Page 12 of Bred Mate (Stalked Mates #2)

He smiles broadly. “I’m going to put in a mall and a hotel and a casino.

That filthy little hole is going to become one of the most profitable centers in Louisiana.

You’re welcome to invest, if you like. Use some of that land buying money to get somewhere in the world. I’m sure your father would approve.”

I’m bored again.

“How much do you want for that patch of forest?” I go back to the original question.

“It’s not for sale,” he repeats. “I already have the plans and consents for the development. I have buyers for the wood. I have contractors built for the construction phase. This is more complicated than you imagine.”

“What if it turned out that the area had some significance in terms of nature or what the fuck ever?”

“Would you like a cookie?” Margaret sweeps into the room with a tray of baked goods. I didn’t realize she was gone, and I’m definitely not having a single one of those muffins.

“We have the permits, and the resource consent procedures are completed. The area is not a habitat to any native wildlife,” he says.

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” I say. “There’s a specific breed of wolves, you see, and they only den in that area. So if we can get you some land elsewhere.”

“What’s this breed of wolves called?”

“Louisiana specials,” I say, off the cuff.

“Doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard of before,” he grunts. “And they’re not on the list of protected wildlife. If you’re here to acquire land for development, I can recommend some other sites, but that one is already under development.”

He’s telling me no, and it’s a firm no. The kind of no people don’t move off of without lethal force.

This is the point where I’d usually rip someone’s throat out, but Margaret is watching and there’s something about the woman that concerns me.

She’d be a witness, and I’d have to kill her too.

Besides, this isn’t what Ellie wanted. She specifically requested that I avoided a bloodbath and scandal.

She wants me to come out of this building with all her problems solved.

But that’s not how it’s going to happen.

I stand up, feeling somewhat awkward. I know how to end most interactions, but not this one. Usually if I don’t get what I want, I leave covered in blood.

“Have a cookie,” Margaret says, thrusting the plate at me as I prepare to leave.

“Oh, I’m not…”

“Take. A. Cookie,” she repeats, her tone somehow threatening.

“Thank you,” I say, taking a fucking cookie. She smiles at me like she just wrestled me into submission. I feel a cold shiver run down my spine. There’s something about women of a certain age that demands respect. I forgot that for a minute. I will not be forgetting it again.

Ellie is waiting for me at a nearby café. Her curves are clad in black jeans, boots, and a tank top that shows off her generous assets and makes me want to thrust my cock into the tight crevice of her cleavage.

“What the fuck happened to you?” She asks the question with no small amount of anger. I’m not sure if it is directed at me or not, but I am not going to tell her what happened. Can’t say I had my shit handed to me by a woman named Margaret who makes sugar cookies on the side.

“What do you mean?” I don’t know what she’s referring to right away.

“You’re drenched in blood,” she says. “Who cut your head open?”

“Oh, that was a secretary. They weren’t open to negotiation,” I say.

“So they smashed your head open?”

“There was a misunderstanding about appointment times.”

She looks at me with wide eyes.

“Did you fucking kill them? Is there a crime scene in that building? You know that we can’t just?—”

“Everyone’s alive,” I interrupt her. “They didn’t want to sell. But I got you this. Actually, on second thought, probably best not to eat it. It might be poisoned.” I Frisbee the cookie into a nearby trash can.

“Why have you come back with a poison cookie?” She looks at me, frowning. “What happened?”

“They don’t want to sell,” I repeat. “They have plans to develop the area. They already have permits. It’s like I said. There’s one way to deal with things like these, and it’s not through paperwork.”

Ellie scowls. “Why did your father sell the land?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you call him and ask?”

“What difference would it make? It’s been sold, and it’s going to be developed. It’s time your little pack moved. Nothing can be done.”

She nods slowly. “Nothing can be done,” she repeats in a tone I really don’t like.

“Nothing can be done in the way you want it done,” I clarify. “Plenty can be done my way.”

She pushes her sunglasses up into her hair. “We just murder everyone who gets close to the forest.”

“We don’t have to murder them. We can fight them off, destroy their machines, generally make life miserable for them,” I say. “We can disrupt, and we can do it until it costs them more than their development could ever make them. I tried it your way, little girl. Now, we try it mine.”

