Page 31 of Ruthlessly Mated (Shared Mates #2)

“It’s not going to be okay!” I reply, more loudly than I probably should. Shout, really. “Nothing has been okay from the beginning and I don’t care what you do to me, it’s all my fault. It’s all my fucking fault.”

Tailor narrows his eyes at me. “I will deal with you later,” he says. “But you’re in trouble. Yes, there was an attack, but unless you planted the bastards behind the rubble, then it wasn’t your fault.”

“I…”

I am gripped by the back of the neck as I raise my voice again.

“Go outside and calm down,” Conroy growls the words in my ear. “There won’t be any yelling to distract the doctor while she tries to save Damon’s life.”

“Come in here, go out there,” I gripe under my breath, but I go outside.

I actually go way, way outside.

I walk out from the physician’s house and I go toward the hills, furious at myself, and furious at them.

They should have taken better care of him.

I should have taken better care of him. They should never have decided to mate me.

It was stupid. They could have let me go when they found out that I was smuggling through their stupid smuggler’s port.

There is blood all over my hands. Damon’s blood.

I love him.

I’m probably not supposed to have a favorite, but he is mine. He is kind, and he gave me the gift of his voice, even though he could barely manage it. He’s done nothing but love me and now he’s bleeding out in a back country town. He doesn’t deserve it. I deserve it.

Tears are flowing from my eyes as the memory of being with him in the back of the car keeps replaying in my head.

I was trying to hold him together. I was willing him to stay alive.

I was hoping for every breath he took. I was dying along with him, bleeding out just like him, but in some intangible way.

I’ve never wanted to take my animal form voluntarily before, but there’s a moment in which I can’t stand being in my skin at all.

I shift into my wolf form. I fucking hate it. I am still small and weak, and it still is an animal humiliation, but it absolves me of having to think what I think and want what I want.

I’ve come to a conclusion. A conclusion that will hurt me more than I’ve ever been hurt before. I need to get away from my mates. It’s the only way to save them. Every time I am involved, they get hurt.

I am going to disappear completely.

It is afternoon when I start running, and I do not stop as night falls.

I am aware of the setting of the sun, and of the increase in danger as the darkness creeps over the land. Vampires are rising. My enemy is coming back to nocturnal life.

I keep running. It feels like there’s nothing other than running. I am not thinking. I am not doing anything besides putting a great deal of space between me and the men I am responsible for hurting.

My hunger grows with every new pace, until suddenly a rabbit runs out from some bushes. Either it didn’t hear me coming, or it was flushed out by my furious pace.

Regardless of the reasoning, fate or fickle mistake, it pretty much throws itself into my jaws.

It would be rude not to eat it. It would be out of character and against my nature, so I crush the life out of the little beast and fuel my flight with it.

I do it with great hunger and absolutely no mercy.

I have close to no feeling at all, thank god. Feelings hurt. Having none is perfect.

But still, I think about how unfortunate that little creature was as I start running again. It thought it was doing the right thing. The natural thing. It thought if it ran it would be safe, but there was no safety for it to be found. Only my mouth, the end of all things bunny.

Much like the rabbit, I don’t see the trap that catches me either.

Silver white rope snatches me off the ground, sweeping me into a net that burns as much as it contains me. I let out an animal scream, fall out of my wolf form, and end up writhing naked in the trap.

I know instantly that something terrible is happening. It’s obvious, of course. I’ve been caught. I’ve either been caught by the Rock City guard, which makes me feel like I’ve run a lot further than I intended to, or…

“And there she is.”

A voice that has haunted me since childhood looms through the dark. I might not have feelings, but I do have instincts. I still have fear. And anger. And hunger. In that order.

“There. You. Are.”

He sounds so fucking dead and so fucking satisfied. I fill with rage, snapping against the net with human teeth that have absolutely no chance of making any indentation. Every bite only serves to hurt, but I do it anyway because that is what trapped animals do.

“Shhh shhh shhh,” the shadows try to quiet me, but there is no soothing this reaction. I tried to run it away, but I cannot get it out of me. My teeth need to sink into something. I need a target for my anger. I need someone to suffer. The right person.

