he told himself. After a year of it.

I picked up my bag and went to the Bureau.

Chapter 1

"I'd like to trade in my shifter," I told the woman behind the desk.

She had a careful, kind sort of voice. "You've been registered together almost a year. You'll be eligible to bond very soon." A pause. "May I ask why you'd want to trade now?"

Bond.

Six months ago the word used to undo me. I was the one who brought it up first, sliding ring photos across the table, asking which band he liked.

Dorian had looked at the rings. Then at me. Like I'd tracked something onto the carpet. "Cry about it all you want," he'd said. "It is never going to happen."

I'm unranked. Two jobs, the kind that don't ask questions. I could never afford the serum a purebred like him runs on. Getting him at all had been an accident: a quarter-million-dollar fox, marked down, dropped into hands like mine.

I folded the discharge slip in my lap until the crease went white.

"He doesn't like me," I told her.

That was generous. He couldn't stand the sight of me.

Her face did something complicated. "A trained shifter bonds completely. Adores his keeper. That doesn't happen."

"Right." I almost smiled. "Lucky me."

She apologized like it was her fault. Maybe she'd decided it was.

She walked me back to the listings. Same bracket Dorian came from. Fox. Leopard. All of them beautiful in that built, engineered way.

"Anything else?" I asked.

I wanted a dog. A golden-retriever type, if they had one. I'd heard the dog breeds actually liked people. Even unranked people, maybe. Even me.

"Nothing right now," she said. "Two months for the next batch. I'll move you to the front of the line."

I was almost to the door when a photo slipped out of the folder under her arm and landed face-up on the floor.

Gray eyes. Cold ones, slit down the middle, the kind of gray that never warms up. A scar split one eyebrow. Wide shoulders, narrow waist. Handsome the way a blade is handsome, right before it opens you up.

A wolf.

The woman bent and picked it up and sighed at it. "He's the gentlest one we've got. Believe it or not."

"Management wanted to break into wolves. New market." She shook her head. "Nobody'll take one. Too scared they'll turn. The boss is done eating the loss." She slid the photo back into the folder. "He ships out to the pits this afternoon."

She looked at it one second longer before it disappeared.

"Raised soft his whole life, that one. The pits will take him apart piece by piece." A small shrug, like it cost her something. "And nobody wanted him."

Chapter 2

Nobody wanted him.

Nobody wanted me either.

The woman was still going. "I hear the pits tear them apart. A piece here, a piece there." She shuddered. "Nothing left to even scrape up."

That sounded like it would hurt.

A wolf was basically a dog. Dogs liked people.

I stopped walking. "Is he really obedient?"

Her whole face lit up. "Really."

"Then I'll take him."

She said they'd deliver him in three days. I zipped the re-homing agreement into the inside pocket of my bag, the one I keep for things I can't afford to lose.

I saw them before they saw me. Half a block up, gold light coming sideways through the trees.

Dorian, white-furred and lit up like something behind museum glass. And Seraphina.

Seraphina lives one complex over. Ranked, naturally. Clever, polished, nothing like me. Ever since she met Dorian she'd been dropping by with bottles of the good serum, the kind I couldn't buy. The two of them were standing very close.

I slowed down.

She saw me first. "Iris! Off to another shift?" The smile arrived with it, soft and a little sorry for me. "I don't mean anything by this. But you're about to bond with Dorian, and you could try a little. Look at what you've got on." Her eyes took a slow trip down and back up. "Walking around like that, who would ever believe you two are together?"

I looked at my T-shirt and jeans. Then at her dress.

"I think I'm fine," I said.

Dorian didn't look at me. "She doesn't look any better dressed up," he said, low. "Better she pretend she can't, so nobody finds out she's just plain ugly."

Seraphina swatted his arm. "Dorian. You can't talk about the poor girl like that."

He smiled. It was a perfect smile with nothing behind it. "You try to do her a kindness and she decides you're meddling. Lowborns can't follow how ranked people think." His tail flicked once. "Getting bought by her is the worst luck of my life."

He wasn't always like this.

At the start, when I couldn't keep serum in the house, when the cheap shirts I bought rubbed his skin raw, he said it anyway, steady and certain. Meeting you was the lucky thing.

It turned the day we ran into one of his old rivals. A red fox, stepping out of a town car while Dorian crouched on the sidewalk helping me gather a spilled bag. The fox set his shoe down on Dorian's hand.

"If it isn't the famous Dorian." He smiled down at him. "How'd you end up with something this ugly? No. It tracks. A defect and a lowborn. Matched set."

