Page 16 of Feral

“Sounds great.” I led her back to the front door. It did, and it didn’t.

I’d love to hang out with her, maybe get more information on Jett, but the more people I met and befriended under false pretenses, the more would feel betrayed when my real identity was revealed, and the real Natalie showed up. I wasn’t here to make friends and have a good time. I wasn’t here to fix up this old house although that was what I’d been doing all morning, and I still needed to get up on the roof.

“I’ll be here working on the house.”

She glanced around. “It’s a nice place. Good bones. You could make it a bed and breakfast or something.”

I shrugged. Even if it was up to me, I’d have no clue how to run a business like that. I didn’t do hospitality. “Today I have to get up on the roof. There’s a leak, and it’s got to get fixed.”

She went down the steps, then turned back, tilted her chin up to look at the front of the house. “Be careful up there. I don’t want to see you in the ER.”

8

ROB

I stayed away overnight,my wolf keeping me awake. He was restless and riled after that kiss. After the pseudo-intervention in the kitchen. I’d just kissed my mate but was being pushed toward another woman. A she-wolf. Claiming and biting a female who wasn’t your mate might or might not end the moon madness—the subject was up for debate. There were not scientific studies on wolf shifter physiology.

They were being thoughtful, in a matchmaker sort of way, but it might not actually solve my problem.

The only way to do so was to sink my teeth into Natalie’s sweet flesh and permanently mark her as mine. The one my wolf wanted. If I claimed her, the moon madness would be gone for certain. But I’d be mated to a human.

I’d be dead from moon madness otherwise, meaning there would be a new alpha. Or, I’d be mated to a human and alive, but there would be a new alpha.

I didn’t want to fuck my pack like that. So I was fucked.

I shifted my dick in my pants. I wasn’t fucked. Iwantedto be. By Natalie.

She was just down the road, no doubt getting off without me. Maybe even with Markle. She wouldn’t dare go to him after the kiss we shared. That wasmyjob now, to see to her pleasure. If she had needs, I’d meet them, whatever they were. Clint and Boyd had kept silent, understanding the situation I was now in. They had no answers.

I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. Did the pack think Iwantedto turn feral? To go so mad I couldn’t shift back to human form? A danger to man and shifter alike? Wolves like that had to be put down before they injured someone.

That was why, after I’d had my third cup of coffee, that I might as well be damned. Again. I shouldn’t have gone over there, confronted her about seeing Markle. Shouldn’t have kissed her. I couldn’t help it, just like I couldn’t help it now. I didn’t have to claim her. I could fuck her out of my system. Boyd and Colton had fucked their mates without biting them. If they could do it, I could. Hell, I wasn’t a virgin. I’d fucked and not bitten a female before. But none of them had been my mate. I could do it. I’d rather die with a sated dick than with blue balls. I could let my wolf be happy for a little while before I had to give her up for the pack. For a Canadian she-wolf mail order bride.

My cell rang, and I sighed when I looked at the name of the caller. “What?” I barked at Boyd.

“Your mate’s on her roof.”

I pushed off the counter and stared out the kitchen window. “How the fuck do you know that?”

I couldn’t see her house, so I grabbed my hat off the hook and stormed out the back door, the screen slapping behind me, so I could get a view of the Shefield house. I might have exceptional night vision, but I couldn’t see a woman on the roof from this distance.

“Because Audrey went to visit her this morning, and Natalie told her she was going to fix a leaky roof.”

“Why?” I stalked to my truck, my wolf panicking about our mate getting hurt.

“Because there’s a fucking leak, and it rained last night,” he repeated.

“No, why did Audrey visit?”

“Because it’s neighborly. She took her brownies.”

“Fuck neighborly. I thought you said your mate couldn’t boil water. Is she trying to kill her?” I snarled, putting the truck into gear, the wheels kicking up dust with my haste to get down the road.

“Fine. I won’t call next time your mate is in danger.”

“You told your wife,” I said, circling back to a big issue.

“Of course, I did.”