Page 59 of Cursed Wolf

“Don’t give up on her so fast,” the witch said softly. “After everything Orson and I went through before officially mating, I firmly believe the moon likes to test us, you know? Throw a bunch of obstacles our way, see what our relationships are really made of. You have to fight for it, Tryn.”

“It’s not so much an obstacle as it is a fundamental incompatibility,” I argued. As much as it hurt, it was true. Fate was just playing a game with me.

“You said she asked to be bitten, right?” Shiloh pressed. “That has to mean something.”

“I don’t believe it does.”

After talking to Shiloh and Aria, I found out both had the urge to bite and be bitten when getting newly intimate with their mates. However, Shiloh was not a latent wolf, and Aria was. So it didn’t necessarily mean that Emmaline was of my kind.

For all I knew, the biting just signaled strong sexual attraction and nothing else.

“Emmaline’s not like other humans,” Shiloh insisted. “Aria and Riley both said as much.”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t mean she wants to live among a bunch of shapeshifters and moon magic wielders.”

“It’s not like she ran away screaming. You said she asked for time, you brickhead.”

“Because she has the decency to be polite.”

Shiloh sighed and flicked a rag over her shoulder. “You’re impossible.”

“All the better that she doesn’t end up with me.”

“You’re allowed to be sad, Tryn. But this mopey, whimpering-into-my-beer thing isn’t you.”

“I’m not whimpering.”

The front door creaked open before Shiloh could go at me again, and nails clicked over the hardwood floors. I turned to see Orson’s silver-white wolf dash into the tavern, a dark bundle in his jaws. He darted behind the bar and shifted into a naked man breathing hard and covered in sweat.

“Babe, are you okay?” Shiloh put a hand on her mate’s back as he bent over to unwrap the bundle he’d been carrying. “Did you run across the whole territory?”

“Emmaline’s in trouble,” Orson panted. The bundle turned out to be his phone rolled up into a pair of sweatpants, which he promptly started swiping on. His glare at me was pure ice. “Way to answer my fucking calls, by the way.”

“Trouble how? Where is she?” I couldn’t dwell on the fact that I’d taken a page out of Emmaline’s book and left my phone at the lodge so that I wouldn’t be tempted to call her.

“Northwestern border. My perimeter camera picked this up.” Orson turned his phone screen to face me, and the image made my heart stop.

Thorne, leader of the vampires with a charming little outfit called Blood ‘til Dawn MC, rulers of the Sanguine territory, stood with what looked like an unconscious woman cradled against his chest. He held her with one arm, while the other extended out to show a message written in some dark substance on the inside of his forearm.

It read, TRYN. COME ALONE.

“I swung by the lodge while looking for you, so the pack already knows. We’re riding out to back you up?—”

I cut off Orson with a rough scrape of my barstool against the floor. “Call them off,” I snarled. White-hot rage sobered me in an instant. My wolf clawed to come out, to rip into that soulless bloodsucking insect until he was in pieces, and I was moments away from letting him.

“Do not go up against that vampire alone!” Orson called after me. “Thorne wants something; it’s a fucking trap.”

“You think I care? He has my mate! No one is getting between my teeth and his throat.”

Orson’s protests died off in the distance, becoming meaningless background noise as I tore my clothes off. The next thing I knew, I was sprinting on all fours, heading straight for the northwestern border.

If that was her blood on his arm…If that vampire had cut her, fucking bitten her to send a message to me, I was going to kill him. It didn’t matter if he killed me first, I’d come back as a vengeful ghost and haunt that sick fucker until he walked into the sunlight to be rid of me.

That was all I could think of as I raced across the territory. That and a desperate prayer up to the moon that I wasn’t too late for Emmaline.

Thorne was right where Orson said he’d be, standing on the vampire side of the magical barrier that separated our territories, an unmoving Emmaline in his arms. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to the scum like he was a person, but I had to make sure my mate was okay.

I shifted to my human form, ignoring the quirked eyebrow and mild look of approval on Thorne’s face. “Nice cock, werewolf. No wonder this little human went wandering in search of you.”

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