Page 12 of Reformed Wolf

Jude stayed as close to me as possible, even going so far as setting a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t like this,” he warned in my ear. Same, brother. Same.

It seemed no one was here alone. There was an entire pack of hyena shifters and a lot of big cats. I drew in a deep breath, sorting through the smells. There was a distinct lack of prey animals in the place and a disproportionate number of alphas, but also, an underlying scent of steel and gunpowder. “What the hell have we walked in on? Some kind of fight club?” I muttered under my breath. Whatever it was, I had a feeling walking out wouldn’t be so easy.

“We don’t belong here,” I said, stating the obvious as I scanned those around us. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel like our wolves didn’t measure up in this crowd, but it was similar to how I felt driving our truck down the street outside. These men were all wearing their best suits, their fingers adorned with heavy jeweled rings, gold watches, and chains peeking from the cuffs of their spotless dress shirts. I glanced down at my ripped jeans and t-shirt worn soft. I was severely underdressed.

I had almost reached the cage when a spotlight clicked on, and someone cut the music. All conversation tapered off as a tall man stepped up onto a dais at the far edge of the room. His elevated position put him above the crowd, and I knew immediately this was my mate’s father. Besides also being a panther, he had the same hair, the same eyes, though this man was all Alpha, capital A. He had an aura of authority that threatened to buckle my knees in subjugation. I wasn’t the only one under strain. I saw eyes lowered and necks bared.

“Welcome and good evening,” the man I assumed was Mr. Caruso said. Everyone was so silent, you could’ve heard a mouse fart. “We all know what you’re here for tonight.” Speak for yourself, I thought. “You’ve gathered to compete for a chance to join my family. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it comes with generous benefits. Only the strongest, fastest, most cunning of you will win. The most ruthless.” He paced the length of his stage, eyeing the potential competitors. I felt his gaze linger on me a moment, the corners of his eyes tightening, before moving on. “There will be one round of preliminary fights tonight. You must start in your human skin until first blood is drawn. There will be no need to fight to the death, we’re not savages, after all… but if it happens…” He shrugged. “For this competition only, there will be no repercussions for a life taken. Those are the risks.”

A tall viper shifter to my left chuckled darkly, cracking his knuckles, which were tattooed with letters that spelled out GO TO on one hand and HELL on the other. A license to murder? Mr. Caruso had just handed out a free pass to a room full of killers. Cold sweat beaded on my forehead. What the fuck was I doing here?!

Mr. Caruso paused in his pacing, hands clasped at his waist. “Would anyone like to leave now? I will think no less of you, no hard feelings. All our previous business dealings will remain in place.” He waited, but no one left, though I heard a few shifting uneasily, loose grit grinding under their feet. “And now that we have all the formalities out of the way… let me introduce you to the prize.”

A door opened, and with it, a wave of familiar scent washed over me. I swayed on my feet, lightheaded, and instinctively started moving forward through the crowd until Jude locked an arm around my neck to hold me in place. “Don’t,” he gritted out, but no matter the logical part of my mind that agreed with him that it would mean my death, my heart and soul had already left my body, halfway across the room by now.

Out walked the panther shifter from last night, his skin radiant under the spotlight. Mr. Caruso gestured to him with a wave of his hand that would’ve made Vanna White proud. “My son, Dylan.”

It felt like the floor tilted like a ship at sea, nausea twisting my stomach into knots. “Well, shit. Looks like I’m fighting.” Inside my head, my wolf tipped his head up and howled.

Chapter 6

Dylan

He’s here, I know he’s here…

In a room full of alpha shifters, pheromones thick enough to choke me, I could still detect my fated mate’s distinctive leather-and-pine aroma. My entire body reacted to it—skin tingling, blood surging through my veins… cock thickening. And here I was on a stage, every eye on me. There was no way they didn’t notice the way my pants got tight.

Did I care? No. Only one man in this room mattered to me. I could still remember the taste of his cum, the way his finger felt inside me.

Ignoring everyone else, I scanned the crowd. With each passing second that I didn’t find him, panic began to seep into my skin, a droplet of sweat trickling down my spine.

Mate, mate, mate, my panther chanted, urging me to find them. He was so insistent, I knew if I didn’t find him soon, my beast would take matters into his own paws. And may the gods help anyone who stood in our way.

There! As the alphas jostled, testing and taunting their rivals, two bodies moved apart, and in the gap, I saw those piercing blue eyes. And he was staring right at me. My breath caught as my throat tightened. His glare wasn’t just intense—it was furious! I couldn’t even blame him for being angry with me. I mean, I’d left him at that bar with nothing more than an address, and after he’d trusted me enough to show up, it was to discover a godsdamn cage match. A small part of me worried he would give up, that he would walk away, and I would never see him again. That I wasn’t worth the effort. But deep down, there was this burning certainty that fate had chosen him for a reason.

I bit down on my bottom lip to keep from moaning, because fuck me, his anger turned me on.

I was vaguely aware that my father was addressing the audience, calling out names to line up the first fight, but I couldn’t look away from my mate as my heart thundered inside my chest. He looked even better than I remembered. I yearned to learn every inch of his body on an intimate level. My mouth flooded with saliva as I remembered the feel of him in my mouth, the smooth, ridged skin of his shaft riding over my tongue.

A sharp growl startled me, and I jerked my attention away from my mate. I gasped when I saw several sets of glowing eyes leveled at me. I hadn’t noticed the trickle of slick that had seeped from my entrance, and as the scent of it permeated the enclosed space, the tension had ratcheted up a notch. This close to a full moon, it was bound to happen.

Hissing, venom-tipped fangs glinting, one shifter struck toward the low stage, his viper’s slitted eyes making him look more beast than man. From the corner of my eyes, I saw my mate moving fast on a collision course to take the threat down, but he would never make it in time. There were too many people in the way, blocking his route.

My canines popped down, claws out. Like hell this insignificant nobody would lay a finger on me.

Luckily, my father had prepared for this. When the shifter was just three feet away, reaching for me with scaled hands, Edgar’s arm arced through the air, taking the attacker down with a clothesline across the neck. The man hit the ground hard, and his hiss was reduced to a gurgle as he tried to pull air through his crushed trachea. It would heal, but it would certainly slow him down in the meantime.

“Edgar, please escort this pissant off my property,” my father sneered. He hadn’t even bothered to get up from his throne. “And the rest of his party as well.”

“You got it, boss,” Edgar said, gesturing to another guard, and the two of them dragged the thrashing, gasping alpha from the basement. The night’s first casualty, but he wouldn’t be the last. He was one of the alphas who’d been planning on fighting tonight. With his slip, he’d lost his family’s opportunity to gain a foothold in my family.

The excitement seemed to have riled everyone up, and there were animalistic hoots and hollers, but no one else dared make a move in my direction. My father cleared his throat behind me. “Sit down, Son, before you start a riot,” he said gruffly, pointing at the chair beside him.

Shame colored my cheeks. My father could smell my arousal. “Sorry, Father,” I muttered, dropping into the chair, keeping my head low.

This was something that should’ve been private. I was certain he didn’t want to know, and I hoped he found it just as awkward as I did, but he’d made my body his business—or rather, a selling point for his business. He wasn’t just offering me as the prize for this competition. He was offering my virginity.

As I stared down at my hands clenched in my lap, I thought back to this afternoon, when my father had sent his doctor to my suite to perform an examination of me, to confirm my purity. I’d had to lie there while the doctor inserted a speculum and probed at me with his gloved fingers, reaching deep inside to confirm my hymen was not broken. It was beyond humiliating.

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