Page 25 of Bred Mate (Stalked Mates #2)

E llie

I am in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would, but that’s because it’s not my territory.

It doesn’t smell like my territory. Doesn’t feel like my home either.

The birdsong is different, the animals behave slightly differently, and even the insects look a little dissimilar.

I am in my element, and still somehow completely out of it.

And I am grieving. My territory is gone, crushed beneath the tracks and buckets of machinery designed to destroy hundreds of years of natural growth in seconds.

I am still feeling guilty, for running, for raising my brothers in a swamp, for not being happier that Connor gets his juice boxes.

To top it all off, I’m starting to feel a little nauseous.

I manage to find places to stay in many of the stilt houses abandoned in the bayou.

There’s so many old places left to decay by the people who used to live there.

There are no jobs, nothing to do; they had to sell up and run off to one of the cities or maybe another state.

There’s decay in the air here. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I’m tired of feeling like my life is falling apart one inexorable piece at a time.

Karl thinks I took a week off to fuck with Patrick, and I guess I did, but a big part of it was just getting away from everything. I knew once we got into that car, it was all over. I knew the alpha would find me and drag me to the city and make me a good person. I don’t want to be a good person.

New Orleans is busy, and the expectations there are civilized. I’m glad my brothers are there. I know they’ll turn out better for it, even if I get salty when I see it happening in front of me. The problem is I already turned out. I’m done in a way they’re not. I’m a wild thing. I’m a wolf.

I hunt for my food, slinking through the woods in my wolf form, enjoying the rich and alive scents of the world.

I have a lingering pang of guilt for just running away from Karl, but I never promised I’d stay at his house, and it’s true that I don’t owe him my body or anything else.

We had a deal that involved me getting my territory restored, and I didn’t get that.

Rainer gets his fucking mall and loses his son.

He paid in blood for those car parks and the future buildings, and the houses that will inevitably fucking flood when the swamp reasserts itself periodically.

I guess, when I really think about it, my territory hasn’t gone anywhere.

Paving over nature doesn’t really destroy nature; it just pisses it off and makes it come back twice as hard.

I’m trying to come to terms with the loss, and accepting the fact that the loss is a gain for everybody besides me. There’s not a person who has suffered in this more than me, unless you count Patrick, but I don’t count him.

These are my human thoughts. My animal thoughts are so much easier.

I snatch a fish from the water and chew it whole, my sharp jaws working at the living flesh. It’s cruel, but nature is. I am too. I don’t have to pretend otherwise anymore.

I find myself looking for something. I don’t know what, exactly.

The house I found to hole up in is okay, but when I am in my wolf form, I want something more made of earth and stone.

I want to be surrounded by the solid world, nothing made by man, nothing that smells of sugar and sweat and alcohol.

I’m looking for a den. Somewhere to curl up and feel protected, somewhere I can defend against anyone or anything that might try to get in.

The house won’t work for that. It is all windows and doors and thin panels that any creature of strength could break through if it wanted to.

I used to be happy in a human built home, but suddenly the very notion of living in something constructed feels deeply wrong.

I can’t find what I am looking for. The ground is too wet. I need to move up into the hills, I think. I need to track north a long way, up toward Shreveport. There will be other packs there, but that’s not a bad thing, I guess. My instincts are screaming at me wordlessly.

In the meantime, I sleep in the house I am less than comfortable in, slipping into my naked human form when I sleep, because as much as I want to avoid human feelings, I can’t do it forever. My body won’t allow it.

Days pass like this. When I’m awake, I take refuge in my animal self, I seek a den. When I sleep, I do so in one of the houses, because I can’t seem to find a place I trust. Now and then I try to dig, but it’s not exactly right.

As time passes, every now and then, I catch a scent on the wind. Something male is following me. Another wolf. I only really smell him when I am in my animal form, and my instincts tell me to steer clear of him. Males represent danger.

I try not to think of men when I am in my human form. I push the memory of the only male who ever mattered to me out of my mind. By being human only when I sleep, I can avoid thinking. And by being animal while awake, I can fulfill the simple needs I can never seem to as a human.

