Page 28 of Hunted Mate
“New Orleans wants to know why you haven’t reported in. The research was well over a week ago. There’s been no more discernible material coming out of her direction, right? So why aren’t you back in New Orleans?”
“What are you doing here, Karl?” I answer his question with a question. I don’t like being checked up on, and more worryingly, I know they don’t send Karl for check-ins. They send him when they want someone dead.
“Following up.”
“Alright, well, I’m not a pup, and I don’t need to be followed up on. Do you want to go and grab a drink?”
I want him out of here, before he scents Callie.
But it’s already too late. He leers at me, his canines long and white. Borderline vampiric in appearance, though he’s a hundred percent wolf.
“I can smell it, you know. The sex. The human. The seed. The fact that you’ve been fucking someone here.”
He’s an invasive fucker.
He doesn’t care that he’s being rude and awkward. He doesn’t give a fuck, because he’s as close to a psychopath as the pack will tolerate. It’s not that he doesn’t have any feelings. It’s that heknows how to use them as weapons. They’re scalpels he dissects other people with.
“I’m allowed to fuck, Karl. You don’t own my dick.”
“Wrong,” he says. “I own your fucking dick. I can have your dick torn off and fed to you if I like.”
I want to hit him. Actually, I want to rip him apart. Sadistic, stupid fucking errand boy. His power comes from the fact he reports directly to the Louisiana alpha, and he thinks being born a few months earlier to a different mother, but from the same father, gives him some kind of power over me.
I grew up in a power struggle with this fucker that won’t end because he just won’t end it.
“Alpha wants to see you in New Orleans in two days,” he says. “If you’re not there, you’ll be dragged there.”
“Do you want to go out for a drink or what?” I want him distracted. I want him out of here.
“Yes. Asshole.”
“Good. Then let’s go.”
“Do you have your purse?” Karl smirks at me. God, he’s a fucking dick. But he’s letting me draw him out of here, and that’s all I care about.
We get in the van and we leave, and I know I’m giving Callie a chance to escape, but better she escapes now than I watch Karl do his best to tear her apart. I’d defend her, of course, but it would be brutal and bloody either way.
“So why are you really here? Not just to check up on me. Long way to come just to fuck with your brother.”
I ask him the question as we’re driving, hoping that he’s got an answer that doesn’t have anything to do with Callie.
“Pack business. New York has been getting out of control lately. New Orleans is concerned. Local packs are getting slack about keeping things quiet. And they’re getting rough about the fixes.”
I relax a little. This is well within his purview. It’s not about Calista. It’s about cracking heads locally and throwing his weight around. The New York packs have a reputation for wildness. There are multiples of them, unlike the Louisiana pack, which is united under Orion. There are different strata of packs here. Economically well-off wolves have their own pack. The rural wolves are another group. Then there’s three separate city packs, each of which have their own identity and can be considered gangs.
It’s the city packs Karl is here to deal with, I’d bet. I haven’t had much to do with any of them because my job has been managing Calista Hart. I stay out of the way, I don’t tread on any toes. I work with humans, and I move on. Usually.
We get to a bar that must be run by one of the local packs, because I know Karl wouldn’t drink anywhere else. There are a few signs and hints that it’s a shifter bar. It’s called The Dog’s Paw, which is quite funny because there’s nothing more insulting to most wolf shifters than being called dogs. Someone has an edgy or self-deprecating sense of humor.
The clientele are a mixture of shifters and humans. Everyone here has the same edge, a kind of energy that transcends man and shifter alike. It’s rough, and it’s largely, but not entirely, male.
There are three female shifters behind the bar. Two of them smile at Karl like he’s the second coming. My brother is very attractive to shifter women. He takes after my father that way. The third bartender is visibly pregnant and quite obviously over every single male in the place, shifter or not.
I hope someone here catches his attention. He flirts with the shifter who serves us for a bit. She’s got dark hair in a high ponytail and a pretty face. She’s impressed by him, and has that tenderness women seem to automatically have for broken, scarred men.
For a few minutes, she holds his attention, then he looks at me. I know there’s blood in the water. He’s here to sniff out weakness and exploit it.
“So who are you fucking?”
