Page 6 of Bred Mate
“What do you know about the smaller packs?” I ask him. “I feel like she’s not from around here.”
“Your father had some dealings with the smaller packs, but they’re not always easily found. Our kind can be reclusive if they feel threatened. There are untold unspoken deals between Orion and others, deals made long ago. We don’t have records of all of them. We can’t. That means there’re surprises coming for you, Karl.”
“What kind of surprises?”
“Surprises of the kind you might not be entirely ready for.”
“Is that the best help you’ve got for me? Telling me that my father’s made deals with people I don’t know?”
“Myhelpis telling you that you’ve got to do the diplomacy, not just the enforcing.”
He’s trying to remind me of my responsibilities. I suppose someone has to.
I’m a hunter. A killer. I do my job well, usually. This whole pack alpha thing isn’t what I thought it’d be. My father made it look not just easy, but enjoyable. He wielded power like a woman, something to display, something to enjoy.
I’m finding it to be anything other than enjoyable. It’s a pain in the ass. There’s nothing but responsibility and drama. Not the fun kind, the petty kind. Constant irritations and a whole lot of fighting. Baldwin is right. I haven’t been diplomatic. I’ve broken bones and I’ve taken lives and I’ve thrown my weight around.
I guess that’s my idea of fun.
“Would you like your morning coffee in your office, sir?” Baldwin shifts the topic of conversation smoothly, while giving me some direction.
I walk through the door to my office. I hate that I have an office. Offices are for men who keep office hours, and for people who like paperwork. I’m not either. I don’t want to meet with anyone. I don’t want to give up my time talking.
I don’t agree that I have to get diplomatic. I don’t have to be my father. I’m not him, after all. Nobody else is ever going to be Orion Dulac, and the truth is if people had any idea what he was actually like, they’d never dream of calling him diplomatic.
As I take that first step into my office, a body hits me hard enough to drop me. Heavy weight comes down on the back of my neck almost knocking me unconscious, and definitely knocking me to the floor.
It’s her.
The woman.
The one I wanted more than anything.
“What happened to your face?”
She asks the question with her foot on my throat. First she punched it, then she bit it, now she’s using it as a foot stool.
“None of your business.” I grab her ankle and shin and toss her onto the floor. She’s a lot of things, but she’s not very big, and this time she won’t get the jump on me if she shifts. I know what she is now. I know what she’s capable of. As her body hits the floor, stomach first, I reach out and pin her down.
A few hours earlier…
Ellie
My pack numbers just four. Me and my three little brothers.
There used to be dozens of us, but time and fortune hasn’t been kind. Disease has run through the group more than once. We’re vulnerable to so many things, in spite of being strong in so many ways. Shifters were never intended to live with humans. We’re cursed, designed to live as outcasts on the fringes, closer to animals than to men. But the modern world doesn’t allow for that kind of luxury. Every creature in the world has to get used to living with people one way or another.
We need help, and we need it from someone strong and powerful, someone who has the resources to make a real difference.
Goddammit. I do not want to go to the New Orleans alpha for help. There’s no way he’s going to do anything for me. Not after everything I’ve done to him. Not after I let him fuck me then practically killed him.
He’s a brutal man, and I know he’s not going to forgive me all that easily. I don’t know what I could give him to get him to help us. Asking nicely isn’t going to work. So I decided to jump him.
That brings me to this point. The point where I got a cheap shot in, and now I’m under him again. I’m not hating it nearly as much as I should be, and that scares me almost more than the fact that this asshole might snap my neck.
I don’t think so, though. I think he’s finally aware that I’m a wolf like him, so he doesn’t have to wipe me off the face of the planet for the sin of knowing who and what he is.
“What the fuck are you doing back here?” Karl growls into my ear as he pins me to the floor. His fingers are already at the belt of my pants, undoing them, and undoing his own. He’s not going to let me out of here without another fucking.
