Page 22 of Bred Mate (Stalked Mates #2)

E llie

Karl lives in the biggest house I’ve ever fucking seen. Columns. So many columns. And the interior is massive and decorated with the kind of fancy furniture you could put in a photo shoot. It’s a little odd, honestly. It doesn’t remind me of Karl at all.

“This is my father’s dwelling,” he says. “It’s where the alpha of Louisiana lives. That’s why I’m living here, and it’s why you’re going to live here too. You’re likely already pregnant, you know. We should be setting up a nursery for the baby.”

“I feel like you’re getting ahead of yourself. I’m not necessarily pregnant. That could take months to happen. Or years.”

“If it does, I’ll enjoy a very long period of trying,” he says, unfazed. “What would you like to eat? We have a chef who will make anything you like.”

“We have a chef?”

“Yes.”

I frown. This is a whole other world, and I don’t belong.

“Where are my brothers?”

“Tim and Tate are working. Connor is at school. Feel free to explore the house, baby. I need to handle some business.”

Just like that, he leaves me alone in the place.

It would be so ungrateful to say that I don’t like his house.

I come from a rotten swamp hut. I know he expects me to act like I’ve been rescued from horror.

But I could be myself out there in the wilds, and in this city I will have to pretend to be human more often than not—a fate worse than death in some respects.

“Ellie!”

A boy wraps his arms around my waist unexpectedly while I am wandering the halls.

I almost don’t recognize my youngest brother. He is wearing a blue blazer, white shirt with a gold and blue tie, and tan pants with shoes so shiny I can see my face in them. His hair, long and shaggy in the woods, has been cut and brushed into a clean style.

He looks up, sees me, and his face transforms to the one I have always known. He drops his bag and rushes me with a big hug.

“I missed you, buddy,” I tell him. “I’m sorry I was away for so long.”

“They make me wear socks,” he says.

“I’m sorry. That’s fucked up,” I commiserate.

“It is.”

“Snacks are ready, Master Connor.”

A butler appears. He’s a tall, thin man with a dancer’s body and a general air of haughtiness. He barely looks at me at all. His eyes skim over me as if I am something he doesn’t deign to acknowledge, then he is ushering my brother off to the kitchen for food.

“Are you coming?” Connor stops and looks back at me.

“I guess?”

“I am sure the… lady is not here for snacks, Master Connor,” the butler says.

“She’s my sister, Baldwin,” Connor says. He’s already so comfortable talking to a servant. I don’t think I like that. In the woods, we did everything for ourselves. Here, someone else has cut his PB&J diagonally and gotten rid of the crusts as well. How absolutely fucking decadent can you get?

“My apologies, madam!” Baldwin is immediately apologetic. He knows that the sister of the boy is his master’s mate, I suppose.

“It’s okay. I look like trash and nobody bothered to introduce us. I was supposed to take a shower, but I got sidetracked.”

“Would you like me to draw you a bath?”

I look at him in confusion. “You can if you want, but I don’t know what I’d do with it. Stick it on the fridge, maybe?”

“No, madam,” Baldwin says, his expression masterfully controlled. “I meant would you like me to prepare you a bath, run water and such.”

He says it as if that’s supposed to make what he said less weird.

As far as I am concerned, it makes it much, much more strange.

I watch as he continues to get snacks for my younger brother, including a small box of juice.

He pulls the plastic-covered straw off and sticks it in the little foil spot at the top before handing it to Connor.

“Oh. No. I can turn a tap, thank you.”

“Very good, mad…”

“Call me Ellie,” I say. “And stop serving Connor. The kid knows how to get his own snacks.”

“But Baldwin makes them just the right way,” Connor protests.

He’s only been here a couple of weeks and he’s already getting used to being waited on.

I hate that for him. I know it’s good he gets to go to a fancy school or whatever, but I don’t see how you can become a man with someone else putting the straw in your juice box.

“You skinned a deer for the first time when you were four years old,” I remind him. “You don’t need a grown man to get you a juice.”

“I like it when he gets me juice,” Connor replies.

Kids are simply won over.

“Stop serving my brother like he’s a little king,” I tell Baldwin. “I won’t ask you twice.”

“Baldwin, can I have another PB&J, please?”

