Page 45 of Wolf's Claimed Mate
“I’m fine,” she answered in that quickfire way that meant she was likely not fine.
“He’s not here,” I told her. “I’d be able to smell him. The cabin’s empty.” As I approached the window, I grinned at her, trying to lighten the mood. “Which is why we’re breaking in.”
I slid the window open and slung one leg over the sill. “Coming?”
She blinked. “How did you—”
“I had some rookies patrolling these woods. I told one of them to pick the window lock as soon as the pack left.”
“I don’t know whether to be turned on or horrified.”
“Turned on,” I suggested, laughing. She did, too, but then clamped a hand over her mouth. Truthfully, going into an enemy den like this also set me on edge, but it was something I had to do. I was more on edge because if they came back, there were at least two of them. I wouldn’t have backup; if they knew Sasha, they could sway her back to their side.
“I don’t know about this,” she muttered as I slipped through entirely. “The office was different… This is… I don’t know. It reeks of them. It’s making me nervous. A little angry, too.”
“Then use that anger,” I told her. “Use it to help us—to helpme, right now. They fucked you over, right? Don’t you want revenge? You could be there to help us take them down eventually.”
At that, her eyes went bright.
I grinned. “You can claw that fucker’s face off. Jackson.”
“Okay, now I’m definitely turned on,” she laughed. “That’s an appealing thought—ruining that guy’s life.”
I held out a hand to help her through the window. She slipped through, and we landed in the cabin. I immediately felt off-kilter, that sort of pressurized feeling of being somewhere I knew could be dangerous. The likes of Aidan lived for danger; Fenrys embraced it, and while I tended to seek it out myself, I didn’t always enjoy the lack of certainty that came with it.
Sasha’s hand flattened on my chest. I had a brief thought of asking to pleasure her right there, over the desk, leaving the scent for the wolves to go crazy over, knowing she’d been back here, but I quickly dismissed it. It was a stupid, aroused thought.
“Last time I was here, they mentioned Palmetto,” I told her as I headed for the desk, opening every drawer I could find.
Sasha’s head whipped around to face me. “Palmetto?”
“Does that mean anything to you?”
“It’s where Jackson grew up. It’s where I met him, originally. We had a mutual friend who knew someone throwing a party, so I went with some of them from Atlanta to Palmettoand met Jackson. It turned out it was actually his party. His twentieth.”
“You were seventeen?”
She nodded, biting her lip. “Only just. Age wasn’t a big deal.”
“No, but the way he treated you was.”
Sasha ignored that, as she started scrutinizing her side of the office.
“So, how do you tell a pack’s alpha in shifter terms?” she asked me. There were a bunch of pictures on the wall. Some had Kato in. I noticed Jackson in some older ones, Sasha too. She reached out and touched a hand to the glass frame of herself from a few years ago, smiling, tucked into Jackson.
Kato had a possessive hand on her shoulder.
I suddenly felt guilty for baiting her that day in the diner about Kato sharing her around the pack, ultimately saving her for himself.
“When we’re shifted, it’s usually the wolf at the front,” I told her. “Generally, the biggest wolf, bigger than me by a few centimeters. As humans, from what I know, the leader will always be upfront and center, the first one you notice. He might be the tallest, but he’s often the largest in general. More muscled, wider, just gives off a bigger presence.”
“Like Jackson?”
“Well, we don’t know his rank—”
“No, I meanlikeJackson.”
There was a hollow tone to her voice that made me turn, raising a brow. She stood staring at a screen with a slideshow of pack pictures. On some occasions, Kato was in the center, andeveryone else was arranged around him, Jackson always to his left.
