Page 1 of Forsaken (The Nightwolf Pack #3)

CHAPTER 1

R onan

“This is bullshit,” my middle brother, Noah, declares angrily. “We need to charge in there and take her. She’s ours.”

I run my hand across the back of my neck while Noah, our youngest brother Montgomery, and I stand around Noah’s pickup truck, parked on the side of a country road. A quarter of a mile of woods and mountainous fields stand between us and the Nightwolf pack’s territory based in New Mexico.

More importantly, that quarter of a mile stands between us and our fated mate.

“Did you think she would come with us willingly?” I ask him, my voice calm though my wolf prowls inside of my chest. We’ve laid eyes on Serafina once already today and that was enough to awaken his primal instincts.

“Then why didn’t you plan for this? Huh?” He folds his arms across his huge chest, narrowing his hazel eyes on me. “We need to barge in there and take what belongs to us,” he insists.

Noah’s outbursts don’t bother me any longer. He’s the hotheaded triplet. I blink slowly and look over at Montgomery, who’s leaning against the bed of Noah’s truck, arms propped on the door. His head is turned, looking out into the distance.

The redness in his cheeks and the way he continues to shift from one foot to the other speaks to his restlessness. His wolf is too close to the surface.

Noah might be the loudmouth, quick-tempered brother, but it’s Montgomery’s wolf we have to worry about.

It’s my fault. We failed him.

I squeeze the back of my neck with my hand before lowering it, ridding myself of that thought. It’s a separate issue I’ll have to deal with at another time. Right now, we need to acquire our mate.

“Hello?” Noah calls.

“Don’t snap your fingers at me,” I tell him.

“We need to do something. Standing here with our thumbs up our asses isn’t working. We should barge in there and grab her.” He punches his palm with a fist.

“No,” I tell him. “That is the last thing we are going to do. Did you not see the entire Nightwolf pack assembled for Chance’s wedding?”

A slow, rare smile spreads across my face. “Our dear beta cousin is getting married.”

“I saw,” Noah spits back. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?” He rubs a palm across his chest.

My own wolf is feeling the same agitation. We can sense Serafina’s nearness, and yet she’s not with us. Not ours yet, and he knows it.

“Why is she so adamant about not wanting us?” Noah blurts out.

I raise an eyebrow. “Did you forget it was us who initially rejected her?” I remind him. “Once we learned of her mysterious past and the fact that her wolf, if she has one, may be a threat to any pack she is a part of?”

Serafina is a mystery that I still have not solved, but what every instinct tells me—has told me since the first moment I met her years ago at an inter-pack meeting—is that she belongs to us.

Our true fated mate.

“You what?”

Noah and I face Montgomery.

Right .

He was not present for that ugly business. Which, yes, was another failure of mine.

“We told you, we did what needed to be done. Are you cracking up over there?” Noah asks, none too gently.

“Fine,” Montgomery replies through gritted teeth, but the way his hands clench into tight fists betrays his declaration.

Noah continues to eye Montgomery, not believing him either.

“We need to grab her and get out of here. I don’t care if we have to storm that damn wedding,” Noah says, turning back to me.

I shake my head. “We do not need to do that.”

Noah snorts. “We need to do something. It’s not like our mate is going to have a sudden change of heart, all on her own. We need to tell her the truth. The real reason we couldn’t mate her before now.”

I shake my head before he finishes speaking. “You saw how upset she was just now.” Our first attempt to collect our mate, got us sternly told to never return to Nightwolf territory by both our mate and our cousin, Chael, the alpha of the pack.

“Are you willing to risk a war with our cousin’s entire pack?”

“Damn straight I am.”

Of course he is.

“That will not be necessary,” I tell him, digging into the pocket of my suit pants. “We have all we need.” I hold up the key to Serafina’s home.

Noah cocks his head to the side.

Even Montgomery’s attention focuses on me for a brief moment. “What is that?” he asks.

“The only thing we need to gain access to our mate. After the wedding, the pack is going on a run. Guess who never goes on pack runs?”

Noah grunts. “How did you get a key to her home?”

“My contact.”

He snorts this time. “Your contact couldn’t have told us where she was for the past few months?”

“They did not know either.” My wolf growls, not liking that for months we had no idea where Serafina fled to.

“She is back now, but likely to leave again very soon. This time, probably permanently. Now is the only time we will have to grab her.”

A muscle in Noah’s jaw ticks.

“Right, but even still …” He trails off. “Once we have her and take her back home with us, I doubt she will be willing to complete the mate bond with us. We need the bond to be completed before we can fully claim her as our mate and keep our alpha positions over the Blackclaw pack. We aren’t going to?—”

“Never,” I say, sharply. “We will not force ourselves on our mate.”

I cease talking because I haven’t fully planned out how we are going to convince Serafina to give into the bond. Not after the way Noah and I hurt her by rejecting her once already.

The burn in my chest is my punishment for failing to make her ours sooner.

“We will cross that bridge once we come to it,” I tell Noah. “It is your responsibility right now to grab her once we have the chance and get back to the truck as soon as possible. Is that clear?”

His eyes narrow but he nods.

I turn my attention to Montgomery.

“You will be the backup. You will guard the door and take the backseat with Serafina once we have her in the truck.”

Montgomery’s eyes go wide.

“Is there a problem?”

He pushes out a frustrated breath, looking away before he nods. “I’m fine.”

I hesitate, wondering, again, if it was best to make the five-hour drive from Colorado without allowing Montgomery to take his wolf out for a run before we left. It’s one of the ways he keeps a lid on his animalistic tendencies.

At least, that is what I suspect.

“Are we ready?” Noah asks me through our bond.

“One more thing,” I say out loud so that Montgomery can hear it as well. “We do this as cleanly as possible. Our aim is to avoid an all-out war with the Nightwolves while getting our mate. I will do the majority of the talking.”

“You’re talking too damn much now. Let’s go,” Noah declares.

I nod at him to start in the direction of the Nightwolf pack’s territory. I give Montgomery one final, lingering stare. He doesn’t make eye contact with me, but gives a slight nod in my direction, before starting off behind Noah into the forest.

Watching them both for a moment, I flip the metal key in between my fingers.

It’s time to correct the mistake I made years ago and claim what belongs to us.