Page 22 of You're Not My Mate

Chapter Seven

Rocco was once again on guard duty, but so far there had been no problem with Graham. However, what Rose had discovered was huge. Alpha was in the process of contacting Elizabeth Cole in the hope of her shedding light on the subject, because none of them were any wiser about what was going on.

He thought about Rose and his mate spending time with this male, and he didn’t like it.

Graham chuckled. “You’re not going to talk to me.”

“I don’t need to talk to keep an eye on you.”

“You don’t want to ask me for advice on how to deal with your mate?” Graham asked.

“You keep Rose out of this.”

Graham clapped his hands. “At least you’re acknowledging her as your mate now. Isn’t that a step up from what you usually do?”

Rocco glared at him. He was more than happy to put this guy out of his misery, although he didn’t seem to be in any pain. In fact, he looked rather cushy. Rose had made him a very extensive care basket, and the bastard had even decorated his cage. There were throws, pillows, and even a stuffed teddy bear. He needed to talk to Rose, and when Graham was knocked out, he was going to have no choice but to take it all away from him. This was just asking for trouble, when his sorry ass exploded in pain.

Graham held his hands up in the air. “Hey, I’m not the one that rejected my mate. You rejected your own.”

“Don’t try to think you can figure out why I did what I did. This is none of your business.”

“That I do get. It’s none of my business. Only, Rose keeps coming to see me.”

“She is helping with guard duty.”

He wasn’t happy with that, but while Rose came to sit with him, one of the guys was able to do a quick perimeter check. It seemed Rose had been able to get the support and respect of the Poison Wolves MC. He tried to stop Alpha from allowing her to help, but his club brother was not listening.

Everything she had seen was bad enough, and now, she was getting close to Graham. He didn’t like it, because he didn’t want to see her get hurt when the man did finally lose his shit and die. Also, he and his wolf didn’t like the thought of her being with any other male, which made absolutely no sense to him. He didn’t have a right or a claim to her.

He rubbed the back of his head and looked toward Graham. Rose had shown them all the photograph of who Graham claimed to be. At first, Rocco didn’t believe it, but then Enzo, being the pain in the ass he was, mentioned the eyes. The only thing that was the same with the picture of Graham and the man standing before them now, was his eyes. They hadn’t changed or been altered in any way. They were his one identifying asset.

“You don’t like it, do you?” Graham asked.

“No, I don’t.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I do think she is lovely company. She doesn’t look at me like she is waiting for me to die.”

This didn’t fill him with comfort. His wolf started to pace in his mind, and all he could think about was attacking him for even attempting to get close to his mate. Rose was his. And this also annoyed him as well, because he had rejected her.

At the same time, he’d not been able to ask her out on a date. Other than in passing, he’d barely spoken two words to her.

“She doesn’t want to believe what is going to happen, and I can’t blame her.”

“You’re just all shits and giggles, aren’t you?”

This made Rocco smile. “Trust me, I’m not getting my hopes up when it comes to you. I saw what happened to the last mess.”

He’d seen several men and women since then.

Rocco didn’t want to think of the sheer scale of men or women Milton could have infected. At first, he didn’t think it was possible, but now, with Elizabeth’s clarity, that scale could be in the thousands.

After they had over ten people come onto Poison Wolves’ territory, they had reached out to Elizabeth again. She had explained that if Milton saw between twenty and thirty different people a day, over the course of a five-day week, he was looking at one hundred and fifty people. That was only thirty people a day, which was a large number. Even still, Milton had several different veterinary outlets, and even at ten people per outlet, that made it more than thirty a day. Thirty a day, for five days, and then over a year, was seven thousand eight hundred people. Then of course, over time, that was just a potential crazy sum of people.

Right now, having only Graham was a shock, but a welcome one. Rocco knew it could and possibly would get worse.

“So, rather than talk about my upcoming timely demise, why don’t we talk about something even more important, how you’re going to fix things with your mate?”

“I’m not interested in this.”

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