Page 1 of Brock’s Mate

Chapter 1

Brock Reilly was preparing his escape.

He threw the last few things into the duffel bag sitting on his bed, zipped it shut, and slung it over his shoulder.

Stepping into the hallway outside his suite, he listened with his super-sensitive wolf hearing.

The huge house was silent, just like it was supposed to be. His entire crew was at Colt and Callie’s newly rebuilt bar and roadhouse, which had recently had its wildly successful grand opening on New Year’s Eve.

Now they were backing up that success with some kind of pre-Valentine’s-Day extravaganza, leading up to an even bigger event a week from now, on the actual day.

Brock had told them he’d meet them there, which was a total lie. The last place he wanted to be on a Saturday night was a bar full of fat red heart balloons and desperate lonely people feeling like crap about themselves because they didn’t have a date for a capitalistic Hallmark holiday.

He was having nothing to do with Valentine’s Day, or romance, or women who weren’t in his crew.

Come to think of it, right now he didn’t even want anything to do with the women who were in his crew. They’d all been taken over by Valentine mania.

Brock was the only one in the crew who didn’t have a mate, and the other six couples had been together less than a year. It was going to be the first Valentine’s Day for all of them, and by the time it rolled around Brock intended to be far, far away from the miasma of bliss and sex pheromones that was already lying over their territory like a toxic depressive cloud, making both him and his wolf want to stab people in the heart balloon.

Even Phantom Nick, their ghost crew member, had fallen in love over Christmas. Not that Brock grudged Nick his happiness, exactly, but hell. When a dead guy was getting more action than you were, it was time to take off for a while.

Brock did not need to watch that shit, even though he definitely was not on the mate market. He wasn’t like the others; he couldn’t handle being in love. His wolf couldn’t handle it.

Brock was a healer—and worse, he was a rescuer. He fell for women who needed him. Or rather, needed someone. Anyone. And they just kept on needing, filling his life with drama and pain, sucking him dry until he had nothing left.

No way was he going down that road again.

He listened once more, making sure none of his crew had figured out he was not going to ‘catch up with them’, and had come back to get him.

He still heard nothing, so he ran down the stairs and headed out to the car, grabbing his leather jacket from a hook in the mudroom on the way.

He was just slinging his duffel into the trunk when the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Danger. He heard a tiny sound behind him, but before he could turn and confront the threat, every muscle in his body froze.

Binding spell.

He felt a cold hand on the back of his neck, and instant sleepiness overtook him. Another spell. He dimly felt a bag being pulled over his head, and then everything went dark.

When he woke up, Brock was hogtied in the back of a moving vehicle. He couldn’t scent anything useful—the bag was still over his head and it smelled strongly of onions, blocking out everything else. He tried to sit up but only moved a few inches before he banged his head.

So, he was in the trunk then. And judging by the duffel-bag-shaped object pressing into his back, he was in his own trunk. Awesome.

He sensed he hadn’t been passed out for long—possibly only a few minutes. He wondered why his captors had used magic rather than a tranquilizer gun. Maybe they were sorcerers—or maybe they didn’t want to waste time waiting for him to wake up and get over his grogginess, which could mean they wanted information—and quickly.

Information on what, he had no idea.

He tested his bonds. Strong enough to hold a shifter captive for a while, but not unbreakable. If they’d tied his hands in front of him he could have just shifted and slipped out of them, but wolves weren’t built to have their front paws tied behind their backs. The last thing he needed was to turn into a wolf with dislocated shoulders.

Even so, this whole op screamed short-term immobilization, so they couldn’t be taking him far. Hell, they’d even left his cell phone in his back pocket.

Amateurs.

If he could just reach it before the car stopped…

Too late. They turned and crunched over some gravel, and then came to a stop.

The car rocked slightly as doors opened and people got out. Four doors slammed, so there were at least that many of them.

It had been a while since he was in a four-on-one fight. And he was starting to get pissed off—this might even be fun.