Page 14 of Hunted Mate (Stalked Mates #1)

There are three female shifters behind the bar. Two of them smile at Karl like he’s the second coming. My brother is very attractive to shifter women. He takes after my father that way. The third bartender is visibly pregnant and quite obviously over every single male in the place, shifter or not.

I hope someone here catches his attention. He flirts with the shifter who serves us for a bit. She’s got dark hair in a high ponytail and a pretty face. She’s impressed by him, and has that tenderness women seem to automatically have for broken, scarred men.

For a few minutes, she holds his attention, then he looks at me. I know there’s blood in the water. He’s here to sniff out weakness and exploit it.

“So who are you fucking?”

“Nobody you know. Nobody that matters.”

He smirks at me. “Same old Gray. You look like such a nice guy, but you’re a ruthless fucking animal underneath it all, aren’t you.”

I take a long drink of my beer to keep from saying I am as ruthless as our family made me, that I never had a choice to be any other way.

“It’s time you found a she-wolf and settled down,” he says.

“You’re older than me and don’t have a mate,” I point out.

“I’m not the mating kind,” he says. “Never will be. Imagine me with kids.”

“I don’t want to do that.”

“Exactly. But you’re the sort of swell guy who’d make a great dad,” he says, smirking at me like it’s a personality trait he thinks is hilarious.

Imagine being a nice guy. Imagine being someone women want to breed with.

Imagine walking into a room and not having everybody who knows you or ever heard of you looking either scared, disgusted, or both.

Another waitress comes by to see if we want something else. She’s a cute girl with red hair in a ponytail and keen green eyes. She’s smart, I can tell immediately. All Karl sees is a pair of luscious tits. I know that, because he says so, not even under his breath.

Her expression shifts to one of disappointment and disgust. For a second, she thought he was handsome. He never stays sexy for long. Too vile a personality.

I slip her a twenty and apologize.

She gives me a tight smile and disappears down the far end of the bar. A male bartender who must have just started his shift takes over for us.

“Tight ass on that boy,” Karl says. He doesn’t discriminate when it comes to harassment. He’s an equal opportunity asshole.

“I can’t take you fucking anywhere, will you shut the hell up.”

Karl checks his watch. “So do you think you’ve had me out here long enough for the girl you’re fucking to slip out of that apartment?”

I go cold. He knew. Of course he fucking knew. And that means…

Callie

I wait ten minutes and I slip out of the wardrobe. I have never seen Gray look that scared before. Not even when he found me sitting in his place with a gun on him. Not even when he realized I was actually going to shoot him.

Whoever that guy was, he’s afraid of him.

I slip out of the apartment and go down the stairs, into the warehouse. Something makes me stop at the van. I didn’t check it out on the way in, but I definitely take a look now. There’s a whole other bank of surveillance equipment inside. High-tech stuff. Military grade.

Whatever these wolves are doing, there’s a lot of money behind it.

They’re very, very serious about not being outed by anybody.

I have that feeling you get when you’re being watched, the tingling down my spine, the hairs raising on the back of my neck.

I look around. Can’t see anyone. But I do know one thing: I need to get the hell out of here.

Now.

I get out of the van and someone grabs me while another someone shoves a bag over my head. I am carried and bundled into what is probably another van. I don’t fight, because I know fighting is a waste of time. I’m not strong enough to fight a man, let alone a wolf man. Let alone two of them.

I stay still. I keep quiet. I let them think they have a passive little victim on their hands. I haven’t forgotten that I have a gun. And they didn’t pat me down. They just grabbed me like I was a package scheduled for pickup.

I can’t see through the bag, though. I suppose I could take it off, but that would alert them to the fact I’m not tied up and I don’t want to get tied up… though I guess if I shoot them fast that won’t matter.

I’ve never shot anybody before, and I’m not sure I want to start.

In movies, this is usually the sort of time when someone is rescued.

Is Gray going to rescue me? I sure as hell hope so.

I don’t want to have to be the sort of person who shoots other people.

I was never going to shoot Gray. I just wanted to frighten him. And maybe shoot him.