Two weeks later…

Karl

I have never had this much fun before. I thought I knew pretty much everything I needed to know about the world and how it worked, but I’m learning a lot out here in the forest. Like how to drive heavy machinery.

“No! Other lever. Yep. That’s the one. Okay! Push it forward, and then pull back, yep…”

I’m being instructed by a beaten man tied to a tree who doesn’t want me to keep hitting him. He tried coming in here by himself. I almost feel bad for him.

I put a bulldozer into gear and drive it into the river.

They have kept sending people to try to cut the forest down and start construction, and we have done nothing but fight them, steal their machines and their lunches, and anything else not nailed down.

Ellie’s brothers have taken to chaos quite nicely, happily setting fire to vehicles.

I feel bad about the youngest one. I want to send him to New Orleans to go to a good school and have a decent life, but he won’t go and she won’t let him.

I know if I get him snatched up and sent to school he’ll just run away.

I jump out of the dozer just as it hits the water, narrowly avoiding getting trapped and sucked down when it starts to tip and sink.

This is not a safe job, but I don’t care much about safety.

The river is starting to get dammed with all the machinery we’ve put in it.

Can’t be good for the environment, but it’ll be worse for the environment to be cut to shit and built up on.

Once the driver is run off, we settle down to dinner, some of it foraged, some of it hunted, and some of it a kind of smorgasbord of stolen lunches from workers who got sent out here against all common sense.

“Do you want this?” Connor holds out a glistening baggie to me. I can see in his eyes the fact that he wants me to say no. He’s offering it out of misguided kindness.

“What is it?”

“It’s a sandwich without crusts in a plastic bag. It’s tasty.”

“That does not look like food,” I say. “But I think you should have it.”

He smiles, pleased. He deserves nice things, even if they’re trash.

I’ve become quite fond of this little family.

They’re nice people. Ellie has been left with her brothers for a while.

I don’t know what happened to the adults that should have been around here, but it’s clear nobody here remembers them enough to miss them.

This feels cozy. And homey.

And then the spotlights hit us.

I don’t know how the people snuck up on us. I guess the smoke of the fire covered their scent until it was too late. They didn’t send the usual small town cops this time. This time, they sent men who know how to track, how to hunt, and probably how to kill.

We are completely surrounded, spotlights and rifles trained on us as heavily armed humans stand ready to gun us down if we make so much as a false move.

“Alright. You lot put your hands up,” a masked officer says. “You’re under arrest for terroristic acts.”

“Sabotage isn’t a terroristic act,” one of the boys says. Tate and Tim sound the same to me sometimes.

“Yes, it is. You have the right to remain silent, though feel free to keep yapping if you’re going to make confessions of that nature,” the officer says, producing plastic cuff ties.

The fuck. We are fucked.

I could shift, but I’d just be shot in six different ways at once, and I’d be risking Ellie and the boys being shot in the crossfire.

So I submit to the frankly insulting plastic ties that could not hold my true form for even a second.

I see smirks that represent my feelings on the faces of the others, too.

We are beasts being contained by human means and we are all very well aware that we will be able to escape at a later time if we want to.

It might be harder to get out of a cell, but hell…

The greatest sin a wolf shifter can commit is being discovered by humans, so we won’t be doing that. We’ll hide our true natures and I guess we’ll have to find a way to post bail.

“Ellie!” I hear Connor yell for his big sister. It’s a heartbreaking cry and it makes me want to do something, but there’s no way to protect these four from what’s coming, from what we’ve been inviting this whole time.

“It’s okay!” she calls back from where she’s being pushed against a tree and cuffed by a man whose blood I am going to taste later on. “Just go with them, baby. It’s going to be okay.”

We’re carted off in two separate vans. Me and the boys in one, Ellie in the other.

It takes every bit of self-control for me not to burst my way out of these cheap fucking cuffs.

I need to be with my mate. I need to protect her.

But protecting all of us means not using my power.

Goddammit. We should have had a lookout.

I should have been more careful. It’s too fucking late now.

We get driven a long way to a bigger town and processed into cells like common criminals. Even Connor, who is too damn young to be housed with criminals, gets put in a cell along with his brothers. They have no ID. No proof of existence.

It’s a fucking mess.

And I know exactly where I’m making my one call.