Page 25 of Hunted Mate (Stalked Mates #1)

C allie

This is a cute little town. There’s a café, a dance studio, and a little general store that would never dare rise to the label of a supermarket. Everything is quaint and picturesque and somehow screams affordable.

It’s magic here too, just like New Orleans, but a little more rural and a lot more rich. I feel as though I can taste it, like velvet chocolate on my tongue. It feels like power.

I’m hungry again.

I go into the diner, where a man wearing a baseball cap backwards pulled down over dark brows and perpetually annoyed blue eyes gives me one look and then sets about ignoring me.

“Please tell me you have coffee!” A teenage girl who looks far too young to drink coffee barges in and starts talking at him even though he was trying to take someone else’s order.

He turns like he’s on some kind of lazy Susan and pours the girl coffee. No money exchanges hands. I assume she’s his daughter. How cute, a family place.

A moment later, a harried woman who looks a lot like the teenage girl throws herself through the door, forcing it to jangle aggressively.

“Coffee!” She declares the word with such incredible desperation that the man once again pivots from his own sense of free will and serves her coffee. The woman joins the teenage girl and the two of them take a slight sip, then proceed to entirely ignore their beverages.

Nobody else seems to think this is strange, but it is pretty bonkers.

I go up to the counter. “Excuse me,” I say. “Do you have any coffee?”

“Coffee!” The ladies behind me echo me like a couple of thirsty poltergeists. The man serves me with a scowl and barely a word. He doesn’t ask me for money either. I’m starting to wonder if this is one of those social experiments, just a place where you put as much money as you want on the counter.

I sit at the counter and listen to the conversations. Apparently the teenager can’t decide which one of the Ivy League colleges she got accepted into she should actually go to. It’s a problem a lot of people can’t relate to even a little, but I’m engrossed.

“You always wanted to go to Stanford,” the mother says. “Ever since you were little. It’s been your dream. You can’t give up on your dream.”

“Oh, boy,” the teenage girl says. “I don’t have enough coffee for this decision. Or pizza.”

“Then we’ll get pizza. And more coffee,” her mother says. “This is a two pizza, double cheese decision.”

The two of them get up and leave the diner, abandoning the coffees they were so desperate to have entirely.

“Do you have any raw meat?” I ask the man behind the counter. He’s not wearing a name tag, but there’s a man’s name on the outside of the diner. Maybe he’s the man with the name. I wasn’t really paying attention when I walked in here. Dave, maybe?

“Sure,” he says in a tone laced with sarcasm. He goes in the back, then comes out and drops a packet of bacon in front of me. “Go nuts.”

“Thanks,” I say, peeling back the plastic. I’ve always liked bacon. I used to have it crispy, but this is good too.

I pick up a rasher and… it’s snatched away from me before I can ingest it. Rude.

The diner owner gives me an annoyed look. “I’m going to cook this,” he says. “You can eat it afterward.”

“Sure. Thanks. Or maybe you’ve got a hamburger?”

“Yes, I can do a hamburger,” he says, still sounding put out, as if he was spawned inside the diner and never wanted to be bothered with any of it.

“Okay, please. But can I make a few changes? I have dietary requirements.”

His jaw clenches, as if he wants to hurl the notepad at me.

“Okay, well, first hold the cheese. Then hold the pickle. And the onion. Then hold the bun.”

“So you want a hamburger patty.”

“Yep. And hold the heat.”

“Hold the heat,” he says, incredulous. “You don’t want me to cook it.”

“No. Cooking makes it less, well, more nutritious.”

“That’s not in any way true,” he says. “I’m going to cook you some meat, and then you can get out of here.”

“I was thinking about staying around. Maybe buying a house somewhere close. This town has a nice vibe, you know?”

He gives me a glowering stare, sort of smoldering at me. I look back at him with a blank smile, not wanting to give him any reaction to his grumpiness. I have to wonder why someone who doesn’t want to deal with customers decided to run a diner.

“Is this place yours?”

“Yes. It used to be my father’s,” he grunts, volunteering the information almost reflexively.

“That’s lovely. I inherited my father’s businesses as well,” I say. “I can’t run them all, of course. But I have people for that.”

He looks at me as if I just spat in his face. “Good for you.”