I decide to keep the gun a secret. It’s tucked in a band underneath my pants, and as long as they leave those alone, I assume they won’t notice. Gray was just promising me that I was his and that he wouldn’t let any harm come to me, so I have to assume he’s not going to let any harm come to me.

Having come to that conclusion, I continue to sit still, small, and quiet, and I let them take me.

I can predict the conversation before they have it, because I have heard it before. There’s nothing new here. There are two people here, and they are having the conversation wolves always have when they have me in their grip.

“We should kill her.”

“Smell her. She’s got Gray’s seed all over her. He’s her illegitimate mate. We can use her. Remember who his father is.”

“Pack law says we kill her.”

“And I say we keep her and use her.”

None of these people follow their own laws. This is the second, no, third time I’ve been spared when I should not have been. Either there’s something about me that’s just very moreish to wolves, or I’m one of the luckiest people in the world.

“Is it this one? Or the next one? They all look the same to me.”

“Warehouse 75,” the other person says.

The van keeps driving, and I keep quiet and they take me to the location they’ve clearly prepared.

Wolves have to have a den of some kind. Historically that’s a fortress or a castle, somewhere they can protect themselves from aggressive humans.

That never used to stand out because everybody with the slightest bit of sense had a fortress or a castle.

These days there aren’t so many structures, but a good warehouse does much the same in terms of function.

Being taken from one dodgy warehouse to another feels redundant. They could have just done whatever they were going to do at Gray’s warehouse. I guess the old adage applies. This is my scummy fucking shit hole of a warehouse. There are many like it, but this is mine.

“Put her in with the others,” a voice says. “And take that hood off. No point keeping her blind now.”

The hood is pulled off my head, and I am left to face the horror of my new situation.

It has been a while since something very bad happened to me, but I have come to accept that sometimes very bad things happen to me.

Losing your parents young gives you a thickening of the skin that you’ll never really shave all the way down no matter how much therapy you do.

Gray’s warehouse is full of tech and surveillance equipment. This place, when I see it, seems to have been designed to hold people prisoner. Wolf jail.

There’s a cell slash cage in front of me with three other people in it.

Two men, both middle aged, dressed in camouflage.

They look like hunters. Then there’s a woman in a short skirt with a tight bodice.

She’s pretty. She’s also terrified. The men are angry.

I am pushed into the cell with them and the door is shut and chained behind me.

We look out at the warehouse, which contains all sorts of things that would be really useful if they were inside the cell with us.

Guns. Knives. Big containers that lock and unlock and probably contain other weapons.

The wolves take themselves away to some other part of the warehouse to continue their murderous deliberations.

Meanwhile, in the cage, one of the men starts talking to me. He’s rough and angry and scared.

“You saw those fucking freaks? They shouldn’t exist. Have no fucking right to be walking this planet.”

“I don’t know, isn’t it kind of cool?” I keep my tone even.

I’m not here to bond with the other inmates.

I’m here to survive, and that starts with making the wolves think I am still somehow on their side.

I assume they can hear us in here. It would be stupid to imagine we’re not under surveillance of some kind.

My response does, however, immediately piss the man who spoke right off. He turns on me with a vicious, beady-eyed stare. He smell like sour beer and hate. He can’t get to the wolves. He’s imprisoned. And he’s looking for someone to hurt. I’m available.

“Kind of cool to be an animal? You’re a wolf fucker, aren’t you. Just like the other girl. It won’t work out for you. They fuck you and then they put you in holding and then they kill you.”

“Uh. Okay.”

Those two sounds, not even words really, seem to enrage him entirely.

“Fucking bitch,” he curses.

He comes at me and grabs me by the throat. There’s not enough room to get out of the way before he takes hold of me. The cage is too small and I am too slow.

I feel his hatred flowing through his hands, squeezing the breath from me. I try to reach for my gun as he slams me back against the chain link of the cell cage, but I don’t get a chance because the wolves are already on it.

A wolf man comes over, throws the cell door open, grabs the hostile man out by his hair and in an instant there is more blood on the warehouse floor than I ever imagined seeing in my entire life.

I’d like to scream, but I am frozen, and the lady in the cell is doing that for me to great effect and at very high volume.

I see the flash of a knife being wiped on the camo fabric of his clothing, and then it is gone.