Choosing the Rejected Mate (Moon Bound Mates #2)

Chapter One

Sugar, Smoke, and Bad Decisions

Holly

The mixer dies at five seventeen in the morning.

Not quietly. Not with dignity. No, that would be too kind, and apparently the universe wakes up every day, stretches, cracks its cosmic knuckles, and asks, How can I personally inconvenience Holly Black before sunrise?

The mixer gives one violent metallic shriek, coughs twice like a dying raccoon with unpaid debts, and launches a puff of flour directly into my face. I stand there, frozen behind the counter of Sweetique Bakery, covered in white powder from my eyelashes to the collar of my shirt.

The bowl wobbles, the dough inside slumps, and the mixer lets out one final pathetic groan and goes still. I stare at it. It stares back.

Well, no, it doesn’t. It’s a machine. But if it had eyes, they would be smug little bastard eyes.

“You dramatic piece of scrap metal,” I whisper.

From the prep table behind me, Maisie snorts. “Are you talking to the mixer again?”

“I’m trying to keep this professional.”

“You threatened to bury it behind the dumpster yesterday.”

“Yes, but in my defense, it knows what it did.”

Maisie wipes her hands on her apron and leans around me to inspect the machine. She’s human, which means she can’t smell the smoke curling from the motor, but she has common sense, which is sometimes more useful than supernatural senses. Not often, but occasionally. Like now.

“That smells expensive,” she says.

“It smells like betrayal.”

“It smells like you need a handyman.”

I close my eyes. There are words in the English language that should not be spoken before coffee. Handyman is one of them. Taxes is another. Moist is always banned. No exceptions.

“I can fix it,” I say.

Maisie looks at me, and I look at her. The mixer gives a tiny, spiteful click.

Maisie lifts one brow. “You tried to fix the freezer last month.”

“I did fix the freezer.”

“You trapped yourself inside it for twenty minutes.”

“That was a strategic cooling period.”

“You screamed for help.”

“I was motivating the staff.”

“You were alone.”

I point a flour-covered finger at her. “Your tone is ugly this early.”

She grins, completely unbothered. “Call the new guy.”

“No.”

“You don’t even know which new guy I’m talking about.”

“I know enough. I hate him already.”

“You hate everyone before seven.”

“That’s because people insist on existing before seven.”

I turn back to my dough, because dough I understand. Dough is simple. Flour, water, yeast, salt, and sugar. Give it warmth, give it patience, and it becomes something soft. Something useful. Something people want.

People are more complicated. Wolves are worse. Mates are the worst.

Not that anyone asked for my expert opinion, but being fated to someone is the cosmic equivalent of having your life hijacked by a drunk wedding planner with trauma and a superiority complex.

Everyone romanticizes it until you’re the one standing there with your soul cracked open while the person fate supposedly handpicked for you looks you dead in the eye and says no.

I shove the thought down so hard it nearly cracks a rib.

Nope. Not today.

Today is about cinnamon rolls, sourdough, lemon tarts, and pretending my life is a charming little small-town success story instead of what it actually is ... a rejected wolf shifter living off pack land, running a bakery, and absolutely not thinking about the bond that once tried to kill her.

Very wholesome. Very marketable. And it probably looks great on a business card.

Maisie softens in that awful way people do when they almost remember my past out loud. I hate that look. Pity has a scent. Sour and sticky, and it clings to the air and crawls under my skin.

“I’m fine,” I say before she can speak.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was about to say the croissants need egg wash.”

“Liar.” I give her a look over my shoulder.

“Fine. I was about to say you need help.”

“I need coffee. Help is for people with support systems and healthy coping mechanisms.”

“Holly.”

I sigh and lean my hip against the counter.

The bakery is warm around us, glowing gold in the soft light above the display cases.

Outside, the town is still mostly asleep, the street washed in pale dawn and silence.

Inside, everything smells like butter, sugar, yeast, and the faint burn of electrical failure.

Sweetique Bakery is small, but it's mine—every inch of it.

The front has little round tables with mismatched chairs I refinished myself, because I’m cheap and stubborn.

The walls are painted sage green, the shelves stacked with jars of cookies, honey, and homemade jams. There is a chalkboard menu above the counter written in my handwriting, which is mostly legible if you squint and believe in miracles.

Behind the counter, the kitchen is controlled chaos. Stainless-steel surfaces. Cooling racks. Flour bins. Ovens. A sink that drips when it feels emotionally neglected. And now, one dead mixer lying like a fallen soldier.

