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ENZO

My wolf moved faster than I’d ever seen.

He wanted to get back to her side. His female. The one he’d claimed.

The fucker wasn’t taking no for an answer, and I knew better than to fight him when he made his mind up so completely. With one whiff of Aspen’s scent, of the wolf hidden beneath that awful perfume, he’d known she was his. He’d barely handled smelling Hunter on her. If anyone else had touched her, they’d die.

Slowly.

Painfully.

The bastard was rarely bloodthirsty. We killed more than enough to satisfy the worst of monsters, and he was far from the worst.

But for her, he was out for blood.

My enforcers were keeping more distance from him than usual. They always kept their distance, knowing that the weight of the pack bond was already more than I could bear.

My head hurt constantly. Interacting with my wolves at all was painful.

But if I didn’t take the strongest fuckers in, I’d have to kill them when they went rabid.

So I took them.

And ignored the headaches.

At least when I was in the shower with Aspen, her scent distracted me from the feeling of a nail being driven into my brain by the weight of my pack.

Clay’s mind met mine through the bond.

“You done for the day?”

“Almost.”

My wolf tore through another belly while our enforcers trapped a rabid together. The rogues were a nightmare. One I didn’t know how to end in any other way than with blood.

“Let me know when you’re headed back,” Clay said.

My gut told me my wolf’s female had done something that would piss both of us off.

My wolf snarled, tearing into the forest after the final rabid.

When he was dead too, my wolf left him with the enforcers. I gave them a quick command to bury the bodies, promising to send a few more guys out to help, and ran back toward the Lodge.

It was a long run.

I should’ve taken one of the Jeeps. And had some food on the way. I’d just woken up when Hunter told me he thought he’d found a female wolf. Food hadn’t happened.

It should’ve happened.

My wolf pushed us harder.

We were going to regret it. And need to eat a shit ton of food. Which meant cooking a shit ton of food.

I groaned inwardly.

“Headed back,” I told Clay.

“Great. So, we have a small problem.”

“Spit it out.”

“Your princess found your phone and charged it. Couldn’t get in, but read a few texts from me and Hunter. Nothing really important.”

“So?”

“So, she saw in one of the messages that I was talking to her brother, and came out to find me. She’d just gotten out of the shower. Her hair was wet. Shirt was, uh, wet.”

Stuck to her breasts.

My wolf snarled.

He shouldn’t give a shit about her tits. If she was my mate, they were mine, not his. I didn’t know why he cared. And she had been wearing a bra, so what did it matter? They were great tits.

“All she had on was your underwear and your shirt. It was cold. Nothing was really hidden, if you know what I mean. The wet shirt clung. Some of the guys were hanging out in the hall outside your room, waiting for her. They just wanted her to talk to you about the groupie thing, but ? —”

“Get to the names already.”

He rattled them off. Four guys. I wouldn’t kill them, but I’d do enough damage to make a statement so my wolf didn’t come out and kill them.

She belonged to me.

“One more thing. She mentioned a guy in her brother’s pack. Apparently, he flirted a lot. Nothing happened. Her brother didn’t know he even liked her. It’s his Beta.”

My nostrils flared.

I didn’t have time for this newfound jealousy, but my wolf’s rage told me I was making time.

“I’ll handle it,” I said.

“The princess cares a lot about her brother, so I’d use nonlethal force if possible. They’re supposed to be really close.”

“As long as the Beta backs off from my mate, we won’t have problems.”

There was a pause.

A long one.

I knew my brother well enough to be sure he was choosing his words carefully, and rolled my eyes inwardly.

My wolf huffed.

“You know she’s not exactly happy about this situation, right?” he finally asked. “The abduction thing. The taking her phone thing. The leaving her without clothes thing. I don’t think she’s going to play along very well. You may need to prepare yourself for the possibility that she could turn you down at the mating ceremony.”

My wolf snarled so loudly that he scared off a flock of birds as we ran past them.

“She’s a female wolf. She needs someone who can protect her. I’ll convince her to say yes,” I gritted out.

My wolf wanted to howl, but he was running too hard to get back to her.

“Just try to accept that it might take some time. Maybe give it a few months.”

“No.”

He sighed. “Alright, fine. While I have you, I’ve got a few males who took human mates bugging me. Apparently their pack is imploding, and they know we have space. I turned them down because of the no female rule, but…”

“The no female rule stays in place until I’m mated and I’ve tested how well I can handle the added pressure of having a woman around. Tell them to deal with their own shit until then.”

“Got it. See you soon.”

I cut off the communication and thought pointedly, “If you want her to mate with us, you’re going to have to control yourself around her. Scarring her skin and pissing her off aren’t going to make her say yes. I’m not forcing her into a mate bond. I’ve got to draw a line somewhere.”

We couldn’t communicate back and forth, but he could hear my thoughts and words.

He scoffed.

I had no idea whether he was trying to tell me I was ridiculous, that he already knew, or something else entirely. There was no point in wondering.

He was going to do whatever he decided to do, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change it.

Hopefully he didn’t fuck things up so badly with the female that we lost all hope entirely, because I really didn’t think he was going to let her go.