Page 31 of The Fated Hunter Wolf

Logan stood with alpha speed and clamped his hand around my arm. He tugged me toward the next room as Eve followed, but Kenza wasn’t done.

“This is a waste of time,” she called after me. “Are you going to listen finally, or should we keep pretending you’re not losing your damn mind over her?”

I snarled over my shoulder, my wolf pressing too close to the surface. “Shut the fuck up, Kenza.”

“Make me,” she shot back.

I tried to lunge, but Logan yanked me through the doorway before I could get any closer. Eve shut the door behind us, sealing us in the smaller space of what had once been a study. “Take deep breaths, Beta. You’re losing control.”

I barely heard her. My breathing was too fast, my skin too hot, every muscle in my body vibrating. The pull was so strong now it was like something was trying to drag my soul out through my chest.

I couldn’t be here. I had to find her.

“I have to go,” I said quickly, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. “She’s not secure, Logan. You don’t get it. I have to make sure she’s under control.”

Logan crossed his arms, jaw tight. “Rhys?—”

“It’s all wrong,” I barreled on, wiping sweat from my forehead. “I can feel it. She’s doing something to me, some kind of spell or—I don’t know what it is, but it’s butchering me.”

Logan took a step toward me.

“Killian and Blair might already be compromised,” I continued, pacing. “I’ve seen it before. Wolves falling under her charms. She’s a fucking menace, Logan, and if they so much as touch a hair on her head,” I growled, “I’ll rip them to shreds.”

“Rhys.” Logan’s voice was sharp, cutting. I barely heard him.

“She’s not normal. We have to?—”

“Rhys.”

I kept talking, words tumbling, my pulse beating like a marching band in my skull, my wolf pacing, shoving at me to move, to go, to find her, to?—

“Enough.”

Logan’s voice crashed over me like a thunderclap, laced with the full force of an alpha command.

The change was instant.

My wolf—who had been clawing, raging, screaming for control—stilled. And submitted. His tail gave a slow, gentle swish, ears flicking forward in quiet obedience.

The tension in my body evaporated like mist in the morning sun, leaving nothing but a strange, empty calm. The pulling sensation faded to a dull ache.

I exhaled, slow and controlled, then straightened, swallowing hard. “Shit,” I muttered. “I-I’m sorry.”

Logan watched me, his expression knowing. “It’s normal,” he said simply.

I looked up at him, my breathing still evening out. “What?”

He tilted his head slightly toward Eve, and the hard alpha edges in his face relaxed. “I felt the same way when I found my fated mate.”

13

RHYS

Fated mate.

The words echoed in my skull as I stared at Logan. They might as well have been spoken in fucking elvish. My wolf understood them perfectly—he was practically vibrating with smug satisfaction—but the man in me couldn’t process what they meant.

Or maybe I didn’t want to.