Page 42

Mack

“Son.” I was a kid, lying on my mother’s bed, feeling her stroke my hair over and over again. “Darling, you need to wake up.”

“Don’t want to,” I grumbled, but for some reason my voice was a lot deeper than I remembered.

“Mack.” There was so much in the way she said my name: love, frustration, as well as an expectation that I do the right thing. My eyelids fluttered, but rather than see her, everything was a blur. “Sweetheart, it's time to get up.”

“Don’t wanna go to school,” I rumbled, my voice more wolf than human.

“You finished school a while ago,” she said. “Now isn’t the time to get to class.”

“So what then?”

It wasn’t my mother that was leaning over me, but Harper. I glanced down, taking in my adult body.

“I need you to come and get me, Fur Face,” she said, her wry smile twisting into something painful. “There is a teeny tiny chance I might’ve done something really stupid.”

“What?” That came out as a bark. “Harper, what did you do? Harper…?”

The room came into focus with a snap as I sat up, but my head wasn’t pulled from Harper’s lap. A grey cushion was what I’d been lying on, not her legs. Because as I looked around, I realised my mate was nowhere to be seen.

“Harper?” The dense walls of the bunker swallowed my shout. “Harper!”

I was up and off the couch, because this was my worst nightmare.

To mark my mate, then lose her. Dax had gotten in, hurt her while I snored like a fucking baby.

I swore I wouldn’t go to sleep until I’d dealt with him and look what’d happened.

I tore down the hallway, checking each of the bedrooms and the toilet, but there was no sign of her.

Harper’s scent had already started to fade.

I took the stairs two at a time, stopping at the security system panel…

Only to find out the person who had used the security code last was Harper.

I watched the video playback, saw her input the numbers perfectly as she looked at her phone. Someone called her and…

Dax.

As if in response to that thought, my own phone started to buzz. I jerked it free of my pocket and stabbed the screen to answer the call.

“Where the fuck is Harper, you bastard?”

“Gone to meet your brother in the quarry.” It was Kieran, not Dax, though I barely made out what he said, my ears starting to ring. “She wanted to protect you from Dax.”

My phone slipped from my fingers, cracking when it hit the concrete stairs and then bouncing down, down, down, my heart going with it.

Harper… She’d… I was moving before I could put together a coherent thought.

Snatching the rifle off the table before checking it was still loaded, then slinging it over my shoulder before making for the garage.

My car was gone. Harper had obviously decided to commandeer it for this ridiculous plan of hers, but my bike still sat there.

I grabbed the keys from the kitchen, shoved on my motorcycle helmet and then kickstarted the thing.

The roar of the engine was a perfect externalisation of how I felt.

I took off out of the garage like a shot, screaming up the road, not stopping for anyone or anything as I was forced to weave around one car, then the next.

Harper. The bond between us, it felt too new, too fragile to speak mind-to-mind, but I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out. Harper, I told you what would happen if you ran.

Mack?

I hated how small, how weak her reply sounded in my head.

What did I say would happen? I asked as I approached a red light, zipping through the space between cars, then revving my engine when I got to the line.

Wolves chase , she replied.

Damn right they do. Is that why you accepted the bond? Was this what you thought would happen?

I’m not sure if thinking is really my forte. I hated how grim she sounded. In my mind, I was being heroic, changing places with Daria.

Daria? What the fuck does Daria have to do with any of this.

So your brother took my best friend. That’s why I had to sneak out.

I shook my head, my fingers gripping the throttle tighter as I revved the engine.

That’s when you come to me, Harper. I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry. That’s when you tell me what the fuck is happening and let me sort it.

Yeah? And that’s when you’d be forced to kill your own brother, which was exactly what I was trying to protect you from.

I protect. That was the wolf growling at her, not me .

That’s my job. I flung up a one finger salute at some dickhead who thought to pull out in front of me.

I saw the whites of his eyes as I roared past, travelling along the verge.

I would have rescued Daria and you would have stayed in the bunker safe.

Yeah, well, hindsight’s 20/20 and all that. Oh my god, ew.

What, Harper? The light turned green, and the bike leapt forward, speeding down the road towards the freeway. Harper, what’s happening?

