Page 33 of Hunted Mate (Stalked Mates #1)

G ray

We fall asleep together and wake up mid-afternoon.

I make pancakes in a kitchen big enough to concoct a banquet, and we eat them out on the covered porch as light gray clouds skate across the sky and the world fills with the pleasant hum of insects living their myriad little lives.

In one of the corners of the verandah, a spider weaves her web with great alacrity.

I get a full hour of peace, quiet, and simply getting to be with my mate. It feels like a small form of heaven.

Then, all hell breaks loose.

The sound of an engine, followed by another engine, followed by… hell, it’s a convoy of black trucks, and they’re all turning up the long white stone drive to the house.

Callie and I look at one another. She half-smiles and gives me a slight shrug.

She’s wearing another white dress. They look good on her.

Brings out the blonde in her hair and the blue in her eyes, along with her complete lack of concern for moments like these that make my nervous system throb with concern.

There’s not enough time to run, if I could convince her to, and I don’t think I could. Her expression is serene as the lead car pulls up in front of the house, and my father and his henchmen step out.

I knew this wouldn’t be entirely simple.

I knew my father wouldn’t be able to take the insult of having had Calista break out of his facility and then talk shit to him on the phone.

I knew he’d come after her. He’s come hard, too.

There have to be at least a hundred wolves with him, ranged down the drive, all bristling with weapons and desire for the hunt.

Karl is standing to his left with a smirk on his face, his arms folded over his chest. They’re all dressed up like discount commandos, gun belts on their waists, thighs, and anywhere else they can fit them. It makes them look like a pack of…

“You look like a bunch of accountants heading out to a fake Marine induction weekend where you’ll get yelled at by some guy who got a dishonorable discharge from the army and gets off on pushing people into ice baths,” Callie calls out before I can so much as finish the thought.

Christ. She is not going to make this easy. She is going to make it funny. We both get up and move toward my father and his army.

“Why are you here?” I follow her comment with a question, reaching for her arm and drawing her back behind me gently. I want to look worried about her. I don’t want to give away any hint of her true nature.

“We’ve come for her,” Orion says, looking at me as if I am barely anything worth considering. “She belongs to us. Legally. We own the patent on her DNA.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“We own her DNA,” Orion repeats, as if saying something twice makes it more acceptable.

“She’s a person, you can’t own someone’s DNA.”

“Actually there is some precedent for it,” Calista mumbles. “But only a sociopath would try to make it stand up in court. A sociopath who likes losing. Like a loser.”

She seems to take particular glee in taunting my father. I don’t know where she got the hostility from, but it has been there from the beginning, though she tried to keep it quiet to begin with. Now no holds are barred.

“My son has not taught you any manners,” Orion says. “But I will. I will beat you bloody before you warm my bed.”

“I will stab you in the throat,” she says. “But that’s enough foreplay for now.”

Orion is done hearing her mouth off. He jerks his head toward her.

“Get her, boys.”

Callie laughs. It’s a sound that starts out mockingly feminine, but deepens into a terrible chuckle as wolves flow toward her, bounding on strong paws.

This is a mistake. A big one. They think they can take her down through numbers. They don’t want to kill her, but they are trying to subdue their prize.

Callie, on the other hand, has no qualms about killing. They’ve forgotten that. They’ve neglected the fact that when you come for the queen, you can’t just come in numbers, you have to come smart and tactical.

Callie shifts.

I’m surprised she has it in her. Usually a werewolf who just shifted for the first time would spend days recovering, but she slips out of her human form as if it was an inconveniently small bathing suit.

There is a sudden cascade of fur, and a display of white fangs that are not close to the ground but nearly six feet off it. She lets out a roar of pure feral glee.

There is no fear in her, and like a group of attacking dogs suddenly realizing that their prey may not be prey after all, the pack panics.

The sounds of startled and shocked wolves fill the air.

Some of them fall out of their wolf forms entirely and just start scrabbling around in desperation.

Callie throws back her head and howls, a deep, primal sound that creates fear in some and submission in others.

Belly crawling toward her, making soft whines that are designed to make her take mercy on them.

