Page 42 of Hunted Mate
Karl gets up, drops his napkin on his plate, and leaves. He does not take negative feedback well. I’d be tempted to follow his lead, but I need to question my father. This deal is too neat and too kind. I don’t trust it.
“Is this real, then, Father? Is she safe here?”
“She’s safe enough,” he says. “You needn’t panic. I won’t be killing your little mate. Would it really have been so hard to find someone of your own kind? There are dozens of females who would let you breed them. You could have had several litters by now. But you insist on saving your seed for creatures like that insipid little thing.”
“You didn’t like her,” I say flatly.
“What is there to like? Generational privilege in kitten heels?” He snorts. “I’m surprised Karl couldn’t kill her.”
He didn’t really try. He handed her off to another set of wolves who bungled the whole affair, but I don’t tell my father that. Hurling Karl under the bus won’t help anything.
“So what is really on the table, Father?”
Orion looks at me, and his blue eyes are iceberg cold. There is not a hint of feeling in that gaze.
“There is only one thing to be done if you will not have her see death.”
“What? I will do anything to keep her alive. Anything.”
“She must be transformed.”
I am confused and horrified in equal measure. “Transformed? That’s not possible. You mean… there are legends, but shifters are bred, not made. We know we can’t actually make new shifters by biting.”
If we could, Callie would already be one. She has a bite on her deeper and bigger than most any scar I’ve seen on a person.
“Most shifters are simply bred from mother or father to child, yes, passing on the ancient curse. But the nice thing about curses is that they don’t really mind how they are passed on. Only that they are.”
“So you want to turn Calista into a wolf,” I say, not asking how in the meantime.
“Yes. Induct her into the pack. Make her one of us. Doing anything else is unacceptable. If she has chased the curse so long, refused all opportunities to escape it, then she may as well be delivered to her fate,” he says. “She seems to be potentially submissive enough. She was practically begging to show her belly over dinner.”
I hate hearing him speak to me this way. It’s so disrespectful.
“How is a human made wolf?” I ask the question to change the subject.
“She is bitten.”
“She’s already been bitten and survived.”
“Bitten is more metaphorical,” he says smugly. He knows something I don’t, and I hate it.
“What are you talking about, Father? Do you want me to guess your meaning?”
He doesn’t like being called out on his dramatic streak. It makes it all that much less fun for him. This man is up to something, and I want to know what.
“We have been working… and when I say we, I mean people with more scientific acumen than myself or any of the brutes who enforce the laws,” he says, taking a conversational sideswipe at me. “On a method to isolate the curse.”
“So we’re going to cure lycanthropy?”
“No,” he says, not missing a beat. “Why would we do that? Turning into a wolf is fucking cool, my son. We are going to pass the gift on to a select few. The process is still in the testing stages, but there’s promise shown in animal trials.”
“You’ve managed to turn rats into rats? Or you’ve managed to turn rats into very small wolves?”
I shouldn’t mock him, but I do it because he annoys me. The little snotty comment about me being a brute was unnecessary. I am a stalker. I am in no way stupid.
What he says next makes me wonder if that’s actually true, however. I’ve missed his point over and over even as he laid it out before me.
“There are many uses for the affliction that causes so many of us to be unable to function. Regardless. We have not yet tried to give any human lycanthropy. Your mate is an ideal candidate.Then she could truly be your mate, and not the human equivalent of a body pillow you carry around.”
