Page 7 of Mate

She expects little and is not easily offended. It makes pushing her away frustratingly hard.

Present day

K OEN ALEXANDER, THE FERAL ALPHA OF THE MOST DANGEROUS pack on the continent, undisputed ruler in a wild territory known for its exceptional bloodthirst, listens to Human classical music while driving.

I did not see that coming.

And yet here he is. Post Vampyre slaughtering, blissfully unaffected as he chauffeurs me back to the Southwest pack. Lightly tapping his long fingers against the steering wheel to keep rhythm like a connoisseur. Would it be insulting to openly manifest my shock? Do I care about offending Koen?

Yes. And yes , since I’ll be alone with him in this car for the next few hours. At the mercy he may not have.

“Is this Bach?” I ask, with no real clue what Bach sounds like. In my previous life, back when I was a Human financial reporter whose idea of a mightily stressful time included judging the ripeness of watermelons or having to sneeze while driving, I gravitated toward pop.

“Why didn’t you shift?” Koen asks instead of answering. His eyes never leave the road ahead.

“Sorry?”

“Why didn’t you shift to wolf form to run from Bob?”

“Right. Who is Bob anyway?”

The look he gives me lasts a quarter of a second but perfectly relays what Koen thinks about people who answer his questions with more questions.

How lovely, to learn that his patience and willingness to filter himself have not increased in the weeks since he shuttled me to the cabin.

I fidget with the sleeves of the extra-large hoodie he lent me, and for the tenth time since I got in the car, I tell myself to forget the way he stared at my naked chest in the woods.

It was a ruse. To distract the Vampyre. To save my life. He was never going to harm me, and I have zero reasons to be afraid of him.

Well, I have one : he’s objectively terrifying.

“I can’t shift when the moon is this small,” I tell him.

It’s the way it works with Weres: when the moon is fat and round in the sky, we can barely resist its call and need all our self-control to avoid shifting to wolf form.

The feeling of something awakening inside me, clawing to be let out once a month, always during the same lunar phase— that’s what first clued me in that maybe I wasn’t all that Human, after all.

Conversely, when the moon is weak, only highly powerful and dominant Weres can shift. I’m neither, and my ineptitude should be plenty believable to Koen.

If only.

“And yet,” he muses in his deep voice, “back when I first met you, you could shift at will.”

“Not when the moon was like this.”

“When it was smaller, if I recall correctly. And I do.”

I force myself not to tense. Weres pick up on physiological changes like sentient lie detectors, and I nurse too many secrets to have someone as perceptive as Koen on my back. “Maybe you have me mixed up with someone else.”

He shoots me another dissecting, eviscerating look. “Does your sudden inability to shift have anything to do with the reason you decided to disappear on a two-month holiday in the middle of the forest?”

Yes, it does, and no, it’s none of his business.

“The reason I decided to disappear , if that’s even a word you can use for someone whose whereabouts were never not accounted for, is that the things I had to deal with in the past year include, in chronological but not traumatogenic order”— I lift my hand and begin counting with my fingers— “the slow realization that I’m not fully Human; the even slower realization that I’m much wolfier than I ever believed; my abduction and subsequent imprisonment at the hands of the Vampyres; baby’s first mass murder— in which I partook as the murderer ; and, at long last, coming out to the rest of the planet as the first Human-Were hybrid.

” I thrust my splayed hand in Koen’s face like it’s the world’s most fucked- up bingo card and bat my eyes at him.

“I think my need for rest and relaxation was justified.”

“Not to kill your buzz, but I doubt you get to claim a Mass Murderer commemorative coin if it was in self-defense.”

He’s probably right. And I don’t feel bad about the (two?

Three? Seven? It’s all a blur.) Vampyres I killed to protect Misery.

“Still. Rearranging my self-image from law-abiding citizen to opportunistic slaughterer did require some inward work. Ego-concept adjustments. Self-reflection. Bawling. That kind of stuff.” I gather my knees to my chest, pull the hoodie over my scratched- up shins, and ask, “How did you know, by the way?”

“Know what?”

