Page 18 of Rejected Mate's Baby for the Alpha King

Nothing.

Duke nosed at me and started to trot. I easily kept pace with him, staying just a little behind while my wolf stayed vigilant.

I hadn’t lied to him. I had no intention of running from him in the mountains, but once we got back to the vehicles? I couldn’t outright outrun him, but if I could distract him for just a few minutes, I might have a chance.

Of course, I wouldn’t be able to stay a wolf for long, especially if they’d parked in a human settlement. No one wanted the humans to know about werewolves, but that was even better. I’d be much harder to hunt in a civilian area.

Maybe I could live my life as a human, hide away and immerse myself with people who didn’t have to answer to an alpha or a king. I’d need money, and a way to hide my baby from turning into a wolf cub at school.

Suddenly, living life as a rogue in the mountains didn’t sound like that bad of an idea. It couldn’t all be wolf-eat-wolf, right?

I knew the tales of the lawless mountain, about wolves who didn’t have packs but roamed freely with the natural animals, living off the land, brutal and uncivilized. Some said a king had exiled them because there was a strange magic in the mountains. A magic that made wolves unhinged.

Maybe it was making me unhinged too, for thinking that I could live here on my own.

We were nearing the clearing of the woods when Duke’s dark gray wolf suddenly stopped short and bristled. Half a second later, I knew why he was upset. We were smelling wolves. Several of them.

He hunched low in the bushes and belly-crawled closer. I trotted along next to him, easily fitting in the space: score one for small wolves. We were at the edge of the woods. Ahead of us, in the parking lot, were the convoy vehicles.

They’d been stripped. Sitting up on blocks, their tires had been removed, and a couple of people were rifling through them. One wolf sat at the end of the convoy. A lookout, no doubt. Luckily, the wind was in our favor.

So the rogues had found the vehicles. It looked like Duke would not be driving me to my father. Hopefully Rhyson hadn’t left anything behind that said Hey, I’m the king, and I’m going to camp out in the forbidden mountain for some unknown reason. Hope you guys don’t mind.

A radio beeped, and one of the shifters straightened and pulled it out of their belt.

Not radios. Walkie-talkies. Seriously? What kind of unhinged, lawless rogues were these?

“We found the camp. There are only five. Should be easy to exterminate them at nightfall. Find anything useful?” the voice over the radio said.

Five? Shit. That was Rhyson. There were two teams: one to watch the vehicles and one to hunt the invaders.

“Whoever it is has money. Try to keep the leader alive so we can ransom them. They might be an alpha.”

An image popped into my head of someone trying to ransom Rhyson. It was funnier than it should have been.

A growl sounded behind us, and the fun times were over. I sank into my wolf, and she turned and attacked.

9

Rhyson

“All I’m saying is that if you’re going to mope about it, you should have never let her go,” Juniper said with a shrug. “I’m not here to follow a grumpy werewolf into the forbidden forest.”

I scowled. “I’m not grumpy, and this is not the forbidden forest. And you’re here because of loyalty, not because of any personality trait of mine.”

“So true.”

When I snarled at her, she just laughed. Juniper was the youngest of my entourage at only twenty years old, but she’d been Marrow’s second-in-command since she was fifteen. Reckless and impulsive, she was the last wolf I’d expected to be by my side, but when push came to shove, her wolf was one of the best. As my third, she would spend a lot of time traveling from pack to pack and identifying problems.

If she survived that long.

Her loyalty to my brother meant she wouldn’t back down on the revenge mission, and we both knew the jokes were just a front. She would be here until the bitter end.

“Grumpy is his main personality trait,” Dante said with a shrug. “You should be used to it by now.”

“Usually it’s just your ugly face making him grumpy,” she said cheerfully. “Not a pretty little redhead.”

“You’re just jealous,” Dante shot back.

---