Page 63 of Hunted Mate
“I can’t,” I say. “You have to know that I’m not going to cause you any trouble because you let me out of the horrible hotel room.”
“You are so incredibly spoiled,” he laughs. “That room was nicer than almost any place I have ever lived.”
“Your father’s house is very palatial.”
“I never lived there.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I was better off for not having much to do with him, and my mother was certainly happier. He’s a bad man. Everyone loves him, but that’s because they get to imagine who he is. And every time he’s evil, they get to pretend he’s doing it on their account. So the worse he is, the more they love him because they assume he must love them. But actually, he just loves himself, and doing whatever benefits him in the moment.”
I listen to him, glad he’s talking to me about these things. I enjoyed threatening his dad and calling him names, but this provides more context, as well as shoring up my understanding of the family dynamics involved.
“Where’s your mom now?”
“Back in England,” Gray says. “She got married to a nice man who builds roads and she’s never been happier.”
“Was she a wolf too, or did you just get the gift or curse from your father?”
“My mom’s a normal human woman,” he says. “She’s nice. She bakes bread.”
“Good for her.”
We drive to the supermarket and I realize I am running out of time to convince him to let me come in with him.
“I know you said I had to stay here, but…”
“Just stay,” he sighs. “It’s going to make it so much easier and safer.”
“Letting me out of your sight is easier and safer?”
He puts his face in his hand for a moment before looking at me. “Callie,” he says. “If I leave this car, and you do anything, and I do mean anything other than just sit here and wait for me to come back, I swear to whatever deities you may have heard of, I will thrash you to within an inch of…”
“I just meant someone might bother me,” I say, pouting.
“Oh,” he says. “I thought you were threatening to be a problem.”
“I don’t have to threaten to be a problem. That would make things not very organic.”
“Stay here,” he says, unbuckling his seatbelt.
“Please, sir,” I whimper, clutching at his hand. “Let me buy oatmeal.”
Gray looks over at me, the muscle in his cheek twitching. “I’ll buy you oatmeal,” he says.
“I am an orphan,” I say, putting on a silly British accent. “And I want to choose my own oatmeal.”
“You are not poor,” he says.
“No. It’s the one thing I am not. I’m very lucky that way, I know. I shouldn’t even be referencing not having money. It’s a shitty thing to do.”
“You were trying to get oatmeal,” he says. “That excuses a lot of tone-deaf pleading.”
“It does?”
“When it’s just the two of us in the vehicle, sure,” he says.
And that’s how I get him to relent on not letting me out of the car. He takes me into the grocery store and we get snacks. I don’t actually want oatmeal. That was a misdirect. I want meat. A lot of raw meat. Lucky for me, they sell meat raw in stores.
