Page 3 of Bred Mate (Stalked Mates #2)

K arl

Raglan has come to save the day with a fresh change of clothes and a fresh car besides. He’s the one man I trust not to spread this story around, finding the alpha shivering naked after nearly bleeding out while trying to shift to his wolf form.

The whole thing was a mess. I got into my wolf form, but I couldn’t hold it, and ended up slipping out of it. Wasn’t bleeding anymore, but was still in a pool of my own blood. That’s how he found me.

He looks over at the car. The taillights are all that’s visible right now.

“You know you can’t park there,” he says.

“Shut the hell up,” I groan, rising to my feet. “Where are those pants?”

He tosses me a pair of jeans. I pull them on.

“The hell happened to you, boss?”

I look at him with a flat expression.

“A woman.”

“The one you were going to kill? She got one over on you?”

“Christ, Raglan,” I grunt. “She wasn’t a girl. She was a wolf. She shifted.”

“How the hell did we miss that?”

“Whole damn place smelled like blood and death, and then she smelled like fear. Maybe we missed it ‘cause of that.”

Can’t explain how I fucked her and didn’t smell her. I guess there’s a chance I was too busy smelling myself and everything else to pay attention to who I was fucking.

“Get a tow crew out here to get the car and bike out of the water,” I say. “Less said about this the better.”

He’s trying not to smile obviously, but I can see the little smirk on his face.

“It’s been a long night, boss,” he says. “I’ll drop you home.”

I sleep deep and easy that day and night. My body is trying to make up for blood loss. My mind is fixated on her. I dream of her all night long, and I wake with her on my mind. Every little bit of her face, every little feature.

I can’t get that she-wolf out of my head. I remember her every time I swallow. She put a mark on me that damn near took the life right out of me. Nobody has ever done that before.

I want to find her. Badly.

It’s time to start hunting.

We have records of every shifter in the state—or we’re supposed to anyway. I go to the record keeper my father always used. She’s a woman of the library. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her outside it. She wears long skirts and keeps her silver-streaked hair tied up behind her head.

“I need to find a woman. Early twenties. Dark hair. Dark eyes. I think she’s an alpha female.”

“Aren’t many of those,” the librarian says. “But they’re also not technically registered either. What makes you think she’s an alpha?”

“The way she handles herself.”

“Did she have a particular accent?”

“Sounded rural.”

“Alright. Well. I can compile a list of known female shifters,” she says. “Just give me a little time.”

“How much time?”

She ignores me and walks away, her brow slightly furrowed as she gives her full attention to the task at hand.

I don’t think she’s going to have much luck. Nobody in the bar last night recognized that little female. Even I was too covered in blood to scent her properly. Her essence is probably still clinging to my dick, but I can’t exactly present that as information to the librarian.

“Rough night, Master Karl?”

My father’s manservant didn’t get taken with him to Hawaii.

He was left with the house. His name is Baldwin, and he’s been a fixture of my life for as long as I can remember.

He’s a tall man with white hair and a general demeanor of calm.

He’s seen many things happen over the years, and he knows where the bodies are buried.

Metaphorically and literally, because he manages the family crypt.

“I’m looking for a girl,” I say.

“Aren’t we all,” he replies with a broad smile. “What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you are certainly making it easy for me, aren’t you.”

I ignore his sarcasm.

“What do you know about the smaller packs?” I ask him. “I feel like she’s not from around here.”

“Your father had some dealings with the smaller packs, but they’re not always easily found.

Our kind can be reclusive if they feel threatened.

There are untold unspoken deals between Orion and others, deals made long ago.

We don’t have records of all of them. We can’t.

That means there’re surprises coming for you, Karl. ”

“What kind of surprises?”

“Surprises of the kind you might not be entirely ready for.”

“Is that the best help you’ve got for me? Telling me that my father’s made deals with people I don’t know?”

“My help is telling you that you’ve got to do the diplomacy, not just the enforcing.”

He’s trying to remind me of my responsibilities. I suppose someone has to.

I’m a hunter. A killer. I do my job well, usually. This whole pack alpha thing isn’t what I thought it’d be. My father made it look not just easy, but enjoyable. He wielded power like a woman, something to display, something to enjoy.

