Page 20 of Hunted Mate (Stalked Mates #1)

“My son has a tender spot for you, and as we’ve already said, killing you is not an option.

Here is what I am offering. A place to stay here for the short term, full access to my libraries and to my mind.

I will answer any questions you have. In return, you will stay here for several months at least, and you will take an oath of silence, a binding oath that will require you to never share any of what you learn.

I know you come from an honorable family.

Are you also an honorable person, Calista Hart? ”

“Yes,” I breathe. “Yes. I am.”

Gray

Karl and I swap looks while our father talks Callie into his little deal without so much as a single objection from her.

He definitely has a way with women. A way of manipulating them.

They never see it coming. He just focuses his attention on them and they fall under his sway.

It’s almost like vampire powers, in a way, it’s like he fogs their minds.

But there’s nothing supernatural about it. It’s just being a hot older guy.

“I can have someone escort you to the reading room now,” he says. “It’s within the walls of the property. You’ll be safe from prying eyes.”

“Yes, oh yes, please. Thank you so very much,” she says. “I am so glad I came. This is everything I have ever imagined. I don’t know how to thank you.”

I want to talk to my father, so I do not object when he sends her off with a bookish lady with big thick glasses and a chunky cardigan. I’ve been in the libraries here. There are books that don’t exist anywhere else in the world. Callie is going to be in absolute heaven.

So why don’t I share her joy?

My father sits back in his chair once she leaves, and fixes both Karl and me with a much less friendly stare.

“The two of you are too big for me to be cleaning up after,” he growls. “One of you is thinking with his cock, and one of you can’t kill a soft girl. Ridiculous.”

The nice, cheerful, sociable facade he showed Callie is gone in an instant, and in its place is the same cold disapproval Karl and I are so used to. I almost believed him when he was in performance mode. It makes me wonder why he can’t just be nice, if he knows how to pretend to be nice so easily.

Karl gets up, drops his napkin on his plate, and leaves. He does not take negative feedback well. I’d be tempted to follow his lead, but I need to question my father. This deal is too neat and too kind. I don’t trust it.

“Is this real, then, Father? Is she safe here?”

“She’s safe enough,” he says. “You needn’t panic.

I won’t be killing your little mate. Would it really have been so hard to find someone of your own kind?

There are dozens of females who would let you breed them.

You could have had several litters by now.

But you insist on saving your seed for creatures like that insipid little thing. ”

“You didn’t like her,” I say flatly.

“What is there to like? Generational privilege in kitten heels?” He snorts. “I’m surprised Karl couldn’t kill her.”

He didn’t really try. He handed her off to another set of wolves who bungled the whole affair, but I don’t tell my father that. Hurling Karl under the bus won’t help anything.

“So what is really on the table, Father?”

Orion looks at me, and his blue eyes are iceberg cold. There is not a hint of feeling in that gaze.

“There is only one thing to be done if you will not have her see death.”

“What? I will do anything to keep her alive. Anything.”

“She must be transformed.”

I am confused and horrified in equal measure. “Transformed? That’s not possible. You mean… there are legends, but shifters are bred, not made. We know we can’t actually make new shifters by biting.”

If we could, Callie would already be one. She has a bite on her deeper and bigger than most any scar I’ve seen on a person.

“Most shifters are simply bred from mother or father to child, yes, passing on the ancient curse. But the nice thing about curses is that they don’t really mind how they are passed on. Only that they are.”

“So you want to turn Calista into a wolf,” I say, not asking how in the meantime.

“Yes. Induct her into the pack. Make her one of us. Doing anything else is unacceptable. If she has chased the curse so long, refused all opportunities to escape it, then she may as well be delivered to her fate,” he says.

“She seems to be potentially submissive enough. She was practically begging to show her belly over dinner.”

I hate hearing him speak to me this way. It’s so disrespectful.

“How is a human made wolf?” I ask the question to change the subject.

“She is bitten.”

“She’s already been bitten and survived.”

“Bitten is more metaphorical,” he says smugly. He knows something I don’t, and I hate it.

“What are you talking about, Father? Do you want me to guess your meaning?”

He doesn’t like being called out on his dramatic streak. It makes it all that much less fun for him. This man is up to something, and I want to know what.