Dorian locked himself in the bedroom that night. I sat on the floor outside it. I told him the whole better-and-worse thing was a lie, that it didn't matter what the Bureau stamped on his file, that we lived well, didn't we.

He opened the door, eyes red and swollen. "You've never stood at the top. So of course you think being garbage is fine."

After that he found Seraphina. Highborn. Everything I couldn't give him. They got close fast. Sometimes, mid-sentence, she'd tip herself against his shoulder.

I brought it up once, careful. "You're my shifter. Could you keep some distance from Seraphina?"

He looked down at me, cold all the way through, something under the cold that hated me. "Iris. If I weren't defective, how would someone like you ever have afforded me? You took advantage of a clearance tag. That's the whole story. What gives you the right to play owner?"

He had it backwards.

Back then, he was the one on his knees, begging me to save him.

Chapter 3

The day I bought Dorian, he was on his knees.

He'd been the trading house's crown jewel once. Topped every auction they ran. Then they finished the panel and found the flaw nobody had thought to check for: he couldn't sire, couldn't complete a bond. After that he was just inventory. Marked down to a quarter million, and still nobody wanted a fox who couldn't give them young. They'd put him on the schedule to be decommissioned.

I'd walked in that afternoon to buy a shifter of my own.

He broke past his handler and dropped to the floor in front of me. "Please. Save me." Tears ran down that beautiful face like it was the thing it was built to do. "I'll be good to you. I'll be your family. I don't want to die. Please."

I grew up at Brightwood Children's Home. No family, not ever. I'd always wanted kids, but a family of even one sounded about right.

I spent everything I had, borrowed the rest, and bought him.

I never brought that day up again. I thought it would bruise his pride.

Funny, then, to hear it come back out of his mouth a year later as me taking advantage of him.

We'd been arguing about it the night before the clinic. I reached out and my hand brushed his.

He shoved me. Hard, on instinct, like I was something that had touched him without being asked.

The corner of the table opened my arm to the bone.

Blood slid down my wrist and dripped on the floor. He took a half step back from it. He did not reach for me.

"If you hadn't put your hands on me, you wouldn't be hurt," he said. "You did this to yourself." He wouldn't come with me to get it closed. "I'm taking Seraphina shopping today. And me standing there wouldn't make it hurt any less. You've got two hands. Stop pinning everything on me."

The nurse sighed over the stitches. "A cut this deep will scar. It'll ache on rainy days for years." She smoothed the tape down. "The two of you are a bad fit. Maybe just call it."

Call it.

Right. I could just call it. There was no law that tied me to Dorian for the rest of my life.

His hand was on the door when I stopped him. "Dorian. Do you really feel like being with me is torture?"

He paused. Turned. The same sneer waiting on his face. "Yeah." Then: "But a lowborn who finally lucked into me? You'd never actually let go. I'm stuck with you for life. Some plaster I can't scrape off."

I let out a slow breath. Good. My decision was the right one.

When the answer didn't come, his tail slapped the floor, impatient. "What are you trying to say?"

I picked at my thumbnail. "I got you a present. You'll find out in a couple of days."

Something moved across his face. For one second it almost looked like hope.

Then the sneer reset. "Not more of that low-grade serum even a dog won't touch? So I can waste my time pouring it down the toilet?"

"No." I meant it. "It's the one thing you want most."

Freedom.

He threw an it better be over his shoulder and shut the door.

Seraphina turned up first thing the next morning. "Dorian and I are going shopping. We have the same eye, the two of us. It's nice, going out with someone who actually speaks your language." A beat. "Iris. You won't... be upset, will you?"

Her eyes glittered, waiting for it.

Chapter 4

Normally I'd have sulked. Kept him home. What was the use of a shifter who'd never go out with me but trailed after everyone else?

Today I had somewhere to be. "I don't mind."

Dorian's lip was already curling into the usual sneer when it stalled out, gone strange. "You're not angry?"

I pulled my jacket on. "Not angry. Go wherever you want."

The mall had its end-of-season sale running, and I had a list for the wolf.

Seraphina threaded her arm through Dorian's, all sugar. "Isn't it nicer when she doesn't make a fuss? Come on, let's go."

I watched his arm vanish into hers and waited for the old ache to land. It didn't come. I toed my shoes on and walked out fast.

The mall was packed, the way it always is. Unranked owners everywhere, steering carts with their plain, ordinary shifters, every one of them wearing the same easy, well-fed smile. It was all I'd ever wanted. A warm, unremarkable shifter who'd stand in a checkout line with me. If I'd never heard Dorian beg, I'd have had it years ago.

