Page 63 of His Runaway Mate

He gets up and starts moving toward the exit without so much as looking at me, following impulse and instinct as he always does. He does not stop to consider if this is a trap. We just finished running from Rex’s pack. Surely he realizes that… no. He is too feral, too animal to care.

“Stay where you are,” he calls. “I’m coming. I will bring you something to eat.”

“Oh, I’m so relieved! I came off the trail and I didn’t…”

“Argh! Fuck! You bastards!” Those words are my father’s screeches of agony as a net is dropped over him. Silver will do that to our kind.

I come out slowly. I feel a strange sense of shame and guilt, knowing I have caused all this trouble. Rex wanted me to talk to him over ice cream, and I detonated his bedroom, killed a man, and led them all on a wild hunt. I think it is safe to say I am going to be in trouble.

My father takes their attention for the most part. I think about slinking off. I could get away. Save them all the trouble. I decide to see if I can sidle out of the mouth of the mine while they are all trying to contain my father’s feral rage.

“Do not. Fucking. Move.”

I feel Rex snarl at me.

I stop, I turn, and I look at him.

He is naked. And he is powerful. He has always had a naturally dominant presence and now he is more alpha than ever. He glowers at me with an expression that hovers somewhere between possession and relief, and I know that every little instinct I had about being in trouble was just the beginning. I am in very big trouble.

“Let me go, idiots!” My father is flailing inside the net. “You can’t take her!”

“She’s mine,” Rex says.

“She was mine first,” my father says. “And she has me in her. You’re too rich. Too soft. Too used to the finer things. That’s not what she is. She’s a feral wolf who will kill and feed every time she shifts.”

I start to sob. I hate that he is saying these terrible animal things in front of Rex and his hunters. They will all remember this. Laura, too. She is looking at me with a shocked gaze. She’s always seen me as a fashionable powerhouse. I don’t think she knows how to deal with me this way, filthy, bloodied, wearing an old, stained hoodie that smells like dozens of kills. This is perhaps the worst humiliation I can imagine.

“Take him away,” Rex says. “And bring the helicopter in here. I’m flying her home.”

* * *

Rex

She looks so small. So pitiful. The tears that course down her cheeks leave streaks from the filth she has been subjected to. I snapped at her when she tried to sneak away, because she will not be allowed to avoid any of this. She has done a great deal of bad things in the last few days. She has made me afraid in ways I never knew I was capable of feeling fear.

I reach out and I wrap her in my arms, I hold her close and I smell the pain, the fear, and the death on her. Some of it will wash away. Some of it will remain longer than either of us want it to.

“I missed you,” I murmur into her hair.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpers.

I soften for her in that tremulous moment. I hold her tight and I wish nobody else was here, and I wish I could give her a fucking bath because my god. The stench.

My team have cleared a place for the helicopter to land. These old mine sites had to have access points so there’s a clearing that had been overgrown until they ranged through it.

I don’t ever want to let her go again. I want to keep a physical hold on her from now until the end of time.

The helicopter lands on the roof of my building. I carry her out and down into the adjusted quarters. Straight to the bathroom we go. I run a bath, strip her down, and put her in it.

There are no words between us for most of this time. She instantly turns the bath water a deep brown color. I rinse her off with the showerhead while I refill the tub. In the meantime, she sits with her knees drawn up and her head bowed. I think she is just barely conscious. Exhaustion is her main problem right now.

Finally, after days in the wild, properly shifted for the first time, and alone and hunted, she is safe. She is with me. Finally.

“Stay awake for me,” I say. “Just until I can get you cleaned up enough for bed, okay?”

She lifts her head, but drops it pretty much immediately. Every bit of energy she had has been sapped by the fight for survival. Maybe I should have left her in the pre-shift bliss. She was happier then. She’d left the old man behind, started a new pack. I understand the reason for the Runaways now. She wanted to fix what had been broken for a lifetime.

And I came in, all bluster and money and tried to buy her efforts out from under her, and then I mated her and I set in motion a chain of events that could only ever end the way they did.