Page 5 of Alpha's Bullied Mate
“Nobody,” I muttered. I knew exactly who she was.
“I’ll take her back,” Jason said. “I’m sorry, man. She must have been patrolling for the party. I thought it was Thalia. She looked… Kind of aimless, I don’t know.”
“No,” I said. He had already opened his door, but I reached over and shut it. I faced the windshield, my handsgripping the wheel as I started the car. I had an idea why she might have been patrolling while the rest of the pack was celebrating, and it was something I could use to my advantage to get under Fenrys’s skin. By keeping her, we risked less of an outright, anger-fuelled attack, and more of a compromise. I could gain so much more in a calmer way by this. I wanted that fight, and, oh, I’d bring it to Fenrys in due time, but I could use this shifter to my advantage now to draw out whatreallymattered to Fenrys, use her to expose him to the whole of Silverlake Valley. She would help me do enough damage just by spilling Fenrys’s pack inner workings and secrets.
“Let’s see how much the great alpha truly cares abouteverymember of his pack,” I said, and tore down the dirt road, back towards my old abandoned family home. Silverlake Valley was shaped almost like a circle. The outer parts of town were abandoned places, warehouses, shut-down factories, office buildings from a strange concept of it once being modernized into a more corporate city before the planning permissions were denied in favor of keeping the town small and traditional. My father had renovated one of those into a modern compound that completely was at odds with the town, and made it our home. It just meant that we always felt like outsiders, and Fenrys’s father’s pack had only proven that years ago.
The central circle of town held the local businesses and municipal buildings, and most of the houses were in the outer and inner areas, largely populating around the woods for shifters to have better access to them. I reached for the anger inside me as I drove to my old home, reminding myself why I had a naked woman wrapped in a blanket in the back of my car.
The wrong damn woman. I tightened my grip on the wheel. She wouldn’t draw Fenrys out, but I could use her tofigure out everything about Fenrys’s pack and use it against him, unraveling the Silverlake Valley pack from the inside.
***
Jason reached for her when we pulled up to the house, but I stopped him.
“I got her,” I said.
“What, you don’t trust me?”
“I do, I just want to take her in.”
Jason gave me a long look, trying to work me out. But the thing about my pack was that we all had our walls up and never let anyone get too close to see what was behind those walls. Even as my second, Jason knewenough,but not all. He didn’t know why the sight of this shifter’s face turned my stomach. He didn’t know what my past was like except for my past with Fenrys and the betrayal I had gone through from my father being targeted.
Eventually, he gave in and ran up the steps to the front door and disappeared inside but left the door open for me. I opened the back door and looked at the length of ginger hair that spilled out from the blanket.
I tightened my jaw and stopped myself from being able to smell the scent of citrus fruits emanating from her. I sighed as I scooped her up, letting her drape sideways over my arms, supporting her with ease.
She shifted in her passed-out state, her head tipping back to expose her neck, the light over the porch casting harsh illumination over her strong cheekbones. When I’d known her, she had still held the full cheeks of a girl who hadn’t yetdeveloped a workout routine usually kept by shifters to maintain agility in both forms.
“Bet you never thought you’d see me again,” I muttered as I carried her into my family home. It was funny how my past was greeting me again tonight. Except one element—my hometown, myhome—had been planned. She wasn’t, though. Not really.
My hands tightened around her shoulders where I supported her with one arm, and around her thigh. I didn’t like manhandling an unconscious woman, but my pack had messed up by gassing her, and I’d see them eat shit for it at some point.
I took her into the house, straight into the living room, still littered with bags. As I'd asked, Ryan had already set out a chair for her in front of the window. Jason left a loop of rope on the floor next to it and met my eyes as he walked out. He clapped my shoulder as he passed me. He didn’t get it. He’d messed up my plans and landed me right in my past, which I didn’t want to face. A house I could deal with but notpeople.
I shook my head and let her fall from my arms into the chair. Making quick of binding her ankles and wrists, I stepped back and looked at her. Then I worried about the blanket slipping off her and opened the nearest duffel. The whiff of Declan’s clothes hit me, and I found a jumper and joggers. It felt wrong to dress her. So I folded the clothes, unbound her, and sat on the couch, watching my new captive.
Chapter 4 - Dakota
Behind my eyelids, darkness twisted into shapes and voices I wasn’t sure if I heard correctly. It came in broken fragments: male voices, the softness of a blanket, the warmth of a chest, a hard-backed chair, mumblings from my own lips as my eyes had peeled open at one moment when I’d been coaxed into a pair of soft clothes that smelt overwhelmingly male. I half-remembered pushing my own arms through the sleeves, my legs sliding into the pants.
I couldn’t quite grasp consciousness for a long time, but when I did, I was clothed, bound, and a piece of cloth was in my mouth. My heart kicked into a panic. Slowly, I remembered. The woods, the smoke, two figures. Talking to a man who sounded furious. Atme? Had I answered?
Panic built in my chest as I forced my body to relax. I knew fighting against bounds was pointless. Fenrys had taught us all that. He’d taught us to scout for anything sharp enough to cut through rope ties, but I was bound to a chair and couldn’t move.
My eyes flicked back and forth, looking out at a large, expansive living room, washed in white, empty walls. The floor was clean and the furniture was old and dusty, as if the house hadn’t been lived in for a while.
Lights flooded the space and from the lack of natural light coming in from the windows behind me, I guessed it was night A door ahead to my right was closed but beyond that, there was a contemporary open-plan kitchen. A black marble staircase led upstairs.
I remembered the smoke forcing my body to shift of its own accord. A split-second anger and vulnerability of beingnaked in front of two strangers, until they’d thrown a blanket over me. A blanket being removed in favor of clothes. A bit-outwork with me, dammit. I’m trying to cover you up, not expose you.A spat curse in my direction, a weak kick that I’d delivered in return. Was that why my ankles were tied to the chair legs?
I had been kidnapped.
But bywho?
Kato. Kato’s pack had been the danger Fenrys and Thalia had been worried about since Thalia’s kidnapping last year. I whimpered at the thought of the hulking, thick men that had been in Kato’s pack. Conall had told me all the stories of how the men were bigger than even Fenrys and Conall combined.
“Steroids,” Theo had muttered. “It had to be. I mean, who bulks up that much?”