I took my time in the pet aisle. A chew stick. A grooming comb, the soft-bristled one. Fish oil, the good bottle, not the cheap one. I read the labels twice. I wanted to get it right.

It was full dark by the time I got home. For once, Dorian was there. He and Seraphina didn't usually drag in before midnight.

He sat on the couch with his arms crossed, not bothering to hide the anger. "Where were you? You didn't even make dinner." He looked me over like I'd failed an inspection. "Bad enough I live this poor with you. Now I can't even get fed. You really do keep me badly."

I sipped my bubble tea and set the bags down. "Oh. I figured you'd eat at Seraphina's." I crouched to unpack. "And you don't eat what I cook anyway. Your last birthday I spent the whole afternoon on dinner. You dumped every dish in the trash."

That shut him up.

I went back to sorting the wolf's things and paid him no attention. Chew stick. Comb. Fish oil.

At some point he was standing behind me. "You're keeping me like a dog now?" He picked up the comb between two fingers. "I don't use low-tier shifter junk. This would wreck my coat. The oil isn't even pure." A pause, generous. "Fine. You already bought it. I'll make myself try"

"It's not for you," I said.

His hand stopped on the comb. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I turned and looked at that perfect face. "I'm not good enough for a high-tier shifter like you. I already filed the re-homing agreement." I let it sit. "In two days you won't have to look at me again."

The clock ticked, brittle in the quiet. We looked at each other and neither of us said a word.

Then the crease between his brows smoothed out. "So Seraphina was right."

"About what?"

"You saw us together." He said it like he'd solved something. "You're pulling back to reel me in. You want me to regret it. And now here you are, throwing around words like re-homing." He almost laughed. "She told me you were the scheming kind. She was right." His mouth curved. "You think a few threats and I'll roll over and lick your hand like one of those bargain shifters?"

I didn't have it in me to argue with him.

"Believe whatever you want," I murmured.

Chapter 5

My calm only wound him up tighter.

He tore the calendar off the wall. Next month, the twentieth, had a little heart inked on it in highlighter. I'd drawn it back when I still wanted to.

"This is what you've been after the whole time, isn't it. Bonding with me." He shook the page at me. "Six months out and you were already interrogating me about ring styles. Forcing me to move in with you. If you want me, just say it. Doesn't pulling stunts like this make you feel filthy?"

Shifters owe their humans companionship. At the start I told myself we just didn't know each other yet. Later it was plain he didn't want to. In a year we had never so much as held hands. The only hand I ever saw him take was Seraphina's.

Let one flicker of hurt show and he'd smile. "She tripped. I caught her. We're not filthy the way you lowborns are with each other."

I looked at him and didn't know him. For a year I'd taken every wrong as mine, worked to close a distance he kept widening. He'd ask if I was worthy and my body would answer no before my head could.

I'd drawn that heart with a chest full of love. I still don't think wanting your own shifter is a filthy thing.

He wasn't finished. He ripped the calendar into pieces and let them rain down over the floor. "Here's the truth. Even if I bond with you, I'll still see Seraphina. You want to touch me, you ask first. On the street, no one can know we"

"Dorian."

I cut him off. He turned on me, furious, like he had a great deal left to say.

I have never been calmer in my life. "No wonder they marked you defective."

One word at a time. "Buying you was the worst money I ever spent."

His gold eyes shrank to pinpoints. The white fur down his tail stood straight up.

The Bureau's courier arrived right on time.

Dorian stared at the wolf like he wanted to put him through the drywall. Beau. He was tall enough that I had to tip my head back to find his face, the muscle in his arms straining the seams of his shirt. Hard, slashing brows. Long sharp eyes. A scar nicking one temple.

He looked like he could take a person apart.

I'd never been near a fierce-breed shifter. My nerves climbed. Could a wolf like this actually be gentle?

He must have caught the fear coming off me, because he bent down, slow and careful, and offered me his head. His soft ears. To touch.

"Hello, Mistress." His voice came out very quiet. "I'm Beau."

The courier was the same receptionist as before. Her name was Birdie. She beamed at us. "Don't be scared. I watched this one grow up. He's a sweetheart, honest." Then: "The Bureau's mid-renovation, so reclaiming Dorian will take another two weeks or so. Could you board Beau here until then? The Bureau covers the fee."

While she talked I felt Beau's tail find my ankle. It was trembling against me in quick little beats, like he couldn't make it hold still.

I didn't say yes and I didn't say no.

Dorian hadn't made a sound this whole time.

Not until Beau reached, so carefully, for my smallest finger.

Then Dorian let out two words, light as anything.

"Mongrel."

Chapter 6