Page 1 of The Wolf Prince’s Mate (Marked Beneath the Moon #2)

one

NOVA

My fist clenched tighter around the spiral binding of the sketchbook at my side as I knocked on the red door again. Harder.

My wolf whimpered and trembled inside me, hidden away as far from the surface as possible. She was usually scared, but at the moment, she had a good reason for being afraid.

When Clay didn’t answer, I raised my voice. “I know you’re in there, Savage!”

There was still no response.

I tried the door, and found it locked.

Asshole.

Pulling my phone from my pocket, I tapped out an angry message with one hand.

Me

ANSWER THE DOOR

Clay

I’m not in my office

Me

I CAN SMELL THE LEFTOVERS YOU REHEATED

DON’T LIE TO ME

Clay didn’t respond to that, but the door to his office opened a moment later.

I forced myself not to react to his size, strength, and overall presence. The man was unbelievable. All three of the Savage brothers were.

Bigger and taller than any other werewolf I’d ever met, they were absolutely gorgeous. The three of them were close to identical with only small differences, and they all had the same dark hair, honey-colored eyes, and tan skin.

But having one of them obsessed with and stupidly overprotective of me was more than enough.

So, I just pushed past Clay on my way into his office.

“Come on in, Gorgeous” he drawled, shutting the door.

Clay was one of the very few people that Hunter, the Savage brother who was obsessed with me, didn’t try to stop me from being alone with, despite his nickname for me. Hunter trusted his brother, and for good reason. The triplets were ridiculously close.

I dropped the sketchbook on his desk as he took his seat again, grabbing his half-eaten bowl of yellow curry. It looked homemade, and smelled incredible, but I barely noticed it.

“Do you have a new tattoo design for me?” he asked, lifting his spoon to his mouth.

My friendship with Clay was… odd.

We both knew that.

It wasn’t even really a friendship.

After the shitshow that was my first time spending heat alone in Hunter’s basement, Hunter wouldn’t talk directly to me. I had no desire to talk to him, either. We went through Clay when we needed to communicate.

Clay had put an end to being our middleman pretty quickly, but by then, I had already realized that Clay and I were kindred souls of sorts. Damaged goods who kept everyone at an arms’ length.

A couple months later, he asked me to sketch out my version on a tattoo he’d wanted for a long time. He had a clear idea of what he wanted it to look like in his mind, but had never found an artist who understood, so he never got the tattoo.

I hit the mark on the first try.

We spent eighty-something hours perfecting his sleeve in the following months. It had been a few weeks since we finished the last session. We had tossed a few ideas back and forth for a leg sleeve, but nothing had hit right, yet.

I wasn’t there about a tattoo, though.

Not this time.

“This was waiting for me inside my truck,” I said, lifting the sketchbook.

“You have at least a dozen of those,” Clay said, around a mouthful of food.

I had far more than a dozen, but that wasn’t the point.

I flipped the first page open to show him the foul image on the paper.

Clay went still. “Was your car locked?”

“Of course it was.”

Clay flipped the page over.

He flipped through the next few, too, before finally stopping on the last one that had been used.

The image on the page was burned into my mind.

It was a charcoal, hand-drawn portrait of me, with a pair of hands wrapped around my throat. My lips were parted, and my eyes were unfocused. Beneath the portrait, it said:

YOU BELONG TO ME, LITTLE WOLF

“Fuck,” Clay finally said, closing the sketchbook and lifting his hand to the bridge of his nose. “ Inside your car?”

“Yes. Sometime between last night and this morning. I got back from the studio at nine PM, and headed outside to leave at eleven thirty this morning. I have appointments scheduled.”

He let out a long breath and picked up his phone off the desk beside him. I knew whose number he would dial before he even started—and I knew he was only calling rather than using the pack’s mental link so I could hear the conversation.

It rang once before Hunter picked up.

“Why are you calling me instead of using the mental link?” my least-favorite Savage brother asked.

“We have a problem. Did you sense any danger between 9 PM and 11 AM?” Clay asked.

“No. What happened?”

Clay glanced at me. He wanted my permission before he shared what had happened.

I nodded grudgingly. Things would be worse for me if Hunter found out after everyone else.

“Nova’s stalker is back.”

“ What ?” Hunter growled.

“He dropped a sketchbook in her car. The pictures he left for her are… gruesome.”

