Page 17 of Destined Prey (Wild Ones #1)

Chapter Fifteen

Ben was in a quandary. His hurt feelings had to be set aside.

They weren’t doing him any good. They sat in his chest like gravel anyway.

Useless weight. Wanting Jack didn’t give him license to be reckless with everyone else’s lives.

He forced his jaw to unclench and breathed until the urge to turn the truck around faded.

What he needed to do was decide whether or not to cooperate with Jack. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t respond to Jack’s pleas for help. If it’d only been his own life on the line, Ben wouldn’t have hesitated to expose his kind to Rhett.

But there were others at stake—his family, his pack, shifters as a whole.

If human society discovered them, there’d be a slaughter and shifters would be eradicated.

Humans always feared what they didn’t understand.

All he had to do was remember the way Jack had looked at him and the words Jack had spoken, both of which reinforced Ben’s hesitancy to be honest with Rhett.

Ben couldn’t make such a decision on his own. He needed to talk to his alpha, to Casey, and to the rest of their pack. Pack first. That drumbeat had kept them alive this long. He repeated it until his pulse matched the rhythm and his hands stopped shaking on the wheel.

Time was an issue, however. If Jack and Rhett were driving to the auto shop, Ben was going to be lucky to beat them there as it was. He’d shifted as soon as he’d reached his truck, but he’d been parked on a dirt road along the opposite side of the ranch where Jack had let him out.

Ben tugged at the collar of the T-shirt he’d put on.

“What to do, what to do. Fuck. Fuck!” He grabbed his cell phone out of the cup holder below the radio, then swiped across the screen.

He pulled up Casey’s name and pressed the green call icon.

After tapping to turn the phone on speaker, Ben waited through three rings before Casey picked up.

“What’s up? Did you get to talk to Jack?” Casey asked right off the bat. Just hearing Casey steadied him a notch; the calm in his brother’s voice hit like cool water on a burn.

Ben groaned. “It kind of turned into a clusterfuck.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that?” Casey’s calm voice did little to settle Ben’s nerves.

“He knows what I am,” Ben rushed out before he could change his mind.

“I was in a compromising position and had to show him. Then we had sex. Then he said some things, and I shifted and left.” Saying it out loud made the whole mess feel even more backwards.

Heat, then fear, then flight, all the wrong order for anything that was supposed to last.

“He knows what you are? He’ll know what all of us are.”

“I put everyone at risk,” Ben admitted. “I’m sorry.

I fucked up, I know, but I can’t—there’s this part of me that can’t walk away from him, that can’t—I don’t think I can live a normal life without him, Case, and I don’t know why.

I…I…I need him and lying to him just wasn’t possible.

I need him to want me, to accept me, all of me. ”

“Even though you’ve put our asses on the line?”

Ben sucked in a sharp breath. “He won’t hurt us. He’s a good man.”

“You think he’s a good man,” Casey corrected. “You don’t know.”

It was time for another admission. “I do know. I can hear him, well, I can hear some of his thoughts, and feel his emotions. And the same goes for him. He picks up mine, too. That’s what made him pass out earlier today.

He heard me, in his head, when I thought something while I was in my coywolf form.

Case, we’re bound together somehow, I just know it.

” The truth of it thrummed under his skin.

Not romance. Not fantasy. A pull that felt older than language.

“Are you sure you hear each other?”

Ben didn’t even have to consider the question. “Yes, without a doubt. For instance, I know he had to tell Rhett about us, and they’re on the way to the shop because Rhett doesn’t believe him. Er, I guess Rhett saw Jack letting me out of the house.”

“When you were shifted?”

“Yes.” Ben sighed and steered around a deep rut in the dirt road. “Case, I’m sorry. I mean it.”

“But you’re going to the shop anyway, and you’re going to show Rhett that you’re a shifter,” Casey said.

“I think I have to.” Ben tightened his hold on the steering wheel until his knuckles ached. “I can’t lose Jack. I’ll tell them it’s only me.”

“But you can’t lie to Jack.”

“I can lie to Rhett,” Ben clarified. “Tell them it’s just me, that I’m adopted or something, because they’ll find out about you and the others somehow. Then I’ll get Jack alone and tell him the truth. I want him to accept me, accept my family.”