I’m finding it to be anything other than enjoyable.

It’s a pain in the ass. There’s nothing but responsibility and drama.

Not the fun kind, the petty kind. Constant irritations and a whole lot of fighting.

Baldwin is right. I haven’t been diplomatic.

I’ve broken bones and I’ve taken lives and I’ve thrown my weight around.

I guess that’s my idea of fun.

“Would you like your morning coffee in your office, sir?” Baldwin shifts the topic of conversation smoothly, while giving me some direction.

I walk through the door to my office. I hate that I have an office. Offices are for men who keep office hours, and for people who like paperwork. I’m not either. I don’t want to meet with anyone. I don’t want to give up my time talking.

I don’t agree that I have to get diplomatic. I don’t have to be my father. I’m not him, after all. Nobody else is ever going to be Orion Dulac, and the truth is if people had any idea what he was actually like, they’d never dream of calling him diplomatic.

As I take that first step into my office, a body hits me hard enough to drop me. Heavy weight comes down on the back of my neck almost knocking me unconscious, and definitely knocking me to the floor.

It’s her.

The woman.

The one I wanted more than anything.

“What happened to your face?”

She asks the question with her foot on my throat. First she punched it, then she bit it, now she’s using it as a foot stool.

“None of your business.” I grab her ankle and shin and toss her onto the floor.

She’s a lot of things, but she’s not very big, and this time she won’t get the jump on me if she shifts.

I know what she is now. I know what she’s capable of.

As her body hits the floor, stomach first, I reach out and pin her down.

A few hours earlier…

Ellie

My pack numbers just four. Me and my three little brothers.

There used to be dozens of us, but time and fortune hasn’t been kind.

Disease has run through the group more than once.

We’re vulnerable to so many things, in spite of being strong in so many ways.

Shifters were never intended to live with humans.

We’re cursed, designed to live as outcasts on the fringes, closer to animals than to men.

But the modern world doesn’t allow for that kind of luxury.

Every creature in the world has to get used to living with people one way or another.

We need help, and we need it from someone strong and powerful, someone who has the resources to make a real difference.

Goddammit. I do not want to go to the New Orleans alpha for help. There’s no way he’s going to do anything for me. Not after everything I’ve done to him. Not after I let him fuck me then practically killed him.

He’s a brutal man, and I know he’s not going to forgive me all that easily. I don’t know what I could give him to get him to help us. Asking nicely isn’t going to work. So I decided to jump him.

That brings me to this point. The point where I got a cheap shot in, and now I’m under him again. I’m not hating it nearly as much as I should be, and that scares me almost more than the fact that this asshole might snap my neck.

I don’t think so, though. I think he’s finally aware that I’m a wolf like him, so he doesn’t have to wipe me off the face of the planet for the sin of knowing who and what he is.

“What the fuck are you doing back here?” Karl growls into my ear as he pins me to the floor. His fingers are already at the belt of my pants, undoing them, and undoing his own. He’s not going to let me out of here without another fucking.

I knew I was going to have to give him my pussy. I knew he was going to take it. I counted on it. I craved it.

I didn’t get to come last night. I was right on the verge when I bit him and ran. I wanted to stay on his cock and take his knot, and I wanted to fucking come. I didn’t get what I wanted. I’m going to get it now.

He thrusts inside me, rough and brutal. I stretch for him, my body struggling to adapt to his thick cock. My whimpers are impossible to hold back, and he seems to delight in them. I can feel him throb every time I make any kind of sound or sign of pain.

He could be a lot worse. He could be really beating me, choking me, doing the awful things men do to women they want to really hurt.

This man just wants the pleasure of dominating me.

He doesn’t want to see my blood, even though I have drawn his.

His revenge could be truly brutal, but it isn’t.

His fingers are down between my legs, his arm wrapped around my waist so he can rub my pussy while he fucks me harder and faster.

“Going to breed you,” he snarls. “Going to pump my seed deep inside you, use you the way you were meant to be used.”

His words are supposed to humiliate, but they touch me in a place I didn’t know I had. I feel my pussy get wetter as he promises to come inside me.