Page 22 of Hunted Mate (Stalked Mates #1)

“She’s doing fine. She’s going to be everything she’s always wanted to be, or she’s going to be… not a problem anymore. Relax and stop acting out. You were always so dramatic.”

“And you were always a kiss-ass. You think if you keep doing Daddy’s dirty work, he’s going to love you? He doesn’t care about any of us. He uses us. That’s it.”

“You just wish you were the favorite son,” Karl says.

“You’re not the favorite. Neither of us are. We’re not even in the will, Karl. His real kids are the ones who’ll inherit. We’re useful pawns. Nothing more.”

Our father mated a lot of females, but he only really ever loved one, the woman he is still married to, one who has given him three sons since they started coupling. They’re all under ten years old, and they are all treated better than the rest of us ever were.

Karl calls me something foul and walks away.

“Go babysit the real heirs,” I call out to him. “Maybe if you suck up to them hard enough they’ll let you live in the pool house when you’re older.”

He leaves, and I have achieved nothing. I curse myself.

I could have maybe talked him into letting me go if I’d been a bit more diplomatic, but like everyone says, there’s nothing like going home to make you feel like you’re five years old again.

Karl and I are back vying for the attention and affection of a man who really doesn’t see us as anything other than tools to use.

It’s time to grow up and separate from the man, even if it means being exiled from the pack.

I’d spend the rest of my life defending myself from my own kind as long as I had Callie by my side. I have to get her back. I have to hope she is still alive. If she’s not… I’m going to burn this place to the ground.

Time continues to pass. It feels like every minute is closer to an hour. Seconds are torturous. I am kept helpless in this fucking cage.

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson, boy.”

Orion looms out of the darkness at some point.

“Please, Father, let me out,” I say. “I promise I’ve learned my lesson.”

It makes me want to be physically ill to hear those words coming out of my mouth, but I’ve already decided I’m going to do whatever it takes to get out of here, including lie through my teeth.

To my surprise, Orion unlocks the cage doors and actually allows me to step out. My immediate impulse is to run to my mate, but I don’t know where she is, so that impulse just turns into a dithering energy that does very little for either of us. I’ve got to do some recon.

“Well,” he says. “I’m glad to hear that. The good news is you were right about the girl. She’s much stronger than we gave her credit for, and much more intelligent than any of us realize. I’ve had word she’s escaped the facility. We need you to track her down.”

“What the fuck!” I say, forgetting myself immediately. “What facility did she escape from? What was done to her?”

“There’s a lot of wet around New Orleans.

Wouldn’t want her to stumble into the bayou and become a meal before we even know if the process worked.

” He doesn’t answer, he just winds me up with a vague but dramatic comment designed to get me stupid and emotional.

He doesn’t want me to think about any of this. He just wants me to do as I’m told.

I am so furious I could kill my father. He knows it too. There is no way to hide this level of violent impulse, to make it acceptable or submissive, or even polite. My instincts are telling me to tear him limb from fucking limb and feed the pieces to the alligators.

“There’s no time for revenge,” he says. “Your mate is in the wind, and frankly, I don’t think any of us can predict what will happen if she’s not captured. I’ve prepared you a car and the address of the facility is already loaded in the GPS. Anything else you need, just call.”

Callie

I am so hungry. It’s a ravenous feeling that consumes the core of me.

Escaping the lab was easy in the end. I left a mess, but that’s not really my fault.

I took some clothes off some of the people, so I don’t look like I just escaped a secret lab.

I also took the cash they had on them, so I’ve got enough to do a few things.

I’ve found my way to a small town not that far from the very secret laboratory. There’s not much here; a church, a garage, and a diner, all arranged around an intersection. It seems like a nice little place, but I don’t think I am going to get to enjoy it.

I go into the diner, take a seat at a booth, and smooth my hair down. I try to look sane, and not like I just escaped from an asylum.

“What can I get you, honey?” A lovely older woman comes up to me with a pad and paper, ready to take my order.

God, I love that there are places you can go and people just ask you what you want to eat and they bring it to you.

It’s honestly somewhat magical. We don’t appreciate simple things like this.

“Steak, please.”

“Sure, honey, and how would you like that?”

“Raw. I mean rare. Very rare. Just make sure it’s not mooing anymore.”

She gives me a disapproving look, tinged with a bit of humor. “I could just bring the meat tray out here and let you do your thing if you like,” she says.

“Sure, do that,” I reply, making the joke immediately real. “Please, actually do that.”

“I can’t do that, honey, that’d be a health code violation.”

I laugh, as if it was a joke all along, as if I was just playing with her, as if the mental image of a tray of raw steak just sitting there under plastic isn’t making me salivate at the very thought of it.

I guess this is just what being really hungry is like.

When you’re privileged like me, you don’t ever really get to know what true material suffering feels like. I guess I’m learning now.

“Eggs too, please,” I say, trying my best to be normal.

“Sure, and you want those poached, fried, or also raw and in a glass?”

“Raw in a glass, ma’am,” I say. “It’s a whole diet. I’m sorry. I know it sounds mad, but it’s really all the rage up in New York.”

That’s the clincher. Soon as I mention my bizarre preferences being rooted in some big city bullshit, she is instantly prepared to not only lose interest in them, but to accept them.

I wish I had known that saying things were popular in New York was such a social get out of jail free card before now.

I’ve got to remember that, because I intend to keep being generally weird.

She goes off to get my meal, and I sit back at the booth. Starving.

One minute ticks by.

Another minute follows.

I feel like my body is dissolving itself.

The people at the table next to me get up and leave.

I notice their plates aren’t completely clean. One of them left a whole mass of bacon rind, and the other only half ate their toast. No sooner do I notice these things than my belly is full of bacon rind and toast.

“Uhhhh… you really shouldn’t eat off strangers’ plates. It’s unsanitary.”

“Waste not, want not,” I say, invoking another conversational trap card.

The waitress—Laura, her name tag says—slides me a plate of steak and eggs. They’ve all been cooked, though the meat is rare and the yolks are runny. The whole order took less than three minutes to put together, so I can’t really complain.

I start eating, first with knife and fork, but I quickly drop them because they’re annoying and just grab the barely seared meat with my hands. Juices from the kill drip down my chin and I make a sound of perfect satisfaction as the taste and texture of meat finds my mouth.

I open my eyes, and see that the waitress is giving me a look of real concern. I’m acting strange, even to someone who sees all kinds of strangeness day in and day out.

“Sorry,” I say, swallowing. “I was vegan for ten years, so… This is like… you know. Forbidden fruit.”

She gives me a tight smile and walks away. I’m not technically doing anything wrong, but that doesn’t really matter at times like these. Sometimes, just being a bit weird is enough wrong for anyone. I can tell I’ve creeped her out. Maybe I should take my bloody steak and half-cooked eggs and go.

I take another bite and stop worrying. This is good. This is what life is all about. I spent years eating polite little bites of very reasonable food, but this is the first time I feel like I’ve really eaten, consumed like an animal is supposed to.

I pick out some bills. They’re a little bloody, but they’re still good currency.

“Here,” I say, leaving a generous tip. “Treat yourself.”

She tucks the money into her apron and nods at me.

Oh, I really wish I could stay in this town.

There aren’t many places in the world where you can find women who don’t ask questions when handed a wad of bloody cash.

I suppose most of New York is probably that way outside my social circle of people who basically never handle cash.

I never used to handle cash. I never used to eat in diners. I never used to… well, there’s a lot of things I’ve done today I haven’t done before. There’s a lot of firsts happening. It could be overwhelming. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at self-care.