Page 41 of Cowboy Devil's Embrace

“Cause each of us is holding on by a thread. We’re outcasts. Loners. But that’s not how nature designed us.”

“Someone translate this for me,” I barked.

“He’s saying he wants to shack up,” Kian replied with a grunt.

“Shack up? OH shit, you mean women?” I asked.

“Yes, he means women, or whatever the hell you call female furry monsters like him,” Kian replied.

“A female Bear Shifter is a Sow, and fuck you, you walking cheeseburger,” Dante shot back.

“Alright, so what’s the problem? Go find a date if you need to blow off steam,” I said, not understanding their dilemma.

“Max, do you have any idea how few female Shifters exist?” Emmet asked me.

“No. Obviously,” I replied.

“Not a lot. And of course, we have rules. Shifters, I mean. They’re just like yours, I think,” Emmet explained. “We can’t just go fucking human women, and risk our animals getting attached. Not until we meet our fated mates.”

“But how will you meet them if you don’t try?”

“Don’t you think we have,Alpha?” Kian snapped and walked out of the barn without looking back.

Shit.

So that was the problem. All the members of my Motley Crewd Ranch were in the same boat. This was theirs, mine too, last chance if they wanted to survive.

Without mates, each of us could succumb to the darkness within, and that could be catastrophic.

Shifters and other supes who did not find their mates,their tether, went mad. That kind of descent into darkness usually ended in death.

And it was the Alpha’s job to mete it out.

Fucking hell.

“Look guys, I admit to feigning interest when Emmet was describing whatever problem Kian discovered with our highest yielding corn fields, but I am on this. I am going to help you control your Shifter sides until you find the one you were meant for,” I vowed.

They all looked at me solemnly, even Kian was back hanging out by the barn door.

“I mean it. I won’t let you down.”

And I wouldn’t. Avail and Grandmother might think me a good for nothing, but over the last couple of days, I’d listened to these men. My Devil bonded with them, the same way I did with the land.

What could I say?

No, I’d never had a purpose before, but I think I found one.

Hell. I found two.

My sweet Sugarplum and this group of rag tag Shifters. Motley Crewd, indeed.

It wasn’t that I was lazy. Well, not exactly. But I’d gone from being a lackadaisical millionaire to working with animals and muddy earth for fourteen hours a day.

And as if that wasn’t enough of a change, meeting my fated mate, the one person in the universe capable of filling my heart and soul, not to mention tempting my body, and having to stay away from her while I waited for our date was not easy.

Penelope Abruzzi.

It had been three days since I saw her, and my beast was barely manageable. The Devil inside me was desperate for the curvy, dark-haired beauty.

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