Page 57 of His Runaway Mate

“That’s alright, darling,” he says, pulling over into a private leafy layaway. “I don’t need anything from you other than what you’ve got on you.”

“But I don’t have anything on me,” I say, confused.

“Exactly,” he leers.

He unsnaps his seatbelt, turns and reaches for me, big, pawing hands with filthy fingernails trying to lift up the hem of the hoodie. I draw back.

“Don’t be shy, honey,” he says. “I’m not asking much from you. Just let me do what I want and it’ll be over soon.”

I reach for the door handle. The locks click. He’s operated them from the driver’s side.

“Now you’re not going anywhere, pretty thing, not until I’m done with you,” he says, leering as his eyes turn black. I see something in him I did not see before. Shifters are not the only ones who have predators lurking inside them, beasts which want nothing more than to claim their prey.

I smell him. All of him. I smell his sweat, his filth. I smell something else, too. Death. I smell all the endings he’s brought to women who disappeared without a trace. I smell traces of their presence here, little whiffs of perfume and desperation. There are so many of them. Too many of them.

He lays his hand on me. It is clammy with excitement. It leaves a sticky, needy residue of powdered sugar, sweat, and road filth on my thigh.

It is the last thing he ever does.

CHAPTER 13

Rex

She’s been gone for almost twelve hours. The bedroom has been utterly destroyed. The mattress and blankets are ripped and torn, stuffing and feathers coat the scene, mixed with shattered glass. I can smell her here, still. I can smell her, and her fear.

I have come back to the place I made the mistake with the idea I might somehow be able to understand what’s happening now, but I don’t get it. We have seen a great many wolves through their transformations, and while they are often messy, and usually clumsy, I have never seen anyone react the way she did. The power, the intensity, the drive. She was not confused for a moment. She did not shift and whine, and when I took my form, she did not lick at my jaws in eager submission. She did not give out signals of softness, or look to me for the lead.

She attacked me, and she ran. She had precisely the same reaction in her wolf shape as she did in her human one, but she was much more able to act on her wild impulses. I was the one who wanted the shift so bad. She wanted to avoid it. She was trying to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen.

Obviously the full weight of our resources has been deployed. A web of surveillance, human and mechanical is covering a three-hundred-mile radius. She will be found. I know it.

And yet, I am deeply afraid that somehow we might miss her. She escaped my custody as if this place is as porous as a sieve. This, the fortress and home of the Regent pack was escaped from in minutes.

I remind myself that this is not a prison. It is not designed to keep those who do not want to be here in. I don’t know why she ran. She must have been absolutely furious with me. I must have neglected her so much she could not share a single thought with me that mattered. I came to her with an offer of chocolate ice cream, but by that time the damage had already been done.

I should have been courting her from the beginning. Taking her to dinner, ensuring I spent as much time with her as possible. But instead of any of that, I played the power game. I waited her out until her awoken hormones had her almost entirely out of control. And then I punished her. Confined her. And now she is gone, and there is something inside me telling me that no matter how I get her back, I won’t be getting the same person. Not completely. I changed her with my arrogance and negligence. I went to meetings instead of meeting her where she needed me, and I thought it was all okay because I was the alpha of the Regent pack and she was a little nobody. I thought she’d come to me, break for me, give me everything I wanted and I would never have to do more than breed her.

Now everything has fallen apart.

“Sir,” Fescue says, getting my attention. I did not hear him come in. I am too busy being locked in a reverie of the very particular misery that comes from missing the one I love.

I turn toward him for the update I know he must be here to give.

“We might have found a sign of her,” Fescue says. “A truck driver around sixty miles from here was found dead inside his cab. Reports say it looks like he was savaged, and partially consumed by a wolf.”

“Where do they get wolf from?”

“They have forensics, sir. And, naturally, our contacts follow wolf attacks, in case…”

“In case,” I say. From time to time, a shifter will turn feral. They will start to kill, and perhaps even eat human flesh. It’s frowned upon, because it can become a compulsion. In my pack, it is strictly forbidden.

“There’s a decent chance it was her,” Fescue says. “So I took the liberty of deploying trackers, sir. They are already on their way.”

I start walking. I am not going to be left out of or behind on this one. I want to be the one to find my mate. I want to be the one to save her from whatever troubles she has gotten herself into.

A dead man. Someone tried to hurt her.

“You think she ate a man?”