“Meet me there. Bring it with you.” There was a heavy pause. A frustrated breath. “Bring her, too. She might recognize the scent of someone we don’t know.”

Clay’s gaze flicked back to me.

I grimaced, but didn’t refuse. I knew we wouldn’t find the guy’s scent anywhere, but I didn’t say that. My stalker had never been sloppy. If he’d finally figured out a way to get past the Savage brothers’ insane defenses, he hadn’t done it just to get caught because of their insane senses of smell.

“On our way.”

“Tell her to keep her distance. She’s approaching heat, and my wolf is getting antsy about it again.”

The way he always did.

I had never heard of a male wolf being nervous when the female he wanted to mate with neared heat, and it seemed messed up. But, Aspen and Enzo were the only couple I really knew.

And I didn’t want or need that reminder of the hell I’d been dealing with every month since I’d met Hunter.

This would be the fourteenth time I suffered through the multiple days of agony that accompanied being a female werewolf every month.

If I spent it with a male werewolf, it was over in a few hours.

Hunter’s wolf wouldn’t accept me spending it with someone else, and he and I didn’t want to screw each other. So, I suffered.

I was starting to hate him for it, and I wasn’t sure how to stop. Wasn’t sure I should, either.

I also wasn’t sure how to end the hell that my cycle had become. Aspen and Sydney, my best friends, had been urging me to start dating for at least six months. They thought it would either make Hunter decide he actually wanted me, or give me a chance to get away from him.

I was pretty sure it would just get whoever I tried to date killed.

Syd spent her heat with her boyfriend, Fletcher, who was Aspen’s twin brother. That was awkward at first, but they got past it. Aspen spent hers with her mate—the remaining Savage brother, Enzo.

I envied their stability.

Maybe I was just too much of a mess to find that for myself. Then again, Hunter’s wolf wouldn’t let me if I tried.

Which was frustrating, because I knew with absolute certainty that I didn’t want to mate with Hunter. He didn’t want to mate with me either, but his wolf’s obsession made us each other’s only option.

It was a real shitshow.

But whatever.

I’d figure it out, or I’d eventually lose my mind to heat’s pain entirely. Both options were starting to sound equally appealing.

“How many days until it starts?” Clay asked both me and Hunter, still on the phone with his brother.

“Three,” we said at the same time.

My heat was irregular sometimes, but it was always regular for a few months before it switched up. I could feel a little tingle about a day before it hit, so it never caught me by surprise. Just annoyed me by being impossible to schedule around.

It had switched up the month before, so I knew exactly when this one was coming.

Hunter knew all of that, too.

Which was just plain uncomfortable for both of us.

Clay grimaced. “You have to find a way to make this thing work between you.”

I laughed bitterly. “Yeah, right.”

“It’s not going to happen,” Hunter said flatly.

Clay and I wove down the landscaped path that led to the parking lot. It was the middle of November, so there was a little snow on the ground, but the path was heated to keep it clear.

The Lodge that housed the Crimson Pack was gorgeous. With towering walls of artfully-crafted wood and stone, it was a rustic retreat that housed more male werewolves than any other location in our city, and a couple hundred females now, too.

The pack was growing like a weed beneath Aspen and Enzo, the Alphas. She had made it clear that she wasn’t going to let him take so many wolves that it caused him physical pain the way it used to. But, thankfully, neither of them thought they were nearing capacity.

They had to expand the Lodge, as well as build and repair a bunch of old cabins in the forest around it to make room, but the expansions only energized the pack.

“If you’re not going to work it out, you need to figure out a way to let her spend heat with someone else,” Clay said matter-of-factly. The words were obviously pointed at Hunter.

Hunter snarled on the other end of the phone. “I’m trying.”

Clay and I got along, but we didn’t talk about anything personal. Just tattoos and other random things. I was positive he had no idea the extent to which heat caused me pain.

We were close enough that I was sure if he knew, he would probably figure out a way to convince me and Hunter to spend heat together the way nature wanted us to. And I wasn’t going to let him do that, obviously.

But the pain did seem to be getting worse every month. Even if I wouldn’t admit that aloud.

“How are you trying?” Clay countered.

“I’m here. Where are you?” Hunter changed the subject, to my absolute lack of surprise.

