Page 3 of His Runaway Mate

I am more befuddled than angry at this point, though anger could be coming soon. I do not enjoy being fucked with, and the fact that my hopes were raised to return to the reserve is causing dangerous disappointment.

“They do understand this is a hostile pack takeover. That there will be jaws on throats if this isn’t handled by end of business today?”

“Possibly not. This is a younger breakaway pack. They don’t follow the old rules. Most of them grew up never being told the word no, I reckon. I don’t understand half the things they say.”

“Did you call Nick Love directly?”

“Just got the secretary. She says Nick doesn’t talk on the phone.”

Every sentence leads me to a fresh circle of hell.

“What do you mean he doesn’t talk on the phone?”

“Apparently he doesn’t like it. She said he prefers texting. Or memes.”

Now I know they are trying to provoke us. “They want us to perform a several million dollar takeover via memes?”

“Well, not memes.” Chase Ratcliff clears his throat. “Via short form videos about unrelated subjects that somehow still tangentially relate, ideally.”

“This is deeply unserious behavior.”

“Yes, that is rather the marker of the generation, sir.”

“Someone should have dealt with these pups months ago,” I sigh.

“You were busy, sir.”

“Yes,” I admit. “I was.”

I am always busy. That’s why I don’t have anything resembling a mate. I’ve taken lovers from time to time, but none of them have had any fated energy. The connection between an alpha and his mate is sacred and urgent and cannot be denied. I’ve never experienced that, and I am starting to wonder if I never will.

Not everybody meets their fated mate. Not everybody gets to experience the world through a devoted lover’s eyes. I might, eventually, if I must, settle for a suitable female instead. It would be best to continue the bloodline. Not doing so leaves the pack open to power struggles.

I’ve met a few pleasant, smart, and beautiful female shifters recently, all potential candidates for the role, but none of them are the one. I know that, and the fact is, they know it too. They have the mates made for them, and to take one of them would be to deny them that.

It’s complicated. It’s time consuming. And it means I really don’t have time for a pack of upstart wolf brats refusing hundreds of thousand dollars to fall in line.

“I’m going to go and handle this in person,” I tell him. “I assume they have a physical location? They’re not all online in their various bedrooms?”

He clears his throat again. “They do have a physical location,” he says. “One you are familiar with.”

“Where are they?” My tone is short, made shorter by the fact he is making me ask the same question twice. The new suit is starting to feel remarkably small as my body starts the preamble to shifting.

I hear Fescue make a strangled sound of annoyance.

“If I’ve asked him once, I’ve asked him a thousand times to take off his jacket before he comes over all alpha,” I hear him say to the unfortunate tailor.

I turn my attention back to the call, where my associate has finally decided to stop stuttering and just spit it out. “They’re actually in the old warehouse.”

My brows very nearly hit my fucking hairline. “Excuse me?” My voice is quiet and dangerous.

“I doubt they realize the significance of the building, sir. I think it was a matter of opportunistic…”

“I have to go,” I say, ending the call.

These little shits have decided to try to take over some of my territory using my birthplace as a staging ground. The fucking nerve is unbelievable, and will not go unpunished.

Unlike Chase, I do not believe this is an accident. I think they chose the location on purpose to bait me. Unfortunately for them, it took much longer than they imagined for me to be baited.