“I don’t know!” It came out in a burst that made Leggy jerk at my feet. I threw my hands up, starting to pace across the veterinary office. “I wish I did. Just knowing one way or another would be better than this.”
“Maybe Jay and I should try to contact him again.”
I paused in my pacing to turn back toward Paul. “You know how well that went last time. If he refuses to speak to us, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“But if he’s hurting people, we have a responsibility as his parents.” Paul said the words so softly, with so much guilt behind them, that it broke my heart.
“Just don’t say anything to Aidan yet,” I pleaded. “He won’t care about evidence.” My brother was a very moral man. Too moral, I often thought. He didn’t understand temptation and darkness and he had little forgiveness for it.
Paul nodded without protest. Everyone had accepted Aidan as the new alpha after my father died and in the absence of anyone else vying for the position, but the alpha didn’t have to know everything. I was sure there had been plenty of secrets kept from my father as well.
“I’m going to head home and talk to Jay about this.” Paul grabbed his own jacket off of the hook on the wall to pull it on, then scooped up his keys and wallet from the desk. “Want me to take Leggy back to your house for you?”
“Yeah, that’d be great.”
He grabbed my dog’s leash as well and whistled for him before hooking it onto Leggy’s collar.
“Keep me posted,” Paul said, then kissed me on the cheek.
I smiled at him as bravely as I could, nodding. “I will.”
When he opened the door to leave I could hear evening rain starting to patter on the concrete outside, likely washing away whatever scent trails had remained that I might have been able to follow. I sighed, but there was nothing to be done about it.
I shared the office with Dr. Stone, another vet who was getting close to retirement but had wanted to slowly ease out of work instead of just quitting all at once. He came in for a few hours every week, but not nearly as often as he used to. More and more of the business was slowly being shifted over to me so he could be sure his clients would be well cared for. Late nights checking on the animals who were spending the night in the office generally fell on me or a vet tech willing to stay late, but I really didn’t mind the task.
There were two cats staying under observation and one mixed breed puppy who had been hit by a car. He was why I had left Paul in the office instead of just locking everything up when Frankie called, because he really needed someone staying close by for at least the first night. The puppy looked to have been abandoned or neglected, because he was full of parasites and malnourished, but he had also known love at some point. He trusted too easily to be entirely feral. When I approached the cage where he was resting, he whined and attempted to push himself up to come closer to me.
“Hey little guy,” I greeted him as I opened up the cage. I reached in to stroke along his head, settling him down, and used the opportunity to check him over once more and reassure myself he hadn’t taken a turn for the worse while I was gone.
Chapter 3
Hunter
The door to the veterinary clinic had a bell hanging from it, no doubt to catch the attention of anyone who had stepped into the back with the animals. I pushed the door open slowly and carefully and slid a hand in to catch the bell so it wouldn’t chime when I pushed the door open the rest of the way to step inside. I had watched and waited until my dad left, unwilling to do this with an audience. He had tried to contact me far too many times to just let me say what I needed to say. He’d ask questions that I wasn’t willing to answer. Chances were good that Sofia would ask a lot of questions as well, but I had to speak to her. Speaking to anyone else was just pure masochism.
Once I was inside I shut the door behind me as quietly as I had opened it, then clicked the lock into place. There was one of those old-fashioned little signs hanging in the window that declared the clinic was open. I turned it around, then twisted the rod to close the blinds as well. Satisfied, I surveyed the semblance of privacy I had created. No one could walk in, no one could see me inside, and it was unlikely anyone would come knocking on the door either.
The scent of the clinic was overwhelming to me, a mixture of vitamins, pet food, medication, and animal fear. Unnatural. That Sofia had chosen to surround herself with something so uniquely human as medicine for animals that should have been food or annoyances baffled me.
I walked in the silence of a predator as I made my way through the building, following the sound of Sofia speaking to what I assumed was one of her patients.
“Such a good, brave boy you are. Yes, you are. What a good boy,” she was cooing.
The sight of her as I came around the corner into the back room made me go still. Her back was to me, but there was no mistaking her for someone else even after all of these years. She had grown a little taller since she was eighteen and by the look of her she had filled out more, blossoming into powerful womanhood, but her glossy black braids were just the same as they had always been. The way she carried herself had that same unconscious self-confidence I had always found so appealing. A strong mate who chose to be with me instead of needing me was all I could ever accept—nothing less would do—and she was near to perfect in that way except for the fact that she wasn’t with me.
“I hope that’s a dog you’re talking to, or I might have to kill my rival,” I said.
I saw her stiffen, her shoulders drawing up slightly as if she could raise her hackles in her human skin. Sofia carefully shut the cage she had been tending, then turned around to face me.
Actually being face to face with her again just about took my breath away. Stupid human concerns like aesthetics really had never mattered to me all that much—the strength and power of Sofia had always appealed more—but she had grown up beautiful. Wide-set eyes with irises as dark as obsidian watched me, narrowed in suspicion. Full lips that I ached to kiss were pursed in a faint frown. Her smooth brown skin was a bit lighter than it had been the last time I saw her, likely the result of spending too much time indoors, working this obnoxiously human job.
