Page 18 of Bred Mate (Stalked Mates #2)

“I know you want to do something crazy,” she says.

“But you have to work out how to be normal, honey. You have to learn how to make a husband happy and how to live a life that is productive and healthy and good. You need to find out what your favorite cereal is. I bet you don’t know what that is.

If you settle down with Patrick, you’ll have a house just like this one. You’ll start to live.”

She is absolutely demented. Her instinct to love is so fucking twisted. I have to wonder how I turned out so normal.

With no real options, and no real help, I make the best of the situation.

A few minutes later, I present myself to the bizarre family I’ve been kidnapped by. They’re back in the breakfast room, Patrick and my mother. I don’t know where Rainer went. Probably off ruining a delicate and irreplaceable ecosystem.

Patrick looks me up and down.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

“It’s a longer dress?”

“No, what the hell…”

I give myself a little pleated twirl. It’s awkward because the dress is held on with a thick cord taken from the original incarnation of my attire.

“You’re wearing the curtains?”

He gets it. I’m impressed.

“You want me to act like a depression era forced bride, this is what you get.”

Patrick pushes back from the table, enraged by my malicious compliance. He doesn’t like that I’m not breaking. He wanted me to crumble, to beg. He wanted me to want to please him, but I don’t give a fuck about him, and he knows that.

“You think that’s funny, you little bitch?”

He swings at me, his fist clenched. This is a man who hurts women. This is a man who needs to be removed from the gene pool completely. I dodge the blow, but I don’t run. I taunt him back.

“You want to hit me again? You can hit me if you want. If you can. Make it count. Make me bleed. I don’t give a fuck.”

He looks at me with the sort of horror a bully gets when they realize that their intimidation isn’t really working.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you that you wanted a woman who had no choice but to have you?”

He hits me again. Not how Karl would smack me. Not with some kind of dominant disciplinary energy, but with the little piss-ant demeanor of a small boy lashing out at something that’s not supposed to be able to talk back.

I fall on the floor, losing my balance because my head is ringing and your ears don’t work when people hit them hard enough.

Fucking stupid human biology. When this is over, I am going to shift and stay shifted and nobody is ever going to have the chance to give me a mild concussion again without risking an arm.

I want to rip his fucking limbs off. I will rip his fucking limbs off.

“Stay down,” he says, looking at me with those far too light blue eyes. “Stay down in every fucking way there is, because if you get up again, I’m going to make you regret the day you were born.”

I kick his fucking ankle. Hard enough to hear it snap. Stupid fucker had his weight on it and didn’t see my foot coming. Thought he was going to win in spite of the fact that I am a thing too dangerous for my mother or his father to have around.

“Bitch!” He curses at the top of his lungs, while screaming and grabbing at his foot. He likes giving pain, but he has no idea how to receive it.

The commotion brings Rainer in. When it was just the heavy thud of a woman hitting the floor, he didn’t give a fuck, but the agonized screaming of a horrible shitty man is enough to make everyone come running.

“She broke my fucking ankle!”

My mother goes down on her knees next to him, giving him the kind of attention designed to pacify the feelings of a very weak man.

He’s been coddled. Told he was special. Told he was in control.

He’s been made to feel like he’s the most special boy in the world, and the fact that he’s pushing forty doesn’t make him any more grown up than a toddler.

I hate him. And I think I might be jealous of him.

His father stands at the door, staring at the whole scene gormlessly. He’s not used to this sort of thing. He’s used to board meetings and TPS reports and filing for bankruptcy to avoid paying his contractors. Both he and his son could do with a good fucking mauling.

My mother sighs. “She didn’t break your ankle. She hurt your foot,” she says. “You’re going to have to be stronger if you want my daughter.”

Patrick has lost his temper. It’s nice to see that there’s some kind of human under that fleshy cold wet demeanor, but what is there is nasty.

“I don’t want your fucking bitch daughter.”

My mother looks at him, her lip curling in a unique kind of disdain. I wonder if she’s realizing what a mistake she made, trying to get rid of me with this.

“It’s not going to work,” she says to her rich husband. “He’s not going to be able to handle her. She’s too strong.”

Yep. She’s realized.

“She’s a fucking animal,” Patrick says. “She’s a filthy little fucking animal and nobody is ever going to want her.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I say, sitting up. I’m pretty sure my face is swelling. Maybe my eye. Feels like it’s closing up a little. “I already have a boyfriend anyway.”

My mother wants so bad to hope that there’ll be an easy resolution, that the right cock will sort this all out.

It’s always been her modus operandi. She’s always thought that finding a man will fix her problems. That’s why my brothers and I have four different fathers, and it’s why she’s clinging to Rainer and hoping his money will erase the place she lost herself in over and over again.

I feel sorry for her, though I shouldn’t. I wish she knew what it felt like to be loved, and to know that it’s not a solution, it’s just the way most people are and most people get to live. This is crazy, this constant manipulation of the past and the present. If she’d just allow her to be herself…

“Take the girl and get her away from here,” Rainer says. “If she’s a handful, you handle her. You know how to do that. I’ve taught you, haven’t I?”

