Page 36 of Hunted Mate
“Best we can do is get them hidden and then hope we can cut a deal with New York’s pack master. Deals happen all the time.”
“You can still stay at my place,” she tells them. “I told you that, and I meant it.”
“Wait, is that a good idea?” I don’t know that I like the idea of two complete strangers, one of them male, spending time in Callie’s home, no matter how big it is.
“Do you have somewhere for them to stay safe?” She looks at me accusingly, as if I’m to blame for this quandary. She is taking on far too much responsibility for complete strangers.
“No,” I sigh.
I don’t care about these people. I care completely and exclusively about her. I want to get her out of New York, where the shifter packs have taken a black eye in the loss of their pack mate to a human female. They will be out for blood. There is absolutely no doubt about that. She will not be safe, not here, not in this fancy house. They will come in the night, and they will kill her. They will burn this place to the ground if they have to. She has started a fight with a feral force of nature that will show no mercy.
“I have to talk to you somewhere private,” she says. Molly and Mark keep staring at us, so she takes me by the hand and leads me away. I allow it, only because I think grabbing her andcarrying her off into my car is going to make her panic. She’s just been abducted. I don’t want to abduct her twice in one day.
Calista
I take Gray to the study, because we really need to talk. Not in the casual sort of superficial, ‘oh, terrible things just happened’ sort of way, but in the ‘my life and probably personality has changed forever’ sort of way.
He follows me into the book-lined room, his hands on my hips from behind as he pulls me back against him. He’s aroused. I can feel the thick ridge of it between my cheeks. It almost distracts me from my existential crisis. Almost.
“I shot someone,” I say, turning toward him. “I’m a murderer.”
I know I already told him this, but it’s not the sort of thing you mention once and never go back to again.
“Eh. He had it coming.” Gray shrugs it off like it doesn’t matter, and I guess it doesn’t. It was a matter of him or me and of course I chose me. There was nobody else to choose.
“But…” I bite my lower lip. “I’ve never done that before, and it feels like it’s changed something inside me.”
I don’t know how to explain it entirely, but I hope those words are enough. Sometimes, having to blather endlessly about my feelings makes me wish I didn’t have any. It’s painful. This would be worse than most of them, because it’s so dark and so terrible.
Gray’s expression shifts to one of pity. I hate that. He thinks I’m weak. Shooting someone should at least mean people think you are strong.
“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry. I should have been there to kill him for you. And I should never have left your side. I thought I could lure Karl away, but I think it was part of his plan to begin with. They didn’t think I’d done my job with you, and yes, they wanted you dead. I’ve convinced him otherwise now, I think. But…” He gives a slight shrug, as if he can’t know and as if he’s not even going to attempt to guess.
What fun.
I guess danger is going to be ever present now. We’re going to be fugitives to the creatures we wanted to find so badly. Well,Iwanted to find them. Molly and Mark just wanted to fuck in the woods with an asshole called Brent who is dead now. I wonder how many hundreds if not thousands of people have lost their lives over the years because wolves decided they’ve seen too much and took them out remorselessly.
“I want to make a difference,” I say. “I want to make sure that people who don’t deserve to die, don’t die. So you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to hire bodyguards and I’m going to have them guard this house, and I’m going to get the two of them everything they want because…”
“Saving random people won’t bring your parents back.”
I can’t believe Gray just said that. He has a serious expression on his face, as if he said something that makes sense to him. Apparently he didn’t stop to think how it would feel to hear it.
Smack.
I slap him right in the face. Open palm slap. He doesn’t even pretend to jerk away. His face pinkens just slightly. He looks at me with something like mercy, or maybe it’s indulgence. I don’t know. My temper got the better of me.
“Sorry,” he says. “I deserved that. Psychoanalysis is very rarely appreciated in the moment.”
“I know they’re not my parents. They’re two people I can help. And I’m planning on helping them. Nothing you do or say is going to stop me, even shitty below the belt comments on my parents. You fucking…” I stop myself from going off on him completely, but he would deserve it if I did. That was a low blow, and it reduced all my inner goodness to the reactive desire of some little girl missing her parents to save some make-believe version of them.
Gray drops the matter immediately. I don’t know if he really understands how wrong he was, but he definitely understands he doesn’t want the fight with me.
“Alright, then put the bodyguards on them, and make it clear to the New York pack that trying to come after them will be difficult. Nobody wants a scene. The more public you can make the attempt to hurt them, the better.”
“Thanks,” I say. “So nice of you to give me permission to do what I was going to do anyway.”
Gray lets out a little low growl. “I know you’ve been through a lot recently, and a lot more before that, and I’ll give you that slap because I should have known better than to say what I did—but you need to start watching your tone, young lady, or I am going to give you a lesson in respect.”