“I thought I wasn’t going to be able to catch you. Certainly didn’t think it would be in a wolf trap. Thought I might catch one of your mates, if I was lucky. But here you were, in an animal form yourself. I almost made the mesh a little too big, didn’t I. You’re such a petite little thing.”

The Vampire Alexander steps into my field of vision.

He will forever be forty years old. His hair is swept back from his forehead in a widow’s peak.

He has a scar on his right cheek from wounds sustained before he died.

He is handsome, but not to me. To me, he is the vilest looking creature in the world.

His strong features, his crooked nose, his heavy furrowed brow and intense eyes focused on me.

“You always were a pretty little wolf. What happened to your protectors? Did they tire of your chaos? Did they learn of your true nature? A little too chaotic, a little too pathetic?”

“Just kill me already.”

He laughs. “I am not going to kill you. I have never wanted to kill you. Your parents were more than enough of a sacrifice. Your penance is going to be quite different, and a lot more painful. My maker’s heart is still locked in that human rat den.”

“And surrounded by explosives.”

“Oh, is it? Nice touch. Nice touch.”

Vampire Alexander looks at me with cold malice, appreciating my deviousness.

“You taught me well.”

“I did, didn’t I.” He smirks. “I raised you as my own, Kita. I kept you alive long after you had any usefulness. I showed you how to make your way in the world. And you rewarded me by turning into an ungrateful heart-stealing wretch.”

“You killed my parents, you psycho! You destroyed my childhood, and my life. And now you have the fucking nerve to think that what you’re doing is reasonable? You burned a port down. You’re trying to ruin my life, and you’re trying to ruin everything, and I hate you.”

“You sound petulant,” he laughs. “Your mates must have spoiled you in the very short time they had you. I’d like to say I am surprised three wolves could not manage to contain you, but I am not. You have escaped even my clutches, after all.”

“Just let me go. I’m only going to cause trouble. You know it. Even if you somehow break the siege at Rock City, I’ll still be me, and if you’re not willing to kill me…”

“You’re feral. A semi-tame wild animal,” he says. “You’re too broken to be left in the wild by yourself. You need to be looked after. Animals like you? Who have been kept and had their instincts broken? They have to be kept, because what happens in the wild?”

“What?”

“They get eaten.”

He flashes his fangs, and I know that he’s threatening my life in some roundabout way. What he doesn’t understand is that I don’t care.

“I hope you do eat me,” I say through the netting, furious at all that is happening. “I hope you fucking kill me.”

“I already told you I’m not going to kill you.” He pauses, frowns at me. “You know, you were much less feral before you mated. I don’t think these men were very good for you, and I say that as your mortal enemy and eternal captor. I don’t think I approve of them.”

“I’m not good for them. That’s why I ran. So I don’t care what you do. I hope you do take me far, far away and lock me up and make it impossible for them to ever get to me. I hope you do kill me. I hope that all this ends.”

Alexander lets out a little sigh. “You were always a difficult captive. I thought your stealing my maker’s heart was bad enough, but now you are being maudlin and sad and quite frankly very unsatisfying to break.” He turns around. “Get her out of the net. Put her in a cage. Silver collar on.”

“They’re going to come for me,” I threaten him. “My mates are going to come and they’re going to kill you. An eternity is going to come to an end because you won’t leave me alone.”

“First of all, your mates couldn’t even keep a port defended,” he says. “Honestly, ridiculous. I came full force, but I feel I could have sent a slightly incendiary postal note and achieved much the same result.”

Vampire Alexander is funny. It does not make up for any of his other heinous qualities. It is mildly entertaining at best.

“Second of all, I might have left you to your own devices if you’d merely run away, but you didn’t. You took my maker’s heart.”

He sounds faintly annoyed. More annoyed than angry. Our relationship is complicated, always has been. This is the second time he has captured me. The first time, I was much less prepared.

The night he came…

My mother and my father are bickering about who has done the dishes. Neither one of them has done the dishes in three days.

“If you don’t step up around the place, Martin, I’m going to start throwing these at your head.”

“You wouldn’t.”