Your brother is monologuing. Something about the two of you fighting it out in the womb for supremacy. He just has really bad breath and he’s breathing it all over me.

With that mental image in mind, I swerved around one car, then the next. For a moment, I was forced to ride behind a truck, but as soon as I could, I was zipping past that too. Cameras flashed, no doubt clocking my insane speed, but I’d pay a million fines if it meant getting to Harper sooner.

Tell him to keep the fuck away from you , I sent, then instantly regretted it.

No, don’t, that will just egg him on. Tell him…

The driver of the car I was overtaking stared out the window, eyes widening when they saw the rifle on my back.

They grabbed for their phone, no doubt to call the police. Just tell him his fight is with me.

Pretty sure he knows that , she ground out.

And that if he wants to break my heart hurting you… I did not want to put this shit in my brother’s head, but if it bought Harper some time, so be it. He has to wait until I get there to collect his pound of flesh.

This is not what I wanted. When my mate’s snark turned to desperation, I knew I had a problem. I had it all planned out. The guys, the police ? —

You got the cops involved? As if summoned by that thought, I heard the thin wail of a police car. I pushed the bike to go faster. Fuck, Harper, we are going to have a very long chat about this afterwards.

After you rescue me? she asked.

If that’s what it takes for me to put you over my knee and spank the reckless out of you, then yes.

Now. I glanced in my mirrors, seeing the flashing lights getting closer.

I’ve got to take some evasive manoeuvres to get the cops off my tail.

An idiot riding too fast on a motorbike is one thing. An armed idiot is a whole other thing.

I’d brought the damn rifle in my haste to get to Harper, and while part of me wanted to throw it off, let it get crushed under the wheels of incoming traffic, I don’t think that would’ve helped right now.

I took a sharp right, going over a thickly planted traffic island, my hand revving the engine as I scudded over flowers and shrubs, sending foliage spinning in its wake, before zipping up a ramp that led to an arterial road.

The cop car tried to do the same thing, only for the back wheels to fishtail out, spinning back and forth before the car slammed into a tree. With a grin, I took off faster.

It took me far too long to reach the quarry.

Too many cars, too many cops trying to intercept me.

I’d ended up having to veer off and ride through the scrubland by the creek, because nothing other than a dirt bike would be able to follow me there.

The closer I got to the creek, the more familiar the territory it was, because Dax and I, we’d played between these trees as kids, hid behind those boulders, pretending it was a fort.

He wasn’t always broken, but by the end, my father had made sure he was.

It started when Dad took him along to the different jobs he did as an enforcer for some of the biker clubs and ended up here.

“Mack!”

Kieran strode over, putting himself in my path.

“Get the fuck outta my way, Kieran.”

“Mack, you need to listen.”

“Listen?” I shook my head. “Listen and do what? Come up with some cunning plan to smoke Dax out with Harper through the ventilation shafts?”

“There’s ventilation shafts?” I don’t know when the hell Dina and Mira got here, but the tiger shifter sisters darted forward, plucking stun grenades from the belts of the police officers standing behind Kieran.

The cops seemed awfully jittery, not sure what to do around all of these shifters. “On it!”

“There’s no other way around this,” I told Kieran, resisting the urge to flinch when his fathers drew closer. “It was always going to end like this.”

“No, Mack.” His hand shot out, grasping my shoulder. “No.”

“Yes.” It was only then that I could smile without it feeling like it was cracking my face.

“Yes. I should’ve hunted Dax down, finished this years ago, but he’s my brother.

” Right then I saw the scruffy haired kid, the one I used to fight like cats and dogs with, then sit with for ages, playing games in the dirt.

“But not anymore. I’m done. We’re done, because Harper is my mate and I’ll kill anyone who tries to get in between me and her. ”

I made straight for the mine shaft, claws snicked out, fur prickled as the wolf was summoned.

“Dax…!” My voice echoed through the quarry. “You want this? Come and get me!”

I’m coming, Beautiful , I told Harper. When I get you out of that den, I’m gonna spank that arse raw, you hear me?

This was the moment she called me Fur Face and told me it would be my arse that would cop a spanking, right? Instead, the voice inside my head was resolutely silent. That had me roaring, right before I launched myself at the door.