“But you want him to lie to his family.”

“Can you stop with the buts?” Ben asked. “I mean, I could use some support here. I’m trying to do the right thing by everyone, and that part of me that craves Jack is clamoring for me to make peace with him, to do whatever I have to for him to be mine, and you keep throwing roadblocks in the way.”

“Nothing is ever simple, Ben. You know that. Would you be able to keep a secret like that from me? Like you’re going to ask Jack to?”

“I could for him,” Ben answered without thinking, going right with his gut. And it startled him, that declaration. “Oh. Shit.”

Casey exhaled. “Do you know why our parents mated?”

Ben was utterly confused. He turned onto the paved road. “I don’t know where you’re going with that.”

“Just answer me.”

“How would I know anything, Case? They died when I was six. I don’t remember them being around together much before then, and they sure didn’t give me a sex talk.

” Ben wished he had more memories of his parents, but they hadn’t lived together.

He’d rarely seen his father. Casey had twelve years on him, however, and had more memories and knowledge of their parents.

“Right. Well, Mom told me the reason they’d joined together was because they were mates, and they couldn’t keep away from each other.

Mates, as in, they were drawn together despite being two different breeds of shifters, two species that were normally enemies.

Before they knew each other’s names, they were sneaking away from their respective packs to breed. ”

Hope flared so bright it hurt. Then fear doused it: mates hadn’t saved their parents. Wanting wasn’t the same as surviving.

“Can we skip that part?” Ben requested.

“The point is, Mom told me this right before she died in that trap. She said destined mates had all but disappeared from the wolf and coyote shifter world. Then it happened, to her and Dad, and they couldn’t resist. Didn’t want to.

Neither could they live happily ever after, because their packs wouldn’t allow it.

I don’t know what happened, why Dad wasn’t around much or how he died. I only know what Mom told me.”

Ben wondered what else Casey was keeping from him and their siblings, though he supposed he didn’t have the right to demand anything of Casey. If their mother had told Casey things, then she’d trusted only him with those things and to be angry at Casey over that was a waste of time.

Still, Ben had to wonder— “What’s the point? Are you saying Jack and I are mates?”

“Destined mates, maybe, if what you’re telling me about hearing each other’s thoughts and emotions is accurate. Mom said that’s how she and Dad knew, and that it was a rare gift. I wish I’d asked her more about it, but… I didn’t, and then she was gone.”

“You didn’t think maybe the rest of us should have known about this possibility?” Ben had to ask.

“Mom thought her and Dad were a fluke. She didn’t know of any other destined mates, so no. I didn’t think it’d be an issue. Apparently, I was wrong.”

“Apparently.” Ben needed some time to think about that. “What else do you know about destined mates?”

Please say more than a story, he almost begged, fingers tightening on the wheel until the leather creaked.

“Just what I told you, and that they don’t do well when one of them dies. That’s why Mom explained it, I think, because she’d learned that Dad was dead, and she didn’t want to go on.”

“She didn’t mean to die in a trap,” Ben protested.

Casey didn’t reply. Ben’s insides went ice cold.

There were few ways to die that were more horrible than a metal trap crushing one to death.

Casey had found their mother, and that had to have been traumatic, yet Casey had never broken down about it.

Guess that’s why he’s an alpha. He’s stronger than the rest of us.

“I’ll meet you at the shop. We’ll deal with this.” Casey disconnected the call.

Ben hated the abruptness, but Casey was like that sometimes.

Ben set the phone back in the cup holder and concentrated on getting to the shop without getting a ticket for speeding.

Case and the rest of his siblings always teased Ben about having a lead foot, and they were right.

He liked to speed, partially because it was against the law, and partially because he was generally in a hurry to get to where he was going.

“Cruise control is for wimps.” That was his motto, and he had the tickets to prove it.

He worried about what was going to happen when he got to the shop, all the way there. Every version ended badly if he lied. Every version ended worse if he told the whole truth without permission. He picked at that knot and couldn’t find a clean thread to pull.

When he turned onto Sixth Street and saw Rhett’s truck parked in front of the shop, Ben’s fingers and toes went numb, from adrenalin or fear, he didn’t know which. He scanned the street on instinct—exits, cover, human scent—the beast rising just enough to sharpen everything without taking over.