Page 56 of Bred Mate
Karl thinks I took a week off to fuck with Patrick, and I guess I did, but a big part of it was just getting away from everything. I knew once we got into that car, it was all over. I knew the alpha would find me and drag me to the city and make me a good person. I don’t want to be a good person.
New Orleans is busy, and the expectations there are civilized. I’m glad my brothers are there. I know they’ll turn out better for it, even if I get salty when I see it happening in front of me. The problem is I already turned out. I’m done in a way they’re not. I’m a wild thing. I’m a wolf.
I hunt for my food, slinking through the woods in my wolf form, enjoying the rich and alive scents of the world. I have a lingering pang of guilt for just running away from Karl, but I never promised I’d stay at his house, and it’s true that I don’t owe him my body or anything else. We had a deal that involved me getting my territory restored, and I didn’t get that.
Rainer gets his fucking mall and loses his son. He paid in blood for those car parks and the future buildings, and the houses that will inevitably fucking flood when the swamp reasserts itself periodically. I guess, when I really think about it, my territory hasn’t gone anywhere. Paving over nature doesn’t really destroy nature; it just pisses it off and makes it come back twice as hard.
I’m trying to come to terms with the loss, and accepting the fact that the loss is a gain for everybody besides me. There’s not a person who has suffered in this more than me, unless you count Patrick, but I don’t count him.
These are my human thoughts. My animal thoughts are so much easier.
I snatch a fish from the water and chew it whole, my sharp jaws working at the living flesh. It’s cruel, but nature is. I am too. I don’t have to pretend otherwise anymore.
I find myself looking for something. I don’t know what, exactly. The house I found to hole up in is okay, but when I am in my wolf form, I want something more made of earth and stone. I want to be surrounded by the solid world, nothing made by man, nothing that smells of sugar and sweat and alcohol.
I’m looking for a den. Somewhere to curl up and feel protected, somewhere I can defend against anyone or anything that might try to get in. The house won’t work for that. It is all windows and doors and thin panels that any creature of strength could break through if it wanted to. I used to be happy in a human built home, but suddenly the very notion of living in something constructed feels deeply wrong.
I can’t find what I am looking for. The ground is too wet. I need to move up into the hills, I think. I need to track north a long way, up toward Shreveport. There will be other packs there, but that’s not a bad thing, I guess. My instincts are screaming at me wordlessly.
In the meantime, I sleep in the house I am less than comfortable in, slipping into my naked human form when I sleep, because as much as I want to avoid human feelings, I can’t do it forever. My body won’t allow it.
Days pass like this. When I’m awake, I take refuge in my animal self, I seek a den. When I sleep, I do so in one of the houses,because I can’t seem to find a place I trust. Now and then I try to dig, but it’s not exactly right.
As time passes, every now and then, I catch a scent on the wind. Something male is following me. Another wolf. I only really smell him when I am in my animal form, and my instincts tell me to steer clear of him. Males represent danger.
I try not to think of men when I am in my human form. I push the memory of the only male who ever mattered to me out of my mind. By being human only when I sleep, I can avoid thinking. And by being animal while awake, I can fulfill the simple needs I can never seem to as a human.
This works until a massive man bursts through the ramshackle door of the hut I am sleeping in late one night, pins me to the mattress of leaves and moss I put together myself, and starts lashing my ass with a leather paddle he must have bought for the occasion.
I have no clothes to protect me, and I am so startled I don’t even really react at first. I just lie there being taken and punished by my furious mate.
“I told you if you ran, I’d come for you, and I told you I’d make it the worst it’s ever been. Didn’t I?”
I screech as he spanks me so fucking hard I can barely move, one hand pinning me in place as he thrashes me so intensely, it has to be the hardest he’s ever done this to me.
“Hey! Stop! It’s so fucking… Ow! Too fucking hard!”
“There’s not a hard enough when it comes to you,” Karl growls. “Did you think you’d run away and I’d just let you go? No. Ofcourse not. You knew I would come for you. You knew I’d punish you. And now it’s happening, and it’s going to fucking hurt.”
“I’m sorry!”
“Are you?” He pulls my head up, one hand in my hair. “Are you sorry, or are you just sore? Are you sorry for your behavior? Or are you sorry that the consequences hurt?”
He’s lecturing me so roughly and so cruelly. I was asleep. I was vulnerable, and now I am being treated like I’ve committed some terrible crime.
“I’m not sorry,” I correct myself. “You’re mean and I wish I had run even further. Fuck you.”
“No, Ellie,” he snaps. “Fuck you.”
He thrusts his cock inside me roughly, giving me hard strokes that remind me how his body makes mine feel. When he fucks me, I can’t pretend I don’t belong to him. I feel his ownership in each and every inch of him.
“You know not to run from me. You know who you belong to. You know how much it hurt when you were kidnapped, and you went ahead and kidnapped yourself. You took yourself away from me, Ellie, and I told you that I wouldn’t have it.”
I shift.
“Fuck,” I hear him curse as he is forcibly ejected from me. I can run a lot faster than he can in my wolf form.
The next thing I hear is a snarl following me in the dark. My mate and I flash through the trees, my feet pounding at the ground. He is gaining on me. He is powerful in a way I will never be, because he is bigger, stronger, and more dominant. I know Iam going to lose in my animal form as well as my human one. There is nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide.
