Page 15 of Bred Mate
“You don’t need to know where everyone is. You just need to get our forest back. From the valley to the river, and across to those mountains. It’s all ours.” She looks at me with fierce eyes.
“Alright. I don’t want to deny you the land, but this isn’t the way to do things. Putting me in a chair, wrapping me in silver, demanding I do what you say. If this land is owned by a forestry company, we’re talking millions to buy it out. Millions in what you want to be unproductive dollars.”
I sound like my father. I hate it, but I know this way of speaking makes people think you know what you’re doing. It’s a shortcut to being trusted. I want out of these chains.
“I don’t care what it costs,” Ellie says. “We’ve been petitioning the alpha for years now, and bit by bit, our land got sold off anyway. So I don’t trust what you say, and I don’t care what it costs. These are old forests. Logging them is a sin.”
I’d say I agree with her, but the truth is I don’t care about trees. I’m a hunter. An enforcer. I’m not an environmentalist. I understand the concept of territory, but there’s fuck all here to begin to care about.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this. Right now, I’m planning on getting out of the chains and whipping and fucking Ellie’s ass for daring to put them on me. Then I’ll deal with the brothers, Tim first. He thought he could fuck me up. Head still aches from that.
“If you won’t give us what we want, we’re going to send a ransom demand to your family,” she says. “There’s no world in which we don’t get what we want. Do you understand?”
“You say one fucking word to my family, and I’ll make you regret it,” I growl.
Her eyes flash at me with light. I was hoping to scare her, but I’m realizing all I’ve actually done is give her a little more leverage.Now she knows I don’t want her to contact my family, I bet she’ll be in someone’s ear by morning.
“Tomorrow’s coming,” she says. “And when it does, I want to own this forest, alright?”
CHAPTER 5
Ellie
When the sun goes down, I tell my brothers to keep an eye on Karl. I take them aside when I tell them what to do, knowing they’ll listen. They’re excited that we’re finally doing something. Tim especially is keen to keep Karl right where we need him.
“We’re getting close,” I tell them. “Now all I have to do is go and ask for money. Don’t get too close to him, and don’t take your eyes off him. If he moves, don’t shoot him, but make him think you will—not you, Connor. You go in the other house and get some sleep. I don’t want you near that man.”
“I want to guard him,” Connor says, then yawns. He shouldn’t be mixed up in this. The way Karl looked at me after he looked at the place we live made me feel deeply guilty. I know that we don’t live well. I know that Connor doesn’t go to school as often as he should. And I know that the place is filthy. And I know that I’m not doing a good enough job being responsible, and I know that this is fucked up.
Once we own our place, we can start to make it good. Once we don’t have to live in fear for not having anywhere to be in the next six months, we can settle. Tim and Tate are both already quite good at fixing things. Mostly they take things from the other old houses and use them to fix the one we sleep in, but we all need our space and sometimes we spread out through a couple of different places.
I don’t want Connor and Karl in the same place if I’m not here. I owe my littlest brother my protection. This is all for them. For our family. I wish I didn’t have to leave them, but Tim is capable of guarding Karl. He’s a big guy, and Tate’s not much smaller. Give it a few more years and there will be three of them, guarding the whole thing. One day, there will be babies again in the forest. There will be life in these trees. There will be a pack again.
“Don’t worry, sis. You got this,” Tim says. “Now go and freak them all the fuck out about what you’ll do if we don’t get what we want.”
I go out, and I take Karl’s car. Can’t call anybody from here, can’t even get online here, but if I drive to the nearest town, Baltair, I’ll get a signal and then I can send the ransom demand. I took Karl’s phone before I left, made sure it was unlocked, and took some numbers.
I ring the one I reckon is likely to get the biggest rise out of him. The one marked ‘Asshole Brother.’
I know who that is; it’s Gray. He’s younger than Karl, but he got a reputation recently for marrying a really rich woman. There are all kinds of rumors swirling now. A lot of them are absolutely crazy, and I don’t believe them for a second. But I do thinkhitting up the rich side of the family with the news I have their brother captive is a good idea.
“Hello?” I hear a man’s voice. He’s got a slight English accent. Interesting.
“Is this Gray Dulac?”
“It is. But this isn’t my brother,” he says, sounding more curious than anything. I’m guessing Karl doesn’t often put in calls to his little brother. “Who am I talking to?”
“The woman who has your brother.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Must be hard on you.”
The voice sounds thoroughly amused. He’s missing the point, but of course he is.
“I have your brother, Gray. I have him captive, and I won’t be releasing him until I get paid.”
There’s a pause. Then a question.
“How much do you want?”
