by Mandy Rosko
He chuckled, leaning in for another kiss, and when his tongue licked the crease of her lips, she opened for him. There was no question about whether or not she would. Of course she would. She opened and moaned when he slid inside, licking her deep and claiming her.
He was so tall, strong, and alpha male about it, that if he hadn't been holding her by the hips, she might have fallen to her knees.
They were as weak as water.
She wanted him. She wanted him to take her, to make love to her. Hell, she didn't care. She wanted him to fuck her, to claim her even. If that's what the alpha of the pack did with his mate, then she wanted it.
And from the busy way Garret's hands began to roam, it was clear he wanted the same thing. Everywhere his hands slid—across her waist, her ass, and her thighs—left a burning trail in their wake.
When he gripped the cheeks of her ass, pulling her forward so she could feel the hard length of his cock through his pants, a sizzle of pleasure, lust, and desire shot through her.
But it was also that sudden jolt of shocking sensation that yanked her out of the moment, reminding her of why she'd called Garret out here to begin with.
She pushed against his chest, pushing away from him, separating them and feeling cold when she did because his body heat was so wonderful. "No, wait, wait, stop."
"I can't stop."
He leaned in for another kiss. Miranda lifted her hand, pressing it to his mouth before he could kiss her mouth again. He pulled back from the unintentional kiss to her hand. His eyes were dilated, and she felt bad for doing this to him.
"I can't, not until I know my mother is safe."
"Your mother?"
"She's my only family, Garret," Miranda said. "She was the only one left when my father took off, and if those people who tried to hurt me go after her, I don't know what I'm going to do."
It definitely wouldn't be enjoying herself in bed with a big hunky guy who wanted to make her his wolf queen or whatever. That was for sure, and it seemed she got her point across to Garret. His shoulders slumped as he seemed to realize he was being denied what he wanted, what he needed, for a second time.
"Where does she live? I'll arrange to have her brought here."
"You don't understand, she can't be moved. She doesn't live on her own."
Miranda hated having to explain this. It felt like exposing some family secret that she'd been hiding, holding back, and even pretending wasn't as bad as it really was.
She explained her mother's illness, how she was living in an assisted-living home, and the payments required for a place like that.
Garret's eyes softened, and the pity she didn't want to see was suddenly in his eyes.
"You already knew all that, didn't you?" Hell, he'd known her checks were going to her mother, and that she'd been living in her car. Why wouldn't he know about her mother's dementia? How she couldn't take care of herself anymore, and that was the reason why Miranda worked so hard and had so little for herself. Living in her car had been the only way to keep her costs low enough to pay for her mother's care.
He nodded. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. You did what you had to do for your family."
But Miranda still felt the undeniable need to explain herself. "It wasn't for long, and I was working on finding another place."
Which was only sort of true. She had been looking for another place, a cheaper place. After she'd paid back Lois all the money she owed her in back rent, of course.
"Please, Garret, is there anything you can do? I want to call her and check on her. I need to find out if I still have a job so I can pay for her."
Maybe the scary high of finding out she was now a shapeshifter had made her brain pick up on everything a little slower than was necessarily healthy. Since all these things were suddenly in her head, all Miranda could think about was the horrifying reality of what would happen if neither of her jobs were willing to wait for her to come back, assuming they hadn't already fired her for not showing up for two days without explanation. She was supposed to open the diner the morning after being attacked with the owner. That wasn't going to go down well with her boss if she had to open and work alone.
"Calm yourself, sweetheart. Your heart is racing again."
"That doesn't help. Your heart would be doing the same thing if this was happening to you, so just don't tell me to calm down!"
Her claws were coming back out. Miranda's eyes burned. Not only could she not control her life in general, she couldn't control her body. No wonder Garret didn't want to let her leave, if she couldn't even keep her claws and teeth hidden.
"I will send some men to her. She won't even know they're there. They will scout the location, search for scents that do not belong, and will report back to me."