He turns and walks away. I have no idea if he’s going to cook anything or not.

It feels like he’s not going to, somehow.

Sort of feels like the diner is more of a place to gather and chat and talk about coffee more than actually eat.

I wonder if this whole town isn’t a front for something.

I hope so. I love mysteries. I am a mystery.

Red and blue lights suddenly light up the diner. There’s a general consternation from everybody, as if they’ve never seen the police before.

I have the feeling this is for me, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself, so I casually vault the counter, grab the raw bacon, and see if I can’t sneak out the back while everyone else is staring out the diner windows.

I go upstairs, through a window, and up over the roof. I’m not really making decisions in the traditional way, thinking about what I should do and then doing it. I am really just doing things on the fly, following my instincts rather than making good choices.

Perched on the roof, I watch the scene below play out as you might expect. The cops go into the diner, presumably to question the owner and other customers. They’ll ask about me, and then he’ll say I went out the back and then they’ll…

“I don’t think that’s a sturdy enough window balcony to risk climbing out,” a cop complains.

I cover my mouth to keep from giggling. I never imagined I’d enjoy being chased so much.

Back before all of this happened, I was the sort of person who never wanted to be in any kind of trouble.

Now, trouble is the only thing that feels real.

I slide down the other side of the roof and shimmy out onto the balcony on the other side. The cop was right to be worried. The old structure bends under me, then gives way entirely, dumping me two stories down on the concrete below.

It doesn’t hurt, but it does make me drop my raw bacon, which is a bit disappointing.

I start running, assuming that I’m going to get out of this by sheer physical ability.

Whatever they did to me in that lab, it made me so much better than I used to be.

I’m stronger. I’m faster. I might be a little stupider, but what can you do about that.

Intellect is overrated. I was smart for years and look where it got me.

Nowhere. Time to get dumb the way animals are.

I’m faintly aware that someone is giving chase.

“Callie! Stop!”

I don’t stop. I run even harder. I know what the voice sounds like, sort of, but I am running already. Can’t stop. Won’t stop.

My pursuer knows that. He gains on me inexorably in the charming streets of a town where people do not run, do not chase, do not make unpleasant scenes.

Finally, he tackles me, driving me to the ground. I feel the air leaving me, and the sensation of being pinned in place. I can’t move, no matter how much I squirm.

“Stay. Still,” Gray growls.

Something shifts inside my head, a little chemical switch flips in my mind. I feel the tension I was caught up in start to flow away. Just a little. Not entirely.

“I’ve got you,” he rumbles against my ear. “I’ve got you, and you’re safe, and nothing bad is going to happen now.”

I push up, and hear a grunt of surprise as he is moved up. He didn’t expect me to be that strong. I didn’t expect to be that strong either. I knew I’d gotten more power in my body, but I didn’t realize how much.

It feels amazing to be so strong. I’ve spent a lifetime feeling small and weak and being at the mercy of bigger, stronger creatures. Money is a form of power, but being female also means always knowing you’re at the mercy of pretty much any man.

Not anymore. I’ve done some things in the last few hours and days that make me realize I’ll never be a victim again.

“C’mere,” he growls, pinning me down more firmly.

I let him.

I could fight him, but I missed him, and having his strong body pressed against mine is making me soften. It’s not really a choice, either. I don’t get to decide whether or not I obey him. His touch makes a whole flow of chemicals run inside my body.

“Get off me,” I mutter to the ground.

“No,” he rumbles back at me. “Never.”

“You let them take me to a lab and perform experiments on me.”

He levers himself up a little, and flips me over onto my back, looking down on me with that handsome, sad face of his. He looks tired. He looks like he’s been chasing me for days, barely sleeping, hardly eating.

“They didn’t tell me they were going to do that. I would never let that happen to you if I had any knowledge of it at all. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you better. I should have intervened before you were taken.”

“Yeah, you should have.” I narrow my eyes at him. “If another bad thing happens to me once I’m in your presence, I’m going to blame you for it forever, you understand? And I’m not the girl I was when you burned my stuff down. I’m not going to just be a bit sad. I’m going to fuck your life up.”

He smirks at me. “Fair,” he says. “But nothing bad is going to happen on my account. I have no intention of letting you be any more hurt than you currently are. We need to get out of here, okay? I have my car.”