“That someone was going to come for me at the cabin.”

“Lowe called me earlier today. Two Vampyres, Bob and some other jizzmuffin, tried to hack the Southwest and triggered some intrusion detection systems. Alex, their IT guy, realized that they were looking for your location.” A beat. “And Ana’s.”

I cover my mouth with my hand. Ana and I have one thing in common: we’re Human-Were hybrids. But while I went public with my real nature, hers is on a strict need- to- know basis.

Because Ana is seven years old .

“Is she— ”

“Okay, yes. Bob was able to track you through your sat phone and followed you up north. There was no information on Ana. But Alex planted some to lure the other jizzmuffin deeper into Southwest territory.”

“And?”

“Lowe killed him, of course. But prior to his . . . untimely demise, Lowe’s mate did that”— he makes a vague circular motion— “hypnosis thing on him.”

“What hypnosis— Oh. The thrall?”

“Yeah. That.” Koen’s expression clearly states, Not a fan . It’s a common Were feeling.

“So Misery thralled Jizzmuffin? What did he say?”

“A member of the Vampyre council is offering several life-changing amounts of money for a hybrid.”

“Which member?”

“The fact-finding didn’t get that far. Either Jizzmuffin didn’t know, or Lowe got impatient and graduated early to the massacre part of the night.”

That’s unfortunate, but I’m inordinately proud. “Good on Misery. And to think that she used to say I was the only person she could competently thrall.” Koen’s glare is bemused, so I hurry to explain, “Consensually. She practiced on me when we were kids.”

“She practiced on you.”

“Of course. How else was she supposed to learn? She needed a brain to train on, and mine was right there.”

“Maybe there was permanent damage. That would explain it.”

“Explain what?”

“The many things that are wrong with you.”

I frown. “Like what?”

“Your self-imposed isolation. How much weaker you’ve gotten since I last saw you. The fact that you smell exhausted. Your affinity for lies. Your refusal to shift even when your life depends on it— ”

“You know,” I challenge him mildly, “if you’re accusing me of something, you can just come out and say it.”

“Nah. It’s more fun to corner you into admitting it.

” He clearly has feelings about what happened tonight.

They include frustration, worry, anger, and even a hint of distrust. I’m not sure how I know, since his stony profile hasn’t moved a millimeter.

Maybe I’m getting better at guessing others’ emotions by scent, like a real Were.

Look at me, the little hybrid that could.

“There is nothing to admit,” I say blandly. “Do you think Bob told anyone about our locations?”

“No. He’s an idiot who entered Northwest territory on his own.”

“Was.”

“Was,” Koen concedes, disturbingly pleased.

Were justice is swift and brutal, and the Northwest’s most of all.

The pack is known for spending more time in wolf form than others, for being vicious beyond what is necessary to maintain their borders, and for holding grudges.

The Northwest has fewer members than the Southwest, but its territory is wider and more remote.

Which is why, when I decided that I needed to be alone, it seemed like the best option.

But now that I have Koen breathing down my neck, I’m rethinking things.

“You’re tired, and we have a long drive,” he says, abruptly changing the topic. “Go to sleep.”

I am tired. But: “What are we going to do about Ana?”

He frowns in surprise. “I told you, Ana is fine.”

“Ana is seven . We need to have a plan in place to protect her.”

“We?”

“We,” I repeat. When I was seven, I was an orphan. When I was seven, nothing but horrible things happened around me. Too much of this hits too close to home, and I don’t want her to ever feel like I used to.

“Ana has Lowe, and the Vampyre— ”

“Her name is Misery.”

“— and an entire pack that is ready to die and, more productively, to kill for her.”

“I should help, too. I can— ”

“Serena.” There is an edge to his voice. His grip on the steering wheel tightens. “Did you hit your head earlier?”

“What?” I instinctively massage the back of my skull. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“Just trying to figure out what caused the memory loss.”

“I don’t have— ”

“Clearly you forgot that you were assaulted about forty-five minutes ago.”

“I didn’t.”

