Page 14 of Bound By My Alpha Mate

Colt appraised me, then knelt beside me again. He reached out to touch my back, and I bristled, leaning in the opposite direction and kicking at him. With a small laugh, he pulled his hand back. “You’re covered in leaves and muck and blood. I just thought I’d try to clean you up a bit.” When I didn’t respond in any way, he perched his elbows on his knees and sighed. “Why don’t you shift back? It’ll be easier to clean you up.”

I snarled through the t-shirt.

“Are you still angry about Saturday night?” Colt stood up, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked entirely unbothered, smiling like the whole situation was amusing to him. As he walked back to where my head was, I watched the lean muscles in his arms and bare chest ripple, his locks of black hair hanging above his brow. A playful lilt lifted his voice. “Sorry about that. You know how it is…Just doing what my dad tells me to do. Of course, that was before we found out we’re fated mates. The Moondream changed things.” Colt loomed over me. “I’m not going to hand over my fated mate to be slaughtered.”

I didn’t believe a word he said. Especially not after he extended a hand to me, and I saw his fingers arching, going for the spiraling horn on my forehead. Visceral fear caused me to toss my head to one side, and the sharp point of my horn sliced across his right palm, drawing blood.

Colt shouted and retracted his wounded hand, clutching it with the other as blood gushed between his fingers. “Goddammit!”

With my front paws bound, I couldn’t do much more than struggle to sit upright. I searched desperately for a path of escape, staggering to my feet and backpedaling away from Colt. But I couldn’t run. As hard as I tried, I only ended up falling over. I plunged my nose between my front legs and tried to pull the string off with my snout or dislodge the t-shirt from between my teeth, but I wasn’t fast enough.

Colt charged over to me again. He stood above me and wrapped his arms around my neck. I thrust my horn at him, but he dodged it, keeping his distance from the only weapon I had left. With concentrated anger, he pulled my head back and squeezed my throat, holding me firmly as I contorted my wolf body in protest.

“I didn’t want to use force, but you’ve given me no choice,” he breathed. “I have to find a way to protect you. So, you’re going to come with me, whether you want to or not.”

His voice hissed into my ear and was the last thing I registered before consciousness drained from me.

My body was once more at his mercy.

Chapter 10

Colt

There was no way I could salvage any possible relationship between my fated mate and me. I’d never suspected I’d had a chance with her to begin with, but after tying her up and choking her, I knew without a doubt that she would hate me more than she would ever have any other feelings for me. That was going to make this next week until the full moon the hardest week of my life.

I wished I could block out all the nagging emotions in my heart. What would I have to do never to feel anything again? I wanted to kill every flutter of sorrow, anger, and yearning that tormented me.

The rest of the journey back to my vehicle, Kiara periodically woke and fought me, but only until I found a way to knock her out again. I worried that by the time I loaded her into the car—now bound up in bungee cords—I might have given her brain damage from all the oxygen I deprived her of. She didn’t make it easy to kidnap her. Then again, I’d never kidnapped someone before. All through the drive, I heard her thumping in the trunk.

We pulled up to Hexen Manor around midnight. Light rain was falling around us, glittering in the headlights that were pointed at my home until I turned the car off. I had put on the extra sweater I always kept in my back seat, but the cold gripped me all the same. Opening the trunk, I looked down at the hybrid, incapacitated in the colorful bondage of the bungee cords. Her wolf legs were bent close to her body, and the whites of her eyes flashed in wrath. She would gore me with her horn the first chance she got. My hand still throbbed, and it was bleeding through the makeshift paper towel bandage I had wrapped around my palm. Now, how was I going to get her out of my trunk?

I started with her haunches, pulling her up and out into the rain. She twisted her body, trying to stab me. At least I could avoid her horn by sticking close to her rear end. Kiara dropped heavily onto the concrete driveway, and I winced a little when her head smacked the ground. Then, I dragged her by her hind legs around the side of the house, through the wet grass, and up onto the deck. She never stopped fighting to get free. I fumbled for the keys in my pocket and unlocked the glass doors that opened into the dinette. Much like a carcass my pack had hunted, I hauled her inside and toward the stairs leading to the basement. She left behind a trail of mud and blood, but I wasn’t about to clean it up.

It would have taken three or four people to get a body her size down those stairs, but after her thrashing had made it difficult to keep a good grip on her, I just let her tumble to the cold, cement floor below. “Sorry about that,” I said, not sorry at all. She grunted indignantly.

Then, I brought her into the cold room, where I used to butcher game. She would be fine for a few minutes while I rummaged through the rest of the basement, looking for a wire cage that had once been used to trap a coyote just beyond Dalesbloom’s borders. That was years ago, when my father had been training Catrina and me for the hunt. Gruesome as it was, he’d wanted live prey, something as close to a wolf as possible. I understood now that he’d been testing how willing we were to massacre our own kind. Catrina had been the one to make the kill.

I set up the cage in the cold room, then pushed Kiara inside and locked it. Finally, exhausted and sweating, I stood back and wiped my brow. “You should be okay in here. I don’t think anybody’s gonna come down to this room. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

The hybrid glared at me from over her shoulder, uttering primal animal noises.

“No? Okay. I guess I’ll just clean you up, then,” I decided. I grabbed the hose that was hooked up to the sink on the wall, which I usually used to spray blood into the floor drain nearby. It wasn’t that I particularly enjoyed treating her like this, but there was something marginally satisfying about the way she sat helplessly inside the cage while I drenched her. I knew it made her angry from the fire brewing in my own chest that I felt through our connection. It was fucked up of me, but I liked having so much control over her.

Once all the blood and muck were rinsed out of her fur, she lay on her side, ribs sharply rising and falling as wet fur clung to her body. The curves of her anatomy were exposed by her soaked pelt. I watched her shiver.

“If that’s uncomfortable for you, why don’t you shift back?” I suggested. “I’m sure the bungee cords will be loose enough to fall off once you’re human again.”

The hybrid raised her head, and I was convinced that if she could speak, she would be laying all sorts of curses upon me. Her tail cocked up in a silent “Go fuck yourself.”

“You’ll probably have to use the bathroom at some point, too. I mean, you’re welcome to soil yourself in here, but I can’t imagine it would feel very dignified. Besides, if you don’t want your horn to be harvested, it would be wise for you to be human. Really. I’m just trying to make things easier for you.”

She growled and lowered her head again. I sensed she wasn’t going to budge and turned to leave. The hybrid was bound and locked up in the cage; I’d secured it with a small padlock. So, confident she wouldn’t escape, I closed the door behind me and went back upstairs for a change of clothes.

In the dinette, I nearly slipped on the trail of muck she’d left behind. Catching myself with my hand on the table, I gazed through the dark kitchen, listening, half expecting to hear movement upstairs. Or to smell the recent footsteps of a packmate. Only then did I realize how unnerving it was, how quiet and lonesome the Manor had become since we’d left it to hide in the mine. I looked guiltily at the filth smeared on the floor, and before I did anything else, I found the mop and wiped it clean.

Upstairs, my room remained untouched since I’d left. I stripped out of my rain-soaked clothes and put on black sweatpants and a blue pullover, then rustled up a towel to pat dry my hair. Finally, in the bathroom, I cleaned and bandaged my hand. There was no way I’d be able to hide this from my coworkers tomorrow. I’d have to think of some explanation as to why I hadn’t gone for stitches.

On the way back down to the basement, I stopped in the kitchen for a bottle of water out of the fridge. Kiara might have refused to speak to me, but I wasn’t entirely cruel. I knew she’d need something to drink, at least.

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