“We have been working… and when I say we, I mean people with more scientific acumen than myself or any of the brutes who enforce the laws,” he says, taking a conversational sideswipe at me. “On a method to isolate the curse.”

“So we’re going to cure lycanthropy?”

“No,” he says, not missing a beat. “Why would we do that? Turning into a wolf is fucking cool, my son. We are going to pass the gift on to a select few. The process is still in the testing stages, but there’s promise shown in animal trials.”

“You’ve managed to turn rats into rats? Or you’ve managed to turn rats into very small wolves?”

I shouldn’t mock him, but I do it because he annoys me. The little snotty comment about me being a brute was unnecessary. I am a stalker. I am in no way stupid.

What he says next makes me wonder if that’s actually true, however. I’ve missed his point over and over even as he laid it out before me.

“There are many uses for the affliction that causes so many of us to be unable to function. Regardless. We have not yet tried to give any human lycanthropy. Your mate is an ideal candidate. Then she could truly be your mate, and not the human equivalent of a body pillow you carry around.”

He is scathing with his metaphors.

I think about it. Even if it were possible, and safe, and if the process were far enough along that it wouldn’t endanger her life to undergo it, would Calista want to become a beast?

Probably. At first. She’d want to be a wolf the same way a small kid wants to be a dinosaur.

But she wouldn’t be able to really understand the decision she was making.

And it would be painful. And possibly kill her.

And I would have to stand by and let it happen though all I have ever wanted is for her to be happy and safe.

“There is no need to think about it,” my father says. “It is already being done.”

“But she just got here. How?”

My father sits back with a satisfied look. “There was no point wasting time. Better that this were done quickly.”

“Where is she? I’ll tear this fucking house apart if I have to,” I growl. “You better hope she has not been harmed.”

“You harmed her when you decided to play house with her, Gray,” my father says. “Besides. She’s been taken to a secure facility. You won’t be able to find her before the procedure is done.”

I have often wanted to punch my father in the face in my life. This is the first time I actually do it.

My fist makes perfect, beautiful contact with his nose and mouth. It probably hurts, but I’m beyond feeling. Some things are worth pain. This is one of them.

“Ungfh!”

He didn’t see it coming. He thought he could torture me forever and never experience the natural consequences of being a huge fucking asshole.

He rocks back in his chair, and then the whole thing goes over, taking part of the tablecloth as he grabs at it to steady himself.

An entire half-eaten banquet comes crashing down on my prone progenitor.

“What the hell is going on…”

Karl reappears through the side garden door. He’s holding a cigarette, the smoke curling up curiously into his face as he takes the sight in.

I expect my father to shift into his wolf form and do his level best to destroy me for this disrespect.

Instead, Orion Dulac does something I have only seen once or twice in my entire life.

He laughs.

He roars with amusement, standing up and brushing food from his shirt.

The movement only serves to smear roulade sauce down his stomach.

He is a mess, but he doesn’t seem to care in the slightest. The trickle of blood from the side of his mouth does not bother him either.

He wipes it on the back of his sleeve, making more of a mess.

“I didn’t think you had that in you, boy,” he says, ruffling my hair as if I am a child. “Good for you.”

“You attacked our father?” I can’t tell if Karl is horrified, impressed, or wished he’d done it first.

Orion waves him off like an annoying fly.

“Karl, take that outside. It’s disgusting.”

“You want me to take Gray out?”

“The cigarette, idiot boy,” Orion booms.

Karl slinks out, clearly unsure what is happening to a long-established pack dynamic. I am the thirteenth son. I’m usually the one being shooed out of places and treated like an irrelevance.

I don’t care. I need to find my mate.

“Sit down,” Orion says. “She’ll be back in a few days, better than she was.”

“I’m not sitting down. I’m going to get her back.”

“Karl!” My father calls my brother back in. “Arrest your brother.”

Karl grins. “With pleasure.”

“Come near me and I’ll fucking kill you.”

Karl cracks his neck, leaning his head to the side as he does, and fixing me with a sadistic grin. “Go ahead and try, little brother.”

I hear my father laugh, and in an instant I am transported back to a childhood I’ve done my best to forget. Orion always liked to pit his pups against one another. According to him, it was his way of ensuring we were as strong as possible. I think he just enjoyed watching us hurt each other.

Today, I’ll be showing Karl no mercy.