That I was spending a little much time of my own in an office these days irritated me to admit, but I pushed that thought aside.
“Hunter.” She breathed my name, barely more than a whisper, and I remembered the last time she had gasped it against my ear when I was inside of her. Sofia cleared her throat, then raised her voice when she spoke again. “I was just trying to figure out how to contact you.”
“I’m not that hard to find.” I stalked closer to her, circling in from the side though she turned to continue facing me rather than letting me get the advantage of her back again. “Probably as easy to find as you.”
“Finding you isn’t the hard part. It’s getting you to actually respond,” she retorted. “Your dads even went to your office one day and weren’t allowed to see you.”
“I wasn’t there.” It was the truth and a truth I was grateful for.
“And you can’t return a message? You can’t pick up a phone and call?”
Since she kept turning to face me every time I tried to circle around her, I just started advancing forward instead. Her eyes remained focused on mine and now she didn’t budge, refusing to back down. This was her territory and I was invading it. No matter how domesticated she had been by this life, she was still a dominant bitch underneath it all. I liked that.
“Why should I?” I asked. “When I was pushed out, I stopped being anything to them. They’d only adopted me to give me a place in the pack.”
She still didn’t back down even when I came within an inch of her body. We were so close I could feel the heat of her through our clothing and she had to tip her head back to look into my eyes, but there wasn’t the faintest hint of submission in her as she glared up at me. God, I wanted her. I had to curl my hands into fists to keep from touching her.
“They’re your parents and they always
will be,” she bit out.
My lips curled slightly in a mocking smile. “Is that how it works? Once you’ve got a bond like that it never goes away?”
She made a soft sound of disgust as if shocked that I even had to ask that question, her eyes never wavering from mine. “Yes, it is.”
Giving in to temptation now, I brought my hand up to trace what I could see of her mating mark. The scar tissue was raised, each tooth mark I had left in her carefully tattooed with black. I had one just like it on my shoulder, made with Sofia’s daintier jaws. Bites and marks were common enough amongst mated shifters, but we had gone a step further by using the scarification ritual from her grandmother. Ashes and herbs meant to ensure the scar would be raised and darkened like a sculpture on flesh had been rubbed into the wounds. They supposedly had mystical properties as well, binding us in ways that went far beyond spoken promises. I had worried she’d pull away from the touch, but she remained where she was. If I hadn’t been watching her so closely I might have missed the barely perceptible shiver.
I ducked down to bring my lips next to her ear and murmured, “Then why isn’t my mate with me?”
That was what made her pull away. She jerked back, her arm banging into an empty cage and rattling it. The puppy she had been tending before whined at the sound.
A moment of silence passed. There wasn’t an easy answer from her to my question, which frustrated me. She was mine and yet she wasn’t. How could she justify that?
But then she did respond, surprising me by darting forward to snarl at me, “Why didn’t you take me with you?”
I raised my brows, genuinely taken aback by the question. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You left. My father threw you out and you just left. I tried to find you, but you’d dropped out of college and moved. Do you know that I went after you? I packed up a bag and was ready to go anywhere I just needed to be with you and you left.” Her voice raised in volume and pitch as she continued, until it cracked on the last word. She swallowed hard and I thought I saw unshed tears in her eyes, but she blinked and then I wasn’t sure.
I shook my head slowly. “The alpha of the pack beat the crap out of me and told me to never come back. Did you really expect me to stay?”
“I expected you to take me with you, you asshole,” she spat.
Sofia drew away from me, her back now to me as she crossed the room. This time, though, her turning her back on me wasn’t giving me an advantage. It was dismissing me. The supreme insult.
“Nobody wanted me there, ever. Your dad made that abundantly clear.” I followed after her, out of the back room and returning to the waiting room. She was pulling on her coat, which made her dismissal all the more blatant. “Why would I lower myself by groveling to any of you?”
“Nobody asked you to grovel!” She spun on me, dropping her keys back onto the desk. “All you had to do was not go back on your promise to always be with me.”
I shook my head again, wondering how she could remember things so differently from me. I still remembered how she had looked at me when I had come home to the pack that day. My clothes had been torn and ragged from shifting and fighting in them. There had been blood everywhere. She couldn’t even make an attempt to hide the horror in her eyes.
“Everyone was already against me,” I said. “I wasn’t going to humiliate myself like that.” I gestured to the keys on the desk. “And now look who’s the one leaving.”
“I’m not leaving. I just...” She trailed off. “I’m staying here tonight. You’ve just got me so worked up I needed to step out for a bit.”
“What did you expect me to do, Sofia?” I came closer to her again, though it wasn’t the aggressive stalking of before. Just the approach of an equal and, perhaps, a concerned mate. “There was nobody there on my side. I wanted to get away from all that pain and humiliation as fast as I could.”
“You didn’t give anyone a chance to be on your side,” she countered softly, raising her eyes to mine again. “You didn’t explain anything. You didn’t wait to see if anyone was willing to listen. You just decided we were against you and left.”