Baldwin looks like he is about to short-circuit. He’s caught between two different sets of orders. One comes from the young master he has been told to attend to by the alpha, and one comes from me, the forest witch who appeared out of nowhere and started telling him everything he is doing is wrong.

He makes his decision.

It’s the wrong one.

“I swear to god, Baldwin. That sandwich better be for you,” I growl as he reaches for the peanut butter.

The butler has the fucking audacity to ignore me. Another significant mistake he will not soon recover from.

I pick up a knife and stab it into the counter, right between the butler’s fingers. It sticks into the wood top in an intimidating manner. The butler stops making the sandwich, pivots on his heel, and glides out of the room without another look at me.

“Why did you ruin that?” Connor’s voice hits my ears in a high-pitched whine that he used to use when he was very small, and hasn’t used in a really long time.

“I didn’t ruin anything. You’ve still got the food.”

“It doesn’t taste the same when I make it. It tastes better when someone else does,” he pouts obnoxiously.

It is amazing how quickly a kid can be spoiled.

Before I can respond, Karl strolls into the kitchen with Baldwin as his shadow.

“What’s going on here?”

“Ellie won’t let me eat anything,” Connor says, betraying me instantly with the kind of drama I know I taught him. How dare he use it against me.

“Fine. Have your sammies made by a man,” I say. “But don’t come crying to me when you can’t remember how to make them yourself.”

“Ellie? Can I talk to you?” Karl snatches me out of the kitchen in the least possible aggressive way while still making it impossible for me to get away.

“What’s going on?” He asks me the question again. “Really. Because I know you didn’t nearly remove a finger from the butler for making your brother some food.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you’re a lot of things, but irrational is not one of them.”

“I’m not irrational. He doesn’t need to be served like he’s a little prince. He’s already getting too used to this.”

“Are you worried about how used to this he is, or how used to this you might get?”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” I snap. “I never gave permission for any of this.”

“You weren’t around,” he reminds me. “You were busy torturing a man you could easily just have killed. You disappeared into a swamp to be evil. I’m not going to apologize for taking care of your brothers, or how I did it. The boy deserves some care.”

Those are fighting words.

“I raised Connor myself. Since he was a baby. I got him everything he needed. Now you’re telling me I didn’t do enough?”

“Baby,” Karl says, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “You did more than enough. You did everything. And now it’s time to let others do something too. It’s not an insult for someone else to help. When you have the baby, you’ll need help then too, and you’re going to take it.”

I don’t know what to say to that. He’s being so nice, but he’s also making me feel bad by pointing out some of the ways I’m being less than perfect. I never knew I was so sensitive about the boys. When we lived in the woods, things like this never came up.

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” he says, tipping my head up so I have to look at him.

“You’re going to go clean up, you’re going to pick something clean to wear out of the wardrobe I got for you, and…”

“What happened to you? What happened to the man who stood in the middle of pitched battle like he didn’t care about it at all? What happened to the guy who rescued me from the water when I almost drowned? Or who beat up like six dozen construction workers for me?”

“He’s standing in front of you. He’s growing up. He’s seeing what your life took from you, and he’s finding ways to give it back. Now go have a fucking shower, before I rip those dirty clothes off you and put you in the bath myself.”

I slink away, feeling oddly comforted as well as chastised.

As I go to the bathroom, I realize that I have a perspective problem.

I did go to the swamp with the asshole who tried to destroy me and yes, I kept him alive for a few days longer than was really necessary, but I never considered any of what I was doing as being selfish.

And I really never thought Karl, of all fucking people, would be the one to point it out.

I was seeing Karl as just one thing. A brute. A monster. A scarred beast who decided he wanted to breed me. I never expected him to be a civilized man as well. I definitely never thought he’d get my brother into school and my other brothers into jobs.

I shower in a mood. I’m probably supposed to feel relieved at having a mate and landing on my feet. I guess I am. But I miss my home. And I miss my brothers. And I miss… myself. I feel like part of who I was got bulldozed with the rest of our home.

There is a small wardrobe of clothes that I don’t hate, so that’s good.

I pick a black blouse and black skin-tight leggings with little diamantes in a serpent pattern.

Not sure where they came from, but I like them.

There’s boots too, mid-calf length. They have laces, but they zip up at the side.

They’re snug in a comforting way, and that makes me feel better.

So weird that something as simple as a pair of boots and a tight pair of pants can make the very real concerns of the world pretty much fade away.