Page 27 of Hunted Mate
She’s done plenty. She’s disobeyed me at every turn and put a gun on me, but none of that is the reason for my current expression.
“It’s nothing you’ve done,” I say. “I’m just thinking about how I am going to protect you.”
I don’t want to bring up the scar itself. That would probably hurt her feelings. I know she’s self-conscious about it. But it doesn’t mar her body in my eyes. In my eyes, it’s an explanation, a battle wound. It’s a testament to both fortune and strength. You need both in this world. You can’t just be good. You have to be lucky too.
I am still going to hunt down those who hurt her, and end them. But first, I am going to make damn sure this woman knows who she belongs to. This mating and breeding is not recreational in any way. She’s been claimed by me, and as far as I am concerned, she is what most humans would call my wife. We are bonded physically and mentally and emotionally. We are one.
Our relationship will not be honored by the pack. Relations between shifters and humans are strictly forbidden because there’s no way of being able to keep things quiet about our kind if we start breeding out. People notice when their kids turn into beasts on random full moons as they’re growing up. Most of the time, that’s not what happens anyway. You don’t get shifter kids from outbreeding. Instead you get hairy little humans, or ones who have tails at birth. Genetics are tricky demons to tame.
The modern rules are designed to stop our kind ending up in research labs, imprisoned, enslaved, or simply slaughtered. All of the above have happened at one time or another, and that is why my job exists. Destroying the evidence of our existence is paramount. I know others will try to kill Callie. I am going to have to find a way to stop them.
She seems blissfully unaware of all of this. She’s too consumed with her own questions and curiosities.
“I need to know a few things, Gray. Starting with… what the fuck. Is. This?”
She turns around and gestures at the bank of equipment in the office.
“You were watching me for how long?” I know she knows I’ve been watching her. This is more of an interrogation tactic than it is a real question. She’s trying to get as much information as possible. It’s habit.
“I’ve been watching you since your research started to concern us.”
“Who the fuck isus?”
“Is it common for a journalist to insert the word fuck into every single sentence?”
“It’s not uncommon. Answer me.”
I don’t like that tone of hers. I wouldn’t have thought she’d be able to give me attitude after the way I just had her writhing and coming, but that’s okay. I can always handle her again if she needs it.
“Us is the people who will kill you if they discover what you now definitively know. You can never tell anybody. You need to disappear from the publishing world.”
I see her face shift as she struggles to come to terms with the very bad news. Her life as she knew it is over, and as the orgasms fade, the reality of that fact is finally starting to work its way through her mind.
“This is how you tell me you’re kidnapping me.”
“You wanted to follow the wolves,” I tell her. “Now you’ve found them. But they are never going to accept you. That scar you wear? That is your fate if they ever find out that you are with me. I will try to protect you, but…”
“Then shouldn’t you just let me go and live my life? They don’t need to know what I know. It can be our little secret.”
I think about that for a moment. I don’t want to ruin her life by dragging her out of it, but I also know that she already knows too much. She’s not going to be able to resist looking for more information. She and I are not going to be able to stay away from one another either.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
A harsh, demanding knock at the door makes us both freeze. That’s bad. Very, very bad.
“Quiet,” I say, pushing her into a closet. “Don’t. Fucking. Move.”
I close the door on her frightened face, glad to see that she seems to understand the urgency of the situation.
Bam. Bam. Crash!
The door flies open under the fist of someone who has no boundaries, and my half-brother Karl walks in. He is tall, dark haired. It’s long and tied back at the nape of his neck. He has a scar running down the left side of his face that goes right through his eye. That eye is milky white. No color in the iris, just a dark little hole in the middle where light still makes it through, but bent and twisted.
“Why are you still here, Gray?”
He doesn’t say hello. Doesn’t even acknowledge the door hanging half off its hinges. He doesn’t care what he breaks. He doesn’t care if he’s rude. Karl can be defined by the singular quality of not caring about anything other than his mission. He’s my father’s favorite son, or was.
“What do you mean?”