I bristled in defense. “Your father—”
“Was not the entirety of the pack,” she interrupted. “We had a right to form our own opinions, but you leaving ensured his was the only one that mattered.”
Rubbing a hand over my face, I turned away from her briefly. This all sounded like bullshit to me, designed to assuage her guilt. I knew they were all against me. I had always felt that I didn’t quite belong and her father Ric had confirmed that. Her denying it years later changed nothing.
“This isn’t why I came here.” I dropped my hand and took a deep breath, then let it out harshly. Letting the fight go was difficult, but there were more important things to worry about. “There’s a new wolf in the city, going by the name Marcus. He wants one of the alphas here to join his pack and I refused.”
She frowned. “Fine. I’ll let Aidan know.”
I scoffed quietly. “He isn’t going to go for Aidan. Your brother is physically strong, but he’ll never be a true alpha. He’s not your equal.”
“You think this new wolf wants me to join him?” Sofia drew her brows together when I nodded. “That’s not going to happen.”
“He’s pretty powerful and it wouldn’t surprise me if he wanted you as his mate.” My eyes moved over her body admiringly, unable to imagine anyone not wanting her that way.
She shook her head, her eyes fluttering closed briefly with an annoyed sigh. “I know this is hard for you to grasp, but women aren’t just hunting around for the biggest, baddest alpha alive. That’s not why I chose you.”
Then why did you? I stopped myself before saying the words, because I realized I didn’t want to hear her answer. Whatever it was, she likely no longer felt that way and asking now would only dredge up long-buried pain. “Why were you thinking about contacting me?” I asked instead.
Her entire posture changed with that question; muscles tensed and her stance adjusted as if preparing for a fight. When her eyes met mine again, their black depths were hard and cold. “Did you eat those people?”
My mind instantly went to the couple in the park Savannah had told me about, but I wasn’t sure if that was who she was talking about. “Which people?”
The slap across my face wasn’t as hard as it could have been, but it certainly got my attention. I rubbed my cheek, eyes narrowed as a low warning growl rumbled in my chest. “What the hell was that for?”
Her lips drew back from her teeth with a snarl, refusing to back down in response to my growl. “If you have to ask which people instead of just saying ‘no’, how many people have you eaten?”
That wasn’t how I had meant the question, though her logic was sound. I stared at her for a moment, torn between the anger at her lack of faith in me and the aching need to have her back. This had clearly been a mistake. My warnings about Marcus weren’t going to be listened to and she still thought I was some kind of monster. Turning around and leaving, or maybe even moving my entire business to a new city, would the wiser course of action.
Instead my hands went to her upper arms to shove her back against the desk as I leaned in to catch her lips with mine.
Chapter 4
Sofia
I didn’t resist when Hunter kissed me, though it was more out of shock than anything else. There was plenty of anger on my side over the way that he had disappeared, but the depths of rage within him had come as a surprise. He was the one who abandoned me, after all. What did he have to be angry at me for? None of this was how things were supposed to be between us. I had hit him. He had pinned me to the desk and practically forced a kiss on me. None of it was like the love we had shared before.
I squirmed on the desk as I brought my hands up, then pressed them against his chest. Once I turned my face to the side and broke the kiss, I took a deep breath. “Stop.”
To his credit and despite my lack of trust in him, Hunte
r went still. He didn’t pull away from me or stop touching me, but he didn’t do anything else either. He just stood there over me, his warm brown eyes searching my face. “Do you not want me anymore?”
“I want you to stop if I tell you to stop,” I explained, though I could tell by the way he narrowed his eyes that the explanation hadn’t quite worked for him.
Finally, he loosened his grip on my arms and began drawing away. “All right.”
He was warmer to the touch than a human, as any of our kind tended to be, but that wasn’t why I felt cold when he was no longer pressed to me. The absence of him ached like a phantom limb that wouldn’t go away. Before he could put too much distance between us, one of my hands went to the back of his neck and pulled him in once again for a kiss. This time my lips stroked over his to remember all the sweetness there had been before, offering him so much more than just nonresistance.
If he was confused by my change of heart, he didn’t show it. He responded quickly by pressing himself to my body again, bending me backwards over the desk with the kiss. Hunter’s lips parted against mine and his teeth scraped against my bottom lip, a quiet growl escaping his throat. Then he took my mouth again, his tongue plunging past my lips to taste and explore.
I whimpered and clung to him tighter, my fingers sliding up the back of his neck and burying themselves in his hair. My other hand went to the small of his back to hold him. I pushed my way up under his coat to rub along his spine through the thin cotton of his t-shirt, then tugged the shirt up as well so I could get to his skin. My fingers curled against his warm flesh, dragging down it just to feel him every way I could.
When he broke the kiss we were both panting, but he gave little time for either of us to recover. His lips were instantly at my neck to kiss and trail over the sensitive skin there. I hissed softly and pushed back against him, tucking my jaw down to keep from exposing my throat to him. As badly as I wanted him, I wasn’t sure about submitting and that’s exactly what offering him my throat meant.
Chosen Mates (Beasts of the Bay Bundle) Page 9