I am impressed, and I am slightly horrified as I realize my father is losing his pack to my mate. She has no interest in being alpha, and if she is, she will invariably lead her followers astray.

By the time the moment subsides, there are at least eighty naked shifter men in various states of confusion and adoration.

“What the hell just happened?” One of them asks me the question, his face contorted with confusion as he finds himself naked and suddenly very much obedient to a beast he never imagined existed.

“You found someone more worthy than my father,” I say simply. “A female with more strength, more power than any old alpha.”

“Oh,” he says.

Oh, indeed.

It’s fortunate we rented such a large house. There is actually enough room to accommodate those who came to capture or destroy us. There aren’t enough snacks to go around, not at first, not until Callie has some air dropped in from the helicopter she mentioned earlier.

My father is left standing on the driveway with his car. Karl is still beside him. The two of them have managed to keep their senses because they did not shift with the rest of the pack and experience the frenzy of animal submission that has claimed the minds and hearts of those he sent after her.

I stand facing what feels like the dwindling remnants of my family, feeling quite, well, smug.

Orion wants to save face. He wants to let me know he has not lost the game, even though it is quite obvious he has lost the game.

“We’ll make more of them,” he says. “She’s nothing more than the product of a process. You know that. She’s not special.”

The last assertion is where he’s wrong, and where he knows he is wrong.

Callie just took his pack with the sheer force of her existence.

Simply being who she is, is a powerful invocation.

He might be able to try to do science to others, but I don’t think he’ll replicate the results, and he knows it too.

“I don’t think you will. I think you’ll try. I think you’ll kill some people. I think you’ll produce mutated, broken creatures. But I do not think you will create another Calista Hart. It’s not possible.”

“I have a man with me,” Orion says. “Get out here, Doctor.”

The man from the lab who was so helpful when Callie first went missing slides out of the car, looking very sheepish for a wolf scientist. I wonder why he was on hand.

To sedate her? To perform further experiments in the field?

I try to contain my rage as I imagine all the awful reasons he might be here—not one of them good.

“He’s right, sir.”

“What?”

“The processes involved are not designed to create… what we just observed. She must have had some pre-existing DNA components. Perhaps the prior bite, but I think it is more likely in her bloodline. Humans contain quite a bit of DNA of indeterminate function. When we were isolating her code in the lab, we noticed that she already had some sequences coding for…”

“She’s not special. We can replicate this,” Orion says, interrupting the scientist’s facts with his own baseless assertion.

“Good luck with that. In the meantime, your pack is on its knees for her, and she has the resources to take everything. It’s likely not your lab anymore, Father. It’s hers. You engineered your own demise, old man.”

“I still own all I own.”

“True, but the pack itself has shifted loyalty. They will not forget the experience they had, submitting as a group to the embodiment of pure, raw, female energy.” I say the words slowly, enjoying them, and the effect they’re having on Orion and Karl.

They are visibly uncomfortable at what I am saying, and being reminded that raw femininity ruined all their plans in an instant.

“You’ve never managed to bring that to the pack. You’ve brought single alpha male energy. Rough, pointless, self-serving dominance that doesn’t even love its children. And now they have her. She’s more powerful. She’s more wild. And she’s nicer.”

Appearing almost as summoned, Callie shows up with some donuts on a plate, the perfect little feral hostess.

“Have some snackies,” she says, presenting the plate in both hands.

She’s taken the time to brush her hair, put on a nice new dress, oh, and find an apron from somewhere with frills around the edges.

She is the perfect picture of a domestic goddess.

“If you don’t like sprinkles, I think we have some plain ones back in the kitchen?

The ones with pink icing are delicious.”

“Wolves don’t want pink icing,” Orion snarls. “They will return to me. I will make an army of werewolves.”

“Oh, never mind,” Callie grins, wandering off again. She is enjoying herself far too much. I’ve never seen a battle won with catering, but she is doing it.

“You couldn’t handle the one,” I tell him.

“And you think you can?”

“I already know I can, because unlike you, I won’t abandon my mate when things get hard, then go and knock up someone else just to feel like I’m still a man. My pups will be from the same werewolf. They will have her blood.”