Page 33 of Broken Arranged Mate (Badlands Wolves #4)

We find the place at the end of a long dirt road. It’s an old, leaning shack with a wooden fence that’s falling down, the metal strips holding it together pooling on the ground like rope. A single telephone pole stands beside it, the wire stretching out and toward town.

“We should cut the power,” Emin says, “Catch those fuckers off guard.”

Dorian nods, and we move around the back of the building, finding the fuse box.

“Aidan, you stay back and cut the power,” Dorian says. “The rest of us will go to the front and go through the door the second you do.”

As we move back around the side of the shack, I smell Ash—in fact, I smell all of them, including my sister, her scent like my own but with a slant to it, slightly different.

We move into position by the door, and I’m flooded with anger and ready to rip someone limb from limb. Dorian glances at Emin and me, and we flash signs to show that we’re ready.

Seconds later, Aidan cuts the power, and we see the inside of the building—which only a second ago was moving, voices coming hushed from inside—go completely dark.

Dorian is first, throwing his shoulder against the door, and we burst inside. I rely on my sense of scent, looking for a strain I can follow through the dark to one of the men, but I don’t catch anything but the smell of the girls, the dank, wet scent of basement and rusted metal.

Inside is pitch dark, likely helped by the fact that the moon and stars are not out tonight.

A war cry sounds, and the softest punch I’ve ever felt lands on my shoulder. I pull back just in time to keep from bowling the person over, then Dorian hollers for everyone to stop and turns on the light on his phone, illuminating the room around us.

“Emaline?” I ask, and when her face comes into focus, I realize she’s holding her fists up, looking completely unprepared.

There’s something like dirt smeared over her face and fear flashing through her eyes.

Of all the women I could have run into, I suppose I was lucky to get her, or I would have already been knocked out.

“Ow, fuck ,” someone else groans, and I turn to see Emin on his back, rubbing his hand over his forehead, Veva standing above him. After a moment, when she seems to realize it’s her mate that she just hit, she drops to her knees.

“Fuck, sorry,” she murmurs, already bringing her hands up to start healing him with her magic. Emin reaches up to her, taking her around the middle and pulling her down to him, murmuring something I’m sure is an admonishment for leaving in the middle of the night without a word.

“Oh, thank the Gods,” Emaline breathes, running her hand through her hair when I look back at her. “I was not ready to fight today.”

She looks wary, with red marks around her wrists and dirt dusted through her hair.

Emaline is smaller than Ash, less robust, and I worry for a second that she might not be okay, but Aidan is beside her in the next second, scooping her into his arms, and I figure he’s the best person to deal with it.

When I turn around, I see Dorian and Kira talking quietly on the other side of the room, their voices fast and hushed. A few feet to the right, my sister stands in the center of the room, covered in blood.

“Raegan,” I step toward her, looking her over. Maybe it’s wrong, but my first instinct is to be proud. That all those training sessions in the yard ended up being worth something, after all.

Of course, I’d always thought I was teaching Raegan to defend herself against our father, but if the fighting would have worked against him, some hapless highway bandits wouldn’t have stood a chance.

“Hey, Oren,” Raegan chirps, like we’re meeting at a supermarket, and not in the middle of nowhere, bodies littering the floor around us. As much as I care about my sister, there’s someone I’m more interested in finding right now.

“Is she—” I ask, and Raegan nods, turning around and stepping away from me, and I catch Ash’s scent, strong and sure.

“I’m going to see if I can find our Amanzite,” Raegan says, disappearing through another door. I think about going with her, just in case there are others, but Ash’s scent leads my gaze to where she is, standing in an alcove, a rusty hammer hanging limply in her hand.

“ Ash .” The others are talking, moving out of the building and into the night, but I’m walking toward her, eyes locked on her face in the dim light. “Are you okay?”

When she says nothing, the words keep coming. “What were you thinking ? What if something had happened to you?”

