Page 23 of Mate

I froze; sure, I wanted to continue with my unclaimed mate in her naked form more than I wanted to breathe, but my wolf was in control, and my wolf was completely engrossed in whatever shithead I was about to have to murder Big Bad Wolf style. If they were smart, they’d sense that they needed to slowly go back the way they came. After that, I could just mount my unclothed female and?—

A wolf came out of nowhere, in full attack mode, and I immediately jumped on the offensive.

Kaci, screaming, ran back in the direction of the mansion. My wolf didn’t like that; he would have preferred her back up against the same tree that I was about to fuck her in front of. Now, she was exposed to an attack if there was a second wolf in the brush that I couldn’t see.

This wolf was more than a little bigger than me, and I was unused to fighting solo, but I wasn’t worthless. I had skills and could hold my own, and more importantly I was pissed and I had a female to protect and get to. Especially before she could get away completely.

My goal, and my wolf’s goal, was to emerge from this fight with such a robust and striking victory that there would be no arguing about it. Instead, it almost ended in a stand-off, and there were multiple points in which I worried my throat was going to be torn out. That would have been rude.

I wished I had Ry by my side. I was wishing for it before I got a single bite in. As soon as the blood and fur started to spray, I was hating Ry, because he wasn’t here. Where the fuck was he? Why was I such a liberal alpha that I gave my beta autonomy to go live his own life? He should be here, at my side, practically fighting my battle for me. He would have wiped the floor with this rogue and we’d be wearing him as a hat in a week.

Instead, the fucker limped away, and I limped in another direction, my wolf ragging on me that I was a pussy that shouldn’t be an alpha. He was telling me that I shouldn’t be walking away from this fight—that it was a win or die thing. But I disagreed; now that I was in pain, I was seeing things very clearly.

First of all, that rogue pack was much closer than I thought it was, and that was on me. I was getting lazy and maybe handling things a little bit too much like a human would, which meant I was handling things the wrong way in this situation.

Secondly, I had begun to feel mid-fight that ‘win’ wasn’t the option I was going to pluck out of this. He wanted to retreat, and I wanted him to stop biting me so hard. We both got what we wanted in the end.

I limped back toward the mansion. It felt like it took ages, because it was about a three-mile distance over a woody trail, not the road, and I hurt all over. When I eventually was able to change back into my human-form, I realized I looked no better. Iprobably looked like I’d walked off the set of a war movie. Before I was able to call Ry, he called me, and I answered.

Before I could get out a ‘Hello’, or more likely, a pained grunt, he snapped, “I can’t even get hard right now. I was hard all fucking day, and now that I have a pussy on the other side of the door, I can’t get any better than limp.Limp. I’ve never even been completely limpin my life! It’s worthless. It’s just sitting there. I couldn’t even take a piss over the toilet seat right now.”

I was too upset to respond. If only a limp dick was my biggest problem!

“Ry…” I finally began in a growl.

His tone immediately shifted. “What happened?”

“A rogue came out of the fucking wild and attacked when I was with Kaci,” I growled, because it was definitely his fault somehow. I was just deciding onhowit was his fault, but it was.

“Why were you with Kaci in the middle of the wild?” was his stupid response.

“Get to the mansion or I’m going to eat your face!” I barked into the phone, then hung up and continued to limp home. I was pushing forty, which normally had me already not feeling as spry as I did when I was twenty-five, yet right now I felt like I was ninety, and I had to drag my old ass through the woods at a pace that actually got me to the mansion in a fair amount of time.

Kaci’s scent, thank God, went straight there. I didn’t smell any other rogues, and it seemed like she’d made it home okay. She was probably just coming to terms with things. If she was, great. Join the party. She was going to have to come to terms with a lot more now, because the cat was out of the bag—or rather, thewolf was off the chain, as it were—and it was going to get worse because we were apparently in the middle of a turf war.

War meant calling the troops to attention.

It was going to be a lot on a human girl, but she was going to have to put her big girl panties on and deal with it, as unfortunate as that was.

Because that girl was hot as fuck without panties.

CHAPTER 10

Kaci

I didn’t stop running until I slammed the front door of the mansion behind me. I stood in front of it like I was trying to keep out the zombie horde.

What the fuck had just happened?

My insanity had really stepped up today and made something of itself. I was panting because I had just run a little more than three miles, but even though I was out of practice, I could handle it with the proper amount of adrenaline. Even without shoes. Or pants…

I wondered what had actually happened. How had Iactuallylost my clothes? Because it wasn’t by a werewolf, of course. That was stupid. There were no werewolves. I didn’t even want to say I’d seen one out loud tomyself. It was definitely insane.

Actually, werewolves were more insane than insane. Skydivers were insane. People in the Polar Bear Club were insane. People who didn’t like pumpkin spice lattes were insane.

No, no. I was something much worse. Maybe I had a brain tumor? Yeah. That sounded like my luck. It would explain almost everything. This was all a weird brain-cancer dream. That was why I couldn’t get myself to wake up.

I walked slowly up to my room. My door was in pieces now like it had been torn angrily off its hinges by a werewolf, but that was okay. It wasn’t like it actuallyhad been; this was a hallucination. I’d heard from people who liked LSD that when one was having a hallucination, then the best course of action was just to accept it. Lean into it. Don’t worry about it.