This place is the first thing that ever belonged to me. Not my pack. Not my bloodline. Not my mate.

Mine.

I built it after I left Ash Hollow with two suitcases, one scarred wolf, and exactly enough pride to make terrible financial choices.

I slept in the storage room for the first three months because rent for an apartment and a shop would have required either a miracle or a sugar daddy, and I don’t have the personality for either.

Now, two years later, people line up for my apple fritters.

Survival is weird like that. One day you’re certain the pain is going to hollow you out forever. Then suddenly you’re yelling at a mixer while wearing an apron that says Hot Buns Served Daily. Healing is not graceful. Anyone who says otherwise is selling journals on social media.

Maisie’s phone buzzes on the counter. She snatches it up, reads the message, and smiles.

I narrow my eyes. “Why does your face look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you know something irritating.”

“I know many irritating things.” I hate when she gets all vague.

“Specific irritating things.”

She turns the screen toward me. “Lena says the new handyman is already at the hardware store. Apparently he starts early.”

“Good for him. I hope he stretches first.”

“She says he fixed the door at the library yesterday.”

“Heroic.” I roll my eyes.

“And the leak at the diner.”

“Saintlike.” The words drip with sarcasm.

“And Mrs. Bell’s porch swing.”

“Alert the church.”

“She also says he’s hot.”

I pause, not because I care, obviously. I’m a woman who appreciates information. That is all. Knowing whether a man is attractive is simply part of understanding the threat level, like checking the weather or sniffing milk before pouring it into coffee.

“How hot?” I ask.

Maisie’s smile turns filthy. “I thought you hated him already.”

“I do. I want details for accuracy.”

“She used three fire emojis and one eggplant.”

“Lena uses eggplants for everything. Last week she used one to describe soup.”

“It was thick soup.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I’m surrounded by children.” The front bell jingles. “We’re closed,” I call automatically.

“It’s me,” a voice answers.

I relax when Mr. Phelps shuffles in wearing his usual cardigan and judgmental expression. He’s eighty-two, human, and has been buying two raisin buns every morning since I opened. He claims they are for his wife, which would be more convincing if she had not died twelve years ago.

“You’re early,” I say.

“You’re covered in flour.”

“It’s a new fashion.”

“Hm.” He glances at the dead mixer. “That smoking?”

“No.”

Maisie coughs. “Yes.” I shoot her a look.

Mr. Phelps walks closer, squints at the machine, then nods with the grave authority of a man who has never repaired anything in his life but has watched many people do it incorrectly. “You need the new handyman.”

I glare at him. “Has everyone in this town joined a handyman cult overnight?”

“He fixed my gate.”

“Wonderful. Did it propose after?”

“No, but it closes now, which is more than I can say for your mouth when you’re annoyed.”

Maisie chokes on a laugh. I give Mr. Phelps his raisin buns for free because respect for elders is important, even when elders are rude little gremlins in cardigans.

By six, the bakery is open. By six fifteen, there’s a line. By six forty, I’m regretting every decision I have ever made, starting with being born and ending with not buying a second mixer when I had the chance.

The morning rush hits hard. Commuters. Parents. Teachers. A frightening number of teenagers with iced coffees bigger than their heads. I box pastries, pull espresso shots, smile until my cheeks hurt, and pretend the dead mixer in the back is not going to ruin tomorrow’s production.

My wolf paces under my skin. She has been restless all morning. That alone makes me uneasy.

Since the rejection, she’s not gone. But she’s different. Quieter in some ways. Sharper in others. She survived what my fated mate did to us, but survival left marks. We both have them.

Usually, she likes the bakery. She likes the warmth, the familiar scents, the routine. She likes knowing the door locks. She likes that no Alpha can walk in here and command obedience from us.

This morning, though, she keeps lifting her head inside me. Listening, scenting, waiting, and I don’t like it. Waiting never brings anything good.

The bell above the door rings again just as I’m sliding a box of cupcakes across the counter to Mrs. Bell.

“Careful,” I tell her. “The chocolate ones have espresso in the frosting.”

“At my age, dear, I need all the help I can get.” She chuckles at her own joke, and I smile.

“Fair enough.”

She moves aside and the world changes. One second, I’m standing behind my counter with flour on my cheek and coffee on my apron. The next, the air leaves my lungs.

The scent hits first—cedar, warm skin, and fresh rain on dry earth. There’s a trace of metal, like tools warmed by work-rough hands. And wolf.