Patrick hears his father’s voice and stiffens, reminded that he’s not just being seen by women, but by a man. By someone whose gaze matters, someone he wants to impress. He gets up, and suddenly he can bear weight on the same ankle he could hardly move a moment ago.

“A couple more silver bracelets,” my mother says, procuring some from her pocket. She has them wrapped in a pretty little kerchief with her initials on them. “Wear these and remember who you could be if only you’d try.”

“Why don’t you remember who you would be if you weren’t so scared of yourself,” I shoot back.

I want to shift, and to run, but the silver I’ve got around my neck is making me less certain of that ability.

Also shifting in front of these people means having to kill them, and that means two dead bodies, and though I want them dead for obvious reasons, that doesn’t actually mean I want to kill them.

It’s fucked up, how the average person is left at the mercy of evil people simply because they won’t also be evil.

“You’ll thank me one day,” she says. “Months, or maybe years from now, when you’re happy and you’re normal and you live in a nice house with nice, normal children. You’ll understand then that this was a gift.”

There’s nothing worse than someone reformed. My mom used to fuck every shifter guy she met and have a kid with him. Now she’s acting like some kind of Martha Stewart of human propriety, and she wants me to play the same game too.

“I’ll take care of her,” Patrick says, trying to get some of his previously lost composure back. “I lost control a little, but then there’s…”

“Women are hard work,” his father says.

I feel like I’ve been trapped in some 1950s nightmare.

All I want is Karl. I fantasize about him smashing through the window and beating the shit out of these people, just like he did to those guys who were driving their machines through the forest. I was so ungrateful at the time. I didn’t know what I had.

“I’m going to take her out of state, far enough away that she can start a new life with me,” he says. “I understand what’s needed here. Don’t worry. I’ve got this, Dad.”

This is all about making his father proud. Sick.

Patrick and I get into the car. He’s driving, naturally, which is good. He keeps his eyes on the road and piece by piece I take the fucking silver off.

He’s not paying attention. Why would he? My mother will never admit that she’s a shifter, or I’m a shifter.

“Why did you agree to do this?”

He never moves his eyes from the road. He’s not looking at me at all. He’s blanking me, basically. Stupid asshole. I can’t believe how easy this is going to be.

“My father is going to cut me out of the will if I don’t get married,” he says.

“Why not marry a friend?”

He snorts. “That’s gay.”

I didn’t say male friend. He went there first. Confirms my suspicion.

I feel kind of sorry, so I want to give him one last chance.

He’s a fucker, and a danger to women, but I figure if he’s not really interested, he’s not really going to be a danger to them.

Unless, I guess, he finds someone else to marry.

“Shut the fuck up,” he says.

That decides it.

“Thanks,” I say.

“For what?”

“For making my decision really easy.”

I shift.

The sound he makes when he finds himself in a closed vehicle with a massive beast is really funny.

It’s a strangled sort of noise, one of disbelief and fear.

I had intended to bite his goddamn head off, but the last scrap of human sentience makes me consider that we are traveling at sixty miles plus down a highway, and if this idiot freaks out too much more, he might kill us both and someone else who doesn’t deserve it.

I shift back. Now I’m sitting naked in his passenger seat, and to be frank, that might actually be worse for him. A naked lady on his leather car seats. The horror.

He keeps screaming. The sound of his fear is like licking the last bit of frosting off a spatula. It’s satisfying and cozy and feels just a little decadent, but also well earned, like it’s the product of having done something others will also enjoy.

He pulls over to the side of the road and throws his car door open.

“Help!” he shrieks at the top of his lungs. It makes me laugh. There’s nobody to help him.

“Nobody’s going to help you now. I tried to help you, back at the house, when I told you that I’d go in on this with you and just escape. But you wanted to slap me around. You wanted to brutalize me with beatings and silver. You wanted to do what Daddy told you to, and now look at you.”

“What the fuck are you?”

“I’m a wolf,” I tell him. “And I’m going to kill you.”

He looks at me with wide, terrified eyes. “This isn’t possible. I must be having some kind of drug flashback. You’re not a wolf. You’re a woman. You just ripped your dress off. That’s all.”

“Then get back in the car, big boy,” I say. I am enjoying myself now. I don’t know what my mother was thinking. Actually, I do. She thought a few bits of silver and a violent man would keep me in check. She really doesn’t know me at all.

“Get back in, Patrick,” I say.

He hesitates. “No,” he says. “You get out. You get the fuck out of my car, you fucking… you fucking… witch!”

I laugh, very much enjoying myself. The dress I was wearing is in shreds, and my situation is very immodest, but at least he’s not enjoying it.

“I thought I was your captive,” I remind him. “What will your father say if you don’t marry me?”

He goes pale as he realizes that he’s not going to get out of this one way or another.

“Get back in the car, or I will turn back into a wolf, hunt you down, and kill you in the forest.”

Patrick gets back in the car, shaking.

“Let’s go,” I smile.

I have an idea.