On her.
Mine.
I don’t wait for her response. I can’t. My wolf snarls. But that isn’t what has me yanking my hand from her throat before I rise. It’s my wolf’s desperate plea to bite her in that spot.
Only mates bite each other. Fated mates and bitten mates.
The need is instinctive in fated mates. This want—this desire to mark the woman who is yours with your bite. With your mark.
But not all shifters ever find the mates the universe has set aside for them, so they choose their own. And they bite her because she feels like yours and you want every wolf to know it. Just as Sierra feels like mine.
My wolf wants nothing more than to drag her into her cabin, throw her down on her bed, and claim her as his. To make her forget Leo’s name. And then to end him.
He wants her with an intensity that obliterates how he felt about Melody. With Melody, he was caring, loving, protective.
My wolf wants to own Sierra. Craves her.
I take a step back, but it’s not enough to stifle the need building inside me.
No.
Slowly, Sierra sits up, drawing the sheet around her as she does. Her eyes are wary as she reaches a hand to her throat as if to cover the reddened mark.
The fucking hickey that Leo gave her.
I stare down at her. “You think I’m just like the others? We’ll see. Pack run tomorrow night. Leo interferes, he’s dead. You tell your boyfriend that I give one warning, and this was just it.”
Turning my back on a woman I shouldn’t want, I head for the farmhouse so I can wash the scent of Sierra Stone off my body.
If only getting her out of my head was so easy.
7
SIERRA
The next morning, my hands shake so badly during breakfast that the glass coffee pot slips out of my hand and smashes on the hardwood floor.
I cry out as hot coffee burns through my shirt.
“You okay there, Sierra?” Mitchell calls out.
Surprised anyone gives a damn, I turn my head to the dining table that I again set for ten. “I’m okay.”
The blond-haired shifter with a dark beard lowers his gaze to my shirt. “I think you’re a little confused by the meaning of a wet t-shirt contest. Works better with water.”
Laughter fills the room, and I jerk my head away.
Prick.
I should’ve known to expect a comment like that.
“If you want to take the shirt off, that’s fine by us,” Neale calls out. “The shorts, too.”
Without a word, I head for the door so I can grab a rag and a brush to clean up the mess, trying not to think about what I’m going to do about my severe lack of clothes, clean or otherwise.
Although I feel Galen’s eyes on me, he doesn’t say a word. Laughter and dirty jokes from the other men follow me from the room.
When I return, I keep my eyes on the mess in front of me.