Page 63 of Mated

We flee, the two of us coated in his brother’s blood. I am in shock, and I think he is too. What just happened was the most brutal thing I have ever seen in my life.

We run for a long time, first in our wolf forms, then in human guises. After seeing what I have seen, I feel as though I am more animal than human. The human form I used to mistake for being my true self now feels like a costume I put on from time to time.

Abel has stashes of cash and supplies already planted to allow him to escape a bad situation when necessary. We collect and use those to get as far away from the Pacific Northwest as possible.

He will not speak of what he did in the dungeons. We hire cars, drive them for a while, then swap them out again. We spend only cash. We change our hair color, our clothing style. We are running as fugitives, because that is what we are.

Desert flashes by the window. The windows are down and hot air is blustering through the interior of the car, playing with discarded wrappers from gas station food. Cain is beside me, his beard grown out half an inch, his eyes covered by big sunglasses. I wouldn’t have thought a billionaire could go incognito this easily, but once you cover his eyes, Cain Lupin looks just like every other tall chisel-jawed man with dark hair.

“I am sorry about your…”

“Don’t,” he says coldly. “We will not spare a word for him again.”

I shut my mouth, and I grieve for all Cain has sacrificed for me. I was supposed to be the monster, but he became the original beast for me. He has given up absolutely everything, and there is no way for me to ever make it up to him.

“The reward being offered for information about fugitive billionaire Cain Lupin, wanted for the murder of Abel Lupin, has been doubled.”

A television presenter reads the ongoing news about the hunt for us in excited tones. The Lupin Murder has really got the attention of everybody in the country, probably in the world. There are endless conspiracy theories about us online, memes, reels, stories, and yes, law enforcement. At this point, we fear teenage girls with cellphones who work at fast food joints more than any police officers.

We are sitting in a shitty hotel room and wearing matching sweaters and sweatpants that sayFLORIDA IS JUICY. I am wearing a ginger wig, and Cain has shaved his head and is wearing thick rimmed glasses.

An open box of orange juice sits between us. We’ve drunk half of it between us, straight out of the carton.

There’s a decadence and a freedom to being on the run that I would be afraid to admit I am enjoying. The stuffy ambiance at Denholm always felt like a pair of hands wrapped around my throat, squeezing gently, but insistently. And as much as Iwanted to work at Lupin Industries and be a good little assistant for the great Cain Lupin, that could never happen.

“They seek him here. They seek him there,”I mutter to myself.

Cain snorts with laughter. I look up at him, testing a little smile.

He smiles back.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but…”

“Come here,” he says, his tone dominant.

I do as I am told instantly, standing up and going to his side. He reaches up and pulls me down to sit in his lap.

“I did what I did because it had to happen,” he says. “And I don’t regret it. I could have done it some other way. I could have had someone else do it. I could have staged it and made it look like an accident…”

As he talks, his hand reaches down between my legs. I am wearing a skirt, so his fingers easily find the gusset of my underwear and start to stroke me there. It feels wrong to have this conversation while being toyed with, but if this is how Cain wants to do it, then this is how he can do it. I am his. He has given up everything for me, and I will give up everything for him.

His fingertips circle around my clit, then down the smooth fabric to press lightly against the entrance of my body.

“I did it the way I did it because that was the way to satisfy all parties. He needed to know why it was happening. I needed to do it because I had been cornered for too long. And you needed to see it, so you could understand that finally, I am ready to give you everything. No more half-measures. No more putting a packof vicious, simpering strangers who alternate between jealousy and craven greed first. My world changed when I found you.”

He slips my underwear to the side and starts to finger me slowly, sensually. He stretches me open for his use while my hips dance in his lap.

His devotion is unending. He would quite literally do anything for me. That makes me want to do anything, and everything, for him. I spread my thighs, and I give myself to him. I arch my back and grind my ass back against his cock. I submit, like an alpha’s mate is supposed to.

A knock on the door startles us both.

“Ignore it,” I whimper, not wanting the pleasure to stop for even a moment.

“I have to see who it is,” he rumbles, patting my pussy and returning my underwear to its proper place.

He goes to the door and looks through the peephole. I see him hesitate for a moment, then take the chain off the lock. Did he order food? I don’t remember him talking about ordering food.

A man steps into our room. He is in his mid-fifties, powerfully built, graying hair. I smell the wolf on him immediately and back away. We don’t trust anybody, but there’s something about him I especially don’t trust, even though he has one of those faces. The generic, trustworthy kind. He could be anybody or anything, from a math teacher to a checkout assistant at a grocery store.

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