Page 44 of Sold Bullied Mate

“Alright,” I sigh, grabbing my own chair, spinning it around, and dropping into a seated position in front of the guy. I look him up and down once more, still trying to get a read on the situation, and jerk my head at Emin.

He gets the order, steps forward, and removes the Grayhide’s gag. To my surprise, the man doesn’t launch an attack, doesn’t try to bite him—nothing.

“Well,” I say, hating how my curiosity continues to rise. “This is fascinating.”

The man just stares back at me. I cross my arms and lean forward on the back of the chair.

“A Grayhide trying to cross over the border,” I speak slowly, watching him carefully, getting the feeling that he’ll reveal nothing willingly. He tilts his head as I continue, “That doesn’t make any sense. You knew you weren’t going to get through, so your goal was to get caught. But what good does that do you?”

He surprises me by speaking, his voice clear when he says, “Are you the alpha leader of this pack?”

No point in lying. He likely already knows the truth if he can smell my scent.

“I am.”

He looks to the left and right, eyes never going to the other shifters, but just taking in the area. Finally, when he meets my eyes again, he says, “Thought you would have something … bigger.”

I laugh, “Is that it? Some sort of tracker on you, thought we’d take you right into the middle of town? You don’t think we’re that stupid, do you?”

“I don’t,” he says, slight emphasis on the “I.”

A moment passes, quiet stretching out, and I can’t shake the growing sense that if this man weren’t from a rival pack, I might like him. Communicating a lot while saying little.

“What’s your name?” I ask, and to my surprise, he answers straight away.

“Aidan Grayhide,” he says, and the way his voice inflects tells me that this matters. Of course it matters—the current alpha leader of that pack is not a Grayhide. In fact, the last I knew, the Grayhide line was killed off decades ago.

“Is that so?”

“Let’s cut the crap. Does that sound good?”

My guys growl, each swiveling their snouts toward Aidan, but I hold up a hand, and they stop, slowly turning to face forward again, though I can tell that, with their pent-up energy, they are more than ready to tear him limb from limb right now.

“Sounds perfect. What the fuck are you doing in my territory, Aidan Grayhide?”

He clears his throat, sits up taller, and looks me right in the eye.

Normally, a death wish. But there’s something about this shifter that’s giving me pause.

“Jarred Blacklock is not the rightful alpha leader of the Grayhides,” Aidan says, voice a low growl. “I am.”

I sit back, raising my eyebrows. “Last I heard, Jarred defeated the previous alpha in a battle fair and square. What do you have to do with it?”

In fact, I’d heard the battle was so bloody that shifters were vomiting on the sidelines—shifters who had seen battle andgruesome death already. That was before I ever took over as the alpha leader.

“Jarred,” Aidan says, sounding like he’d curse the man with his own name if he could, “Is a slimy, dishonorable trash-fucker.”

Emin lets out a little sound behind me, and I bite my lip to keep a straight face. Aidan doesn’t seem to notice my right-hand man’s amusement, however, and continues on.

“The Grayhide line did not die out,” Aidan says, leaning in as much as he can, until he runs up against the restraints holding him back. “They were murdered in cold blood. Women, children, and the elderly. Jerrod’s father killed my mother infront of us.” His voice shakes, but he recovers. “Thought he killed me, too—but someone got me out. I was brought up in the pack, completely oblivious to my true roots. And after Jarred killed his own father to take over, and there was a chance I might figure out who I was, he had me taken away, too. Cast out.”

I hear Emin suck in a breath behind me, and wish I could turn around to tell him to be quiet. But I don’t want to take my eyes off Aidan. As a non-pack-member, I can’t tune into his being, can’t listen to his heartbeat and see if he’s lying to me, but my intuition is telling me that what he says is true.

“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing inmyterritory,” I snarl. “What the Grayhides do is none of my business.”

“Actually,” Aidan says, letting one side of his mouth curl up. “I come to you with information. Figured you’d never answer a message from a nobody asking for a meeting, but you would definitely come to the border if you heard someone was trying to infiltrate. Especially now that you have your mate—”

His words cut off as my hand wraps around his throat, squeezing. I see red, fury hurtling through me at an alarming pace. The only thing that keeps me from snapping his neck is my training, my Gramps’s voice in my ear telling me not to act in haste.

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