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“You can’t do that,” Luke said, and his eyes flashed silver.
“Um, I think I can. My original plan was to fight in the Games and get a bid.” I ignored his sputtered protests. “Just now, when I heard Del was killed, I sort of… lost the thread.” I pushed down the pain and despair that threatened to swamp me again as I thought of my mentor. Del had trained me to fight through pain. I needed to honor his teaching. “But you’re right. I can’t go in there now, I’ll get murdered.” I crouched down, rubbing a bleeding cut on my ankle. “I’ll go back, find that Glen and cash in the favor. Maybe he’ll take me back to Canada, or wherever. I’d love to stab our fucking Alpha in the heart, but I’d rather keep breathing.”
Luke was staring at me, jaw dropped. “Canada?”
“What? She who runs the fuck away, lives to heart-stab her Alpha another day.” Just like Del had taught me. Yeah, this was the best idea.
“Fuck, no.”
Whoa. I had never heard Luke curse before today, and now he’d done it twice. In fact, I had never seen him look so… undone. His midnight-black hair was standing on end, like he’d run his hands through it too many times, and he had dark circles under his eyes.
“Come on, I can’t stay. Anyone can see that.” I swallowed hard. “You’re not going to take me in, right?” If that was his plan, I would use the skills I’d learned from Del on his pretty face.
“Of course not, Flor. You’re my… It’s just, you… You can’t leave with Glen.” He spat the name out like it was poison.
“And why not?” I sneered through the wire, gasping when one of his hands came up—a hand tipped with his wolf’s claws—and tore through the wire like it was butter.
He tore two more great gashes in the fence, then stepped through, dropping to a crouch next to me. I was frozen, terrified… and sort of aroused. Strength like that was intensely hot. But he could so easily turn it against me.
“Luke, calm down. You said it yourself—I can’t stay here. They’ll kill me.”
“They won’t touch you.” Luke’s scent got stronger, thicker, somehow. He reached past me with those strange, clawed hands and gathered me in, embracing me like I was precious. Like I was his.
For a second, I let my eyes close, let myself feel the hum of belonging. This was what it felt to be pack. I’d never felt it before, except in short bursts, when Del had comforted me.
But the hum this time got louder, longer, until it wasn’t just a feeling of safety. It was a thrumming, like a string deep inside me had finally been plucked. My soul was vibrating in time with his.
“Luke?”
His gaze delved into mine, and his hands moved on my back, on my shoulders, the strange humming spreading from his clawed hands to sing in tune with something inside me. My core itself began to respond. It felt… good. Glorious.
“Luke?” I cried out again. “What’s happening?”
He growled his answer, though the word was garbled as he forced it past sharpened teeth. “Mine.”
My mind spun as I tried to piece together what that word could have meant, coming from Luke. “Your what?”
“Flor,” he said, sucking in a huge breath, surrounding me with his own flame and caramel scent. “You’re my true mate.”
I laughed, the shock of whatever was going on dispelled in an instant. “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining, Luke Callaway. You’re no more my true mate than I’m the Princess of Peoria. Stop messing around.”
“Flor!” His hands moved to my arms, wrapping around them, and he shook me slightly. “I’m telling the truth. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine.”
I had no idea what to say to that. So I stared into his entitled, Alpha Heir, sky-blue eyes, said a firm goodbye with a friendly stab to the gut, and hightailed it out of there.
11
Punished
BRAND
This day was one of the longest I’d ever suffered through, and it showed no signs of ending. Or at least, not ending well. I needed to shift, to dispel the restlessness and anger that had been growing since my arrival. But the host pack had asked us not to change inside the fenced compound, and to keep in human form as much as possible until our Alphas arrived. It would be considered an insult to the pack to ignore those requests, though they made no fucking sense at all.
I’d been appalled when I learned of it. I hadn’t spent a full day in human form since the day I could shift, and I didn’t understand how the wolves who lived here could bear being separated from their wolves for so long.
My pack was different. I couldn’t wait to get back to it, to the forests and the mountains of Colorado. Although now that I’d met her…
“Hello, Alpha Heir Becker.”