"But if I'm late on another payment—"
"You are my mate, remember?" Garret asked, though it wasn't much of a question. "Stop worrying about menial jobs and let me pay for this. This house is yours, and so are my funds. Everything is at your disposal."
She couldn't believe it. Her ears told her everything she heard was real, but in reality, people just didn't offer up everything they had to share like that; some married people didn't even do that.
"I can see you still don't believe me."
"That isn't right. What am I supposed to give to you?"
"Aside from your body?"
The little smile that quirked at the side of his mouth said he was only partly joking. He clearly still wanted her.
"You're not, like, buying sex off me, right? That's not what this is?"
He shook his head, as if the question was not an insulting one. "No. Never."
"And I'm really your mate?"
He nodded. "Yes."
Miranda was still having trouble taking it all in, but it didn't matter because Garret was offering to take care of her mother's payments for her. He was offering to let her live here. He was asking her to basically be his wife, and everything inside her told her to stop fighting it. She wanted this and knew she was compatible with him without even really knowing him yet.
"I… I want to be your mate," Miranda said, "but only after my mother is taken care of. I'm not saying that because you have money or anything. I swear I'm not. And I'm not accepting this because of your money either."
She needed him to know that.
Garret didn't show any signs of impatience, even though she had to be giving him a severe case of blue balls. He nodded again, as if her request was expected, one of the most natural things in the world. "Of course. I know you're not accepting me because of all that."
He sounded sincere, but that wasn't what made Miranda believe and trust him so utterly and completely. It was something else. Something else that was wonderful and made her want to melt against him. Maybe it really was the mating, and if it was, she was all right with that.
"Come with me."
He held out his hand, and this time, Miranda didn't hesitate when she took it. She laced her fingers into his and didn't fight the sense of warmth and safety that came with touching him.
It was like sinking into a warm bath.
Chapter 8
Garret pulled Alex, Neil, and Dimitri together. He told them the mission, gave them the location, and sent them off with strict instructions to not to interfere unless absolutely necessary.
Dane sighed. "Let me go back and check out the car."
"We dumped it," Jax said.
That was right. Garret had yet to tell this to his mate, but they had ditched the car after pilfering everything that could be of value out of it.
"Why do you want to go back?" Garret asked.
"In case we left something behind," Dane said. "I remember seeing receipts and stuff in that car. I thought they were all for the gas station, but if any of them were for that home her mother's in and Dennis finds them…" He shrugged and spread his hands, letting Garret and Jax use their imaginations for the rest.
He nodded. "Right, go."
Dane left, back straight and fist
s clenched, as if the idea that they might have forgotten something, or left a clue behind for the enemy to find, infuriated him.
It bothered Garret, too.
He clenched his teeth and growled. "That motherfucker."
"Does Miranda know, yet?" Jax asked. They were the only ones left in the room.
"No. She's on the phone with the home."
When she found out, he wasn't looking forward to the backlash. Miranda had been shockingly, wonderfully calm about this whole thing. Her reaction to Garret and their mating, and her obvious desire for him, was better then he'd hoped for.
Even though there were still the constant distractions that kept him from taking what was his, he was still hard, and it was only due to their friendship that Jax didn't speak of what he could clearly smell on his alpha.
"It's not your fault the father left. She won't hold that against you."
Garret growled again. He wasn't entirely convinced that it wasn't his fault. He'd been sending monthly payments in the thousands for years. That money was supposed to go to the care of his mate while she was growing up, and that son of a bitch had left his woman and child after they'd moved to a different location.
It was no wonder Garret couldn't find her again when he went looking. When he'd gone to the home the father and mother had been living at when Garret first met the girl, just to find it empty and abandoned, he'd assumed the father had died and that was the reason for the confusion. Then he'd discovered the accounts he'd been sending money to had been closed for nearly a decade. His money was being refunded to him, and with the death of his father, caring for Anna, numerous accounts, and everything else that had landed on him, he hadn't noticed in all that time. It was too much to keep track of for a wolf who wanted to run, hunt, and mate.
The fact that he'd left his wife and child with nothing, leaving Miranda to care for her