“I’m fine,” she says, and when I stop a foot away from her, she tries to take a step back but starts to trip over something—a dead man—on the ground. I reach out and take her hand, pulling her back to me so she doesn’t fall. She pulls her hand from mine. “I said I’m fine .”

All at once, the concern I was feeling up to a moment ago crumbles, and instead is replaced with rage. I take a step toward her, angling my head down and lowering my voice so this conversation is only between us.

The others are outside, and Raegan is somewhere inside the house, but I don’t want to risk them overhearing.

“And do you know how I would know that for sure?”

She stares defiantly up at me.

“If you didn’t go running off in the middle of the night without saying anything to me about it!” I snap, hands clenching into fists. “Do you know how fucking out of mind I was with worry—”

“It doesn’t matter, Oren!” Her voice breaks a little as it comes out, something between incredulity and a sob.

“This marriage is just for appearances, right? It’s all about the packs, and nothing to do with me.

So what if I get picked off by fucking highway bandits!

Nobody would miss me, and you could just pick yourself another little pretty wife from Ambersky. ”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I snap, shaking my head, opening my mouth to tell her everything I promised myself I would, but she speaks first.

“ You left me first. In the middle of the night, in case you forgot!”

“Yeah, but I know this place, and you don’t.” I’m not even sure why I’m arguing with her—just all the adrenaline and anger built up inside of me, coming to a boil. “Maybe if you’d told me about your little plans, I could have warned you about driving that particular stretch of highway.”

“We didn’t plan to get lost,” she snaps, crossing her arms. “And besides, why are there even fucking bandits here, anyway?”

“In case you didn’t notice,” I growl, realizing our faces are close enough a single movement would touch our foreheads together. “I’m fucking working on it!”

“Maybe it would go a little smoother if you accepted any help!” Her whole body is shaking with rage, and for a fleeting moment, I almost wish she would hit me.

At least then, she’d be able to let some of it out.

“Instead of shutting me out and pushing me away! I have good ideas, Oren—all you have to do is fucking listen to them!”

“Okay!”

Silence falls between us, and I watch as her face morphs, confusion replacing the anger that was there a moment before.

“Okay?” she asks on a breath, drawing her chin back.

“Yes,” I nod, reaching out and putting my hands on either side of her, something snapping into place when I’m touching her again. “I want your ideas, Ash. I want every single ounce of you, if you’ll give it to me.”

She’s still, as if she moves, it might shatter the moment. “What are you saying?”

I suck in a breath, examine her—that small, straight nose, the dark brown eyebrows like her brother’s. The tiny vertical line between her brows, the way her blue eyes glint in the light. She’s mine, and I’m hers, and I never want to feel what I felt tonight again.

“I’m saying,” I whisper, dropping my head down even more, so my lips practically brush against hers as I speak, “that I lied to you. During the blood moon—I told you that I didn’t feel it. That you weren’t my mate.”

“You…did?”

I let out a quick breath, and she sways forward, so our lips nearly press together.

“Yeah,” I say, hands moving over her back, pulling her closer to me. “I did. I was—I was young and stupid, and I thought that having a mate would just get in the way. I thought that if anyone found out about you, they would hurt you. I still thought that, when I—”

Pausing, I shake my head, letting my nose run the length of her cheek.

“Fuck, Ash, leaving you was the worst thing I’ve ever done.

I did it because—because I realized I was falling in love with you, and it scared the hell out of me.

I thought that mates were one thing, married was another, but loving you…

it opened me up. I thought it made me vulnerable, but that was naive. ”

Slow, soft tears roll down her face, and I reach up, swiping one away with my thumb. “Loving you makes me stronger, Ash. It reminds me that I’m a good man, and that I can be a good leader.”

“It really, really sucked,” she says, the words breaking on a sob, and I tuck her into my arms, leaning down and pressing my mouth to her ear, whispering as quietly as I can so nobody else hears it.

“And I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you,” I murmur, rubbing her back and holding her tight. “I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you the way you deserve, Ash.”