Page 7 of The Wolf Prince's Mate

“Has my scent changed?”

There was a moment of silence.

“Smells the same to me,” the guy I was working on said. “I can’t smell anything over the coffee and ink.”

Which was why I started drinking coffee and getting tattoos in the first place. Since I loved both, I hadn’t stopped since the truth about female werewolves came out.

“Barely,” Charlie said.

I let out a breath of relief.

I had missed the tingle that warned me heat was coming, somehow, but I had at least a few hours until it really started. That was good.

“I’ll let Hunter know,” Charlie added.

“Thanks.”

The offer was a formality. That was part of his job. Hunter and I started speaking through Charlie when we couldn’t speak through Clay anymore.

I finished up the tattoo, and bandaged it. There was still time to get to Greenview. Probably.

After my client paid and left, I grabbed my bag and headed straight to my car. When Charlie followed me to the driver’s side door, I knew something was wrong.

I stopped just outside my car. “What’s going on, Charlie?”

He grimaced. “Hunter is in the forest, trying to track the scent that was on that sketchbook. He’s a few hours away from the nearest vehicle. By the time he could meet you in Greenview, you’ll have been under heat’s thrall unprotected for hours. And he would have to abandon the scent trail.”

“Oh. That’s fine, I can go alone.”

It was better than fine.

I could suffer alone for a while, without wondering if Hunter was listening to my heat-crazed pleas.

He wasn’t, of course.

He never did.

His wolf would’ve forced him to ease my pain if he listened. He couldn’t have known how much I suffered every time I went through heat alone.

And he wasn’t a monster. If he knew, he would’ve stopped it, either by letting the rut take over or finding a way to hold his wolf down so I could screw someone else.

But I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

Not when it meant potentially ending up in bed with him and making his wolf even more attached to me.

Hunter wasn’t a bad guy. Not even a little.

I just wasn’t interested in mating with him.

Aspen and Enzo had fallen in love after his wolf claimed her, but that didn’t mean Hunter and I had to follow in their footsteps. He had been determined not to since the moment we met.

And I wasn’t going to let myself develop feelings for a man who was that set on not wanting me, regardless of what his beast thought.

I started to open my door, but Charlie was shaking his head. “Hunter’s not going to risk that.”

My forehead creased, and I opened my mouth to ask what he meant.

Before the words escaped, a cherry red, luxury SUV pulled into the parking space to the right of my car. My eyebrows shotupward as Clay rolled his window down and draped an arm over the opening. “Hop in, Gorgeous.”

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