“Really? That’s fucking great.” There is a deep V between his dark, reflective eyes, one that makes his scars pop. “Then I won’t have to remind you that you’re twenty times more at risk than Ana is.”

“That’s not true.”

“ Ana is the sister of an Alpha, and her existence is a well-kept secret. You have no family, no pack, no influence, no resources— you don’t even have a home.

You are virtually alone in the world, and you’ve been under surveillance your entire life, which makes predicting your next move very easy for a specific contingent of people.

And don’t forget that for the last few months, your face has been plastered on every single news segment all over the world.

Now, for a thought experiment: If someone decides that they want to play mad scientist with a hybrid, who do you think they’ll go for, killer? ”

Koen is angry— whether at my stupidity or at being saddled with me, I’m not sure.

Still, the depth of my lack of . . . of everything is not something I want to contemplate at the moment.

“You are correct,” I say calmly, feeling a burning pressure behind my eyes.

“And I’m not going to say that I can fend off whoever comes for me.

However, if I know about a threat, I can prepare and take care of myself— ”

“ I will take care of you,” he says roughly.

Oh. “Oh.”

He sighs and runs a hand through his thick, unkempt hair.

“Koen, you don’t have to— ”

“Serena.” I hear it in his voice, how little patience he has to spare. For the first time, it occurs to me to wonder what his night was like before he appeared to take care of Bob— and of me . The warning phone call from Lowe. The furious drive to reach me. The fear of being too late.

The part of me that matters isn’t interested in you , he’d said, and I do not doubt it.

But even if the mate thing means nothing to Koen, even if he doesn’t care about me as a person, I’m still a hybrid who could bridge the gap between Weres and Humans.

I’m under his protection, and hearing that I was in danger cannot have been easy.

“Thank you,” I say with sincere appreciation.

“For coming to get me. For being there right on time.”

“Don’t thank me.”

“Why?”

“I fucking hate it.”

“You hate to be . . . thanked?”

“Yup.”

“I . . . Why?”

“If I’m doing something, you can be sure that I chose to of my own free will.” He falls silent for a moment. Then his nostrils flare and he turns to scan my face, his expression increasingly horrified.

“What?” I ask. “Is a moth crawling up my nostril, or— ” I pat my cheek with my palm, and it comes back wet.

That’s what’s upsetting him.

“Oh.” Koen just killed someone without batting an eye but cannot take me shedding a single teardrop. “I’m fine,” I reassure him. His alarm doesn’t abate. It’s like I’ve just been shot in front of his eyes. “I’m okay, I promise. I’m just tired.”

“Then go the fuck to sleep,” he orders, panicky. Big Bad Murderous Wolf in Charge of Thousands Cannot Handle Girl Crying. What a headline. “What are you waiting for? Do you need a bedtime story?”

I chew back a smile. Settle against the headrest. “Why? Do you have any?”

“Me?”

“No— Weres. Us , I guess.”

“Sure, but they’re bleak. Humans and Vampyres coming for us if we nip our teachers too hard. The gods of nature toying with their beastly children. Cosmic horror— that kind of shit.”

“Wow. Do children like them?”

“I didn’t. Had nightmares about them for years.”

I nod slowly. “That explains it.”

“What?”

“The many things that are wrong with you .”

Even under the beard, I can see it. A small smile. A soft snort.

“Go to sleep, Serena.” This time, his tone is a gentle push that has me instantly yawning. It’s an Alpha thing , Misery said. They’re great at making their suggestions sound like the best option for everyone involved.

So I close my eyes and let the time and the road flow by. Until I remember something. “Koen?” I’m almost fully asleep, my lids too heavy to open.

“Yeah?”

“I think you owe me an apology.”

“For what?”

“The way you stared at my tits.”

Silence. Then, instead of the I’m sorry or Go to fucking sleep I expect, he says, “I think you owe me an apology.”

“For what?”

“How spectacular your tits are.”

God, he really is an epic asshole. “You might be the worst person I’ve ever met.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” he mutters.

I fall asleep with a small smile on my face. And for a few hours, I don’t think about how little time I have left to live.