Page 15 of Wolf's Claimed Mate
“I had—a fucking name—for you, man,” I shouted, struggling to gain on Fenrys. Thalia’s voice called up to us, footsteps thundering up the stairs. Her hands scrabbled over my shoulder, trying to pull me off her mate.
Without thinking, I whirled on her. Before I made contact, I was thrown forward and pinned to the floor.
Fenrys’s arm lay across my neck. I snarled, hating defying him, but hating that he was the source of my anger. Hewasn’t, that wasn’t fair. He was the catalyst.
“Touch her, Conall, and you’ll see how brothers can properly fight,” he warned me in a low voice. That took all the fight out of me.Brothers. Not Declan. Not anymore. But Fenrys, the man who’d accepted me as his best friend and second. The man who had never once before put me down for DNA that I hadn’t chosen. The thing was, Icouldbecome an alpha. If anything ever happened to Fenrys, I was next in line. I could start my own damn pack if I wanted.
I didn’t dare say that to him.
I held up my hands in surrender, the way I had with Declan at the gym the day before. “I’m done,” I snapped. Then I slumped as he got off me. “I’m done.”
Annoyed and feeling that bite of humiliation, I got to my feet, straightening my clothes. Fenrys’s jaw was red where I’d punched him, and as much as it curled shame through me that I’d done that, I felt a sliver of pride.
“My daughter could have been around,” he said with lethal quietness. “If she had heard anything, found her way in here, or if you had hurt Thalia…” He shook his head.
I met Fenrys’s disappointed gaze. “I miss when you left for your paternity year.”
Fenrys looked skyward, as if looking for an answer. “Get out, Con. Cool down. Go run laps on border patrol.”
“That’s—”
“Beneath you? Yeah, so is punching me.”
I resisted the urge to snarl at him again. I wanted anger and adrenaline. “I wanted to come in here and give you that name and tell you I’d formed a plan with Sasha. Shedidn’ttell me much, but that didn’t mean I’d done nothing all morning.” I looked between Fenrys and Thalia. “We’re pretending to be a couple. We have a stakeout planned, and we’ll pretend we’re on a date if we’re caught or people suspect anything. From there, we’ll disguise any snooping as just dating.”
With that, I walked out, slamming the door after myself.
I thought about finding Aidan and picking a fight with him. He’d get the adrenaline out of my system. Then I paused, scrolling through my contacts to Declan’s number. After that meeting, we’d all been ordered to swap numbers. It had been years since I’d had any reason to put my brother’s number into my phone.
Me: Want to fight it out like we used to?
My offer got silence in response. Anger burned through me. Maybe I should have texted Sasha, perhaps offered to start our stakeout immediately, but the shift was already coming through me when I saw my brother’s read receipt on my message from five minutes ago. No typing, no call, no simply ‘sure,’ even. Just silence.
I shifted and lost myself in the trees and the mind of a wolf, trying to ignore the scent of leopard in the depths of the woods. I should have wanted her as predator wanted prey, but for whatIwanted, Sasha was a different kind of prey.
Chapter 7 - Sasha
A knock on my door had me rushing to apply my cherry lip gloss and hurrying over to open it.
Standing in the doorway was Conall, leaning against the doorway, holding two takeout coffees. One smelled distinctly strong, the other with hints of hazelnut. Conall’s eyes dropped to my lips, freshly glossed, and his nostrils flared, likely smelling the scent of cherry.
I enjoyed knowing it affected him after we’d kissed, the scent likely lingering on his skin where I’d kissed him everywhere I could with our clothes still on.
“Morning, babe,” he greeted.
“Yeah, no,” I answered. He stepped back, glancing around.
“Right, no neighbors,” he muttered to himself. “I forgot about that.”
“And yet you remembered where I lived.”
He smirked, pointing behind me at my kitchen. “Well, considering I was ready to go down on you right against that kitchen counter, I remember this place pretty well. Even if we were a little drunk.”
My cheeks burned, and I bit down on my tongue, holding back any witty response. I wanted to saygood, you’ll remember your way home then,before closing the door on him. But I couldn’t. Thalia had told me about Conall’s and Fenrys’s fight the day before. I knew I had caused some of that trouble for Conall, and I needed to work with him seriously now. It wasn’t about loyalty to an alpha or a pack; it was just about…
I frowned.
Well, I supposed it came down to caring about Conall and helping him follow orders, even if they didn’t extend to me in quite the same way.
