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I think for a second about how to get out of this. I could shift and run past him. He might shift as well, but will he give chase and risk exposure? Probably not. My bet is he’s here to lecture me about the exposure laws and tell me I can’t take my wolf form without permission, yadda fucking yadda.

“Don’t run,” he says. “It won’t work. I’ll catch you almost instantly, and you’re already exhausted from the murdering.”

He’s right. If I shift again, I’m going to be so fucking ravenous I’m going to have to go buy food. Don’t really want to do that. I want to go home, have a shower, go to bed. There’s food at home, I guess. Lots of it. But Chef will be asleep and I don’t want to wake her up for midnight protein pancakes.

I reckon I can get rid of this guy by talking, maybe. Men all want one thing. If I can convince him I’m not up for it, he’ll go back on the prowl.

“I’m not worth catching,” I tell him. “Go find some fertile unmated female and convince her to shift for you. I’ve already been mated. I’m no good to you.”

He stands there, not moving. I wish I could make out his face, but I don’t want to get any closer. And I can’t smell him, because the alley is so full of blood and guts that’s really all I can sense.

I wonder if he simply wants to use a female who can’t be defended because her mate is dead. When Christian was alive, this shit never happened. Everyone respected the mate bond. Even pieces of shit like the guy I just killed would have given me a wide berth. Men of all kinds and species knew better than to fuck with me.

Since he passed, scraggly males who can’t get their own virgin females have been circling me. But this guy is anything but scraggly. He’s got the aura of an alpha about him.

I don’t trust his interest. I definitely don’t understand it. Alphas notoriously pick some young virgin to bond with. They say it’s all fated, but kind of interesting how Fate seems to prefer barely legal girls with double Ds.

“You’re caught,” he says. “And the quicker you come to terms with that, the easier this is going to be.”

I’m not really interested in making this easy for him.

“If you come anywhere near me, I’m going to savage you so badly you’ll wish you were never born. I’ll make what I did to this guy seem like a neat way to go. Now get the fuck out of my way.”

I decide to walk purposefully toward him, because I have to. If I let him corner me, then I’m being hunted. Sometimes you have to be bold, even if you don’t feel like it. Especially if you don’t feel like it, actually.

I am completely stark naked apart from my boots as I do this, my hair isn’t long enough to provide coverage to my double Ds, and while I do have a thick thatch of hair at the apex of my thighs, I know I am a picture of wild feminine brutality. Hopefully he’s intimidated.

The closer I get to him, the taller he seems to be. I snatch my jacket out of his fingers and shoulder check him on the way past.

For a brief moment, I think my bluff has worked. I shrug the jacket on and step out of the alley. Then the same two fingers that had my jacket reach out and snag the back of my collar. I’m pulled back, an arm is wrapped around my waist, and I am hoisted up from the ground as if I weigh nothing at all.

“I’ve got her,” he says to someone who isn’t here.

Three seconds later, an unmarked black van pulls up on the road opposite. The side door is thrown open. He carries me into the interior, and that’s all it takes to fucking kidnap me. The shifter who opened the door gets out of the interior and into the front passenger seat, giving my captor and me the whole rear of the van to ourselves.

“Asshole! Idiot!” I call him both things as I try to kick my way out of the now moving vehicle.

He grabs me more firmly and pins me face down on the back bench seat. I can pretty much lie on it, but for my legs being bent at the knees, feet on the window. I start kicking it, but I guess the glass is bulletproof as well as tinted, because it doesn’t bend.

“Relax,” he says. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to take you somewhere safe, and we’re going to deal with you.”

“Deal with me how?”

A sharp slap lands across my bare ass, making me curse as sting heats my cheeks. The fuck does he think he is doing?

“Like that, most likely, given the way you’re acting right now,” he says. He has a very even tone to his voice. I’m resisting and cursing and he’s not perturbed in the least. He saw me fucking kill a guy, and he’s treating me like… I don’t even know what I can say this is like, because it’s not like anything I ever experienced before.

“You’ve been a menace,” he says. “Hunting you hasn’t been easy.”

“How long have you been looking for me?”

“Maybe three hours,” he says.

I laugh at that, because the concept of hunting me being hard when he’s only been looking for three hours is silly. What he really means is he found me almost instantly. Dick.

While I let myself have a rare moment of amusement, I realize he is winding rope around my ankles. I am being bound up, and there is nothing I can do about it. When he has them tied, he reaches for my wrists, pulls them behind my back and secures them with more rope.

“Let me fucking go, you pervert!”