None of his tries had accomplished anything. I was still spending heat suffering in the expansive basement of a very private mansion in Greenview, after all. Hunter liked to have his own space—from both me and everyone else.

“Almost there.” Clay sounded annoyed by the subject change.

I didn’t know why he bothered. If anyone had a reason to be annoyed, it was me. But I’d been trying to numb myself to it for over a year.

It had yet to work, but I’d gotten good at pretending otherwise.

When we reached my car, Hunter was waiting outside with his phone in his hand. His thumbs were still flying over the screen as he worked on some aspect of the pack’s or city’s security. He hadn’t opened my car’s door, but I hadn’t assumed he would.

We were careful about giving each other space. After the first time, we took our own vehicles when we drove to Greenview for heat. We had never shared a room, bed, or anything else, either. Hunter stayed on the top floor of the mansion. I stayed in the basement.

It sucked, but it was better than the alternative.

Clay opened the driver’s side door, ignoring the distance and discomfort between me and Hunter. “Where was it?”

“Sitting on the passenger seat.” I gestured to it.

Clay inspected the vehicle.

Hunter didn’t say a word about the mess in my car. There was a bunch of random shit in it—I had a stack of sweaters, a few changes of clothes, a pile of snacks, an old coffee cup full of pens and pencils, and a variety of other things. I liked to be prepared.

Also, I was kind of a workaholic.

Which made being able to live out of my car a necessity.

I’d been trying to curb the excessive working because of the extra hours it meant for the guards Hunter assigned me, but it wasn’t really happening. I loved my job too much. And felt too uncomfortable at the Lodge, which was technically my home.

“I don’t smell anything other than you and your usual plethora of random junk,” Clay said, a moment later. “I don’t know how you live like this.”

It was far from the first time we’d had that conversation.

“Emergency snacks are a necessity.”

He snorted as he glanced at his brother. Hunter was still typing on his phone. “You’re going to have to take a sniff. You’ve got the most sensitive nose anyway.”

Hunter’s jaw clenched.

He finally looked away from his phone screen and stepped up to the passenger side of my old Honda Civic.

His nostrils flared, and his body tensed.

He leaned in further, and went still.

I looked at Clay with a question in my eyes.

He shrugged.

We waited.

A few minutes later, Hunter finally stepped back. His voice was strained, and he looked at Clay, not me.

“I don’t smell anyone but her.”

I bit my cheek, reminding myself that I didn’t care what he thought about me. Or how little he wanted to do with me, despite his wolf’s obsession.

“Do you feel anything?” Clay checked.

Hunter was the Gamma, which meant he would get feelings when the pack was in danger. It was a little weird, but we were werewolves. Weird was to be expected.

“No.”

“It’s just an empty threat, then,” I said, stepping past Hunter.

He took a quick step backward, moving away from me like he was afraid I’d accidentally touch him or something.

I ignored him, taking a seat in my car. “If I’m not in danger, I’m going to work. See?—“

Hunter plucked the sketchbook I’d been gifted out of Clay’s hands and lifted it to his nose.

His chest rumbled unhappily. “This is the one he left here?”

“Yeah,” Clay agreed.

Hunter inhaled again, deeper.

Then shoved it back at Clay, and stripped his shirt over his head. I looked away before I could see him take off the cargo pants he always wore.

I didn’t need any help being attracted to my least-favorite Savage brother. Or the other unmated one. Hell, or the mated one.

They were too pretty not to be attracted to them.

I heard paws on the pavement a moment later, and when I looked back, Hunter was gone.

“Guess he smelled something,” Clay said with a shrug. “If you want to stay here, you can, but your security team is on the clock so you should be fine.”

“I’m going. It’s probably just an empty threat, anyway.”

“Probably,” Clay agreed, though he didn’t look convinced.

I didn’t feel convinced, either.

The fact that my stalker had gotten through Hunter’s insane security at all was concerning. Especially after more than a year of silence on their end.

Why had they started again now?

And why were they willing to risk the Savages’ wrath to bother me?

I didn’t know.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to, either.

“See ya.” I closed my car’s door and pulled out of the parking lot. My security entourage followed me.

When I looked back just before I turned away from the Lodge, Clay was still standing where I’d left him, his expression more concerned than it had been before.

My stalker’s gift was just an empty threat, though.

I would be fine.