This works until a massive man bursts through the ramshackle door of the hut I am sleeping in late one night, pins me to the mattress of leaves and moss I put together myself, and starts lashing my ass with a leather paddle he must have bought for the occasion.

I have no clothes to protect me, and I am so startled I don’t even really react at first. I just lie there being taken and punished by my furious mate.

“I told you if you ran, I’d come for you, and I told you I’d make it the worst it’s ever been. Didn’t I?”

I screech as he spanks me so fucking hard I can barely move, one hand pinning me in place as he thrashes me so intensely, it has to be the hardest he’s ever done this to me.

“Hey! Stop! It’s so fucking… Ow! Too fucking hard!”

“There’s not a hard enough when it comes to you,” Karl growls. “Did you think you’d run away and I’d just let you go? No. Of course not. You knew I would come for you. You knew I’d punish you. And now it’s happening, and it’s going to fucking hurt.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Are you?” He pulls my head up, one hand in my hair. “Are you sorry, or are you just sore? Are you sorry for your behavior? Or are you sorry that the consequences hurt?”

He’s lecturing me so roughly and so cruelly. I was asleep. I was vulnerable, and now I am being treated like I’ve committed some terrible crime.

“I’m not sorry,” I correct myself. “You’re mean and I wish I had run even further. Fuck you.”

“No, Ellie,” he snaps. “Fuck you.”

He thrusts his cock inside me roughly, giving me hard strokes that remind me how his body makes mine feel. When he fucks me, I can’t pretend I don’t belong to him. I feel his ownership in each and every inch of him.

“You know not to run from me. You know who you belong to. You know how much it hurt when you were kidnapped, and you went ahead and kidnapped yourself. You took yourself away from me, Ellie, and I told you that I wouldn’t have it.”

I shift.

“Fuck,” I hear him curse as he is forcibly ejected from me. I can run a lot faster than he can in my wolf form.

The next thing I hear is a snarl following me in the dark.

My mate and I flash through the trees, my feet pounding at the ground.

He is gaining on me. He is powerful in a way I will never be, because he is bigger, stronger, and more dominant.

I know I am going to lose in my animal form as well as my human one.

There is nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide.

Karl

Blood is pounding in my body, my instincts sharp and my hunger keen.

I bring her down like I’d bring any other prey down, grabbing the back of her neck and tackling her to the forest floor ruthlessly.

The bite forces her out of her wolf self almost immediately, and then there is nothing but a naked, writhing human female beneath me, her delicate curves and human panic making my killer instincts surge to the surface.

My teeth fix themselves on her tender neck, my wolf tongue feeling the rapid beat of her pulse as she realizes that there’s a chance she could die.

I would never hurt her, but I have to force myself into my human form to ensure I don’t. My teeth stay on her neck and gnaw at the side. She’s a delicious little morsel, and the smell of her fear and her arousal is still hitting my senses.

“You thought you could fucking run from me?” I slide down her body and give a swift bite to her left cheek.

“You thought you could escape the consequences? Fuck, no, Ellie. That’s never going to happen.

I know because we live in a fancy house and because I have to consult with accountants, you’ve forgotten who I am. Don’t forget how we met.”

She’s panting from the exertion of running and being brought down, and she doesn’t have a word to say now that I have brought her down twice.

“I fucking love you,” I say as I push my cock back inside her, spreading her legs to expose her wet pussy. “I love you, and that means I’m never going to let you go, let alone let you run from me, you little fucking beast.”

Her lashes lower over her eyes and she looks up at me with an expression that isn’t quite apologetic. A soft moan escapes her lips as she surrenders to me, and to my cock. I mate her powerfully, pinning her down, holding her right where I want her.

“You’re going to spend the rest of your life being provided for, being spoiled, and being punished when you need it,” I snarl in her ear, feeling her pussy squeeze my cock as she relishes my words.

This was a test. We both knew it. She doesn’t want to live wild. She doesn’t want to be abandoned to the forest where she was left behind as a pup.

“You don’t have to do everything anymore,” I tell her. “It’s not going to all come down to you. You’re going to have me to support you. You’re going to have the pack to come to your aid. You are going to be happy.”