Page 54 of Bred Mate
“Oh, so you have too much money to worry about buying me stuff?”
“You sound so damn spoiled.”
“But you know I’m not. You just told me I came from the swamp and had nothing. So how could I be spoiled?”
Arguing with my mate is not pleasant.
I am not used to dealing with feelings. I am used to being awful and killing things. I barely know how to talk to her outside the bedroom.
“Buy the forest, or I’m going to run away,” she says.
“Run away, and I will hunt you down and punish you in ways you have never been punished before. I will make you regret the day we met.”
“I already do,” she snipes before storming away.
I take a deep breath. I could go and thrash her for her rudeness, but I don’t want to reward that performance with attention. She needs to calm down and accept her new life. And she needs to learn to make herself behave. I can’t control her every second of every day. Sooner or later, she’s going to have to come to terms with her new life, and submit to me as her alpha.
It was only a matter of time before she ran away. We both knew it. So I’m not surprised when I wake up one morning a few days later to discover that Ellie is gone.
I plan to let her run a day or two, then go and get her back. This time, when I find her, I am going to whip her ass. I am not amused by this attitude she’s giving, but I understand it. Her brothers have settled in so well and so quickly she’s taking it all personally, as if she should have been able to give them everything I have in spite of the fact she was also dirt poor and living in the woods. It’s an entirely unrealistic expectation, but that won’t stop her from having it.
“Where’s sister?” Connor asks over breakfast.
“She’s busy for a couple of days,” I tell him. “She will be back soon enough.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ve got art class today. I’m going to draw a horse.”
He moves on after that, trusting me that I’m telling the truth, and trusting that Ellie will come back. She’s actually raised him to be very secure in himself. She did a good job keeping all her brothers alive. She doesn’t give herself enough credit for that.
Further complicating matters, an unexpected visitor to the house later that day changes things all over again.
“A lady has come to see you, sir,” Baldwin tells me.
For a minute, I think maybe it’s Ellie, but he wouldn’t introduce her that way. He’d sound a lot less happy. She has not made a good impression on the faithful retainer.
I go out to meet her in the foyer, not certain who she is or what I am going to do with my visitor. I am surprised to see that it is none other than Rainer Katsoff’s secretary. She is wearing a coral pink blazer and a matching pleated skirt with kitten heels. Her hair is pinned up neatly at the sides of her head. She looks younger than she did the first time I met her, and I sense something different in her. Something familiar and yet strange.
“Come to hit me with a bottle?”
The woman does not smile. I suspect she very much did come to do that, though she will not get as calm a reaction from me if she tries it twice.
“What does Rainer want?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says. “Nothing at all. I am the one who wants something I believe you have.”
“Oh?”
“I want to know where my daughter is.”
“Who is your daughter?”
She laughs. “She didn’t tell you.”
“Who didn’t tell me?”
“Eleanor. I am Ellie’s mother.”
My stomach tightens. My instinct is to get this woman out of the house as quickly as possible. She’s dangerous to the boys. I don’t want Connor to see her. Unless, of course, she’s not their mother. I don’t know what the deal is, but everything in my body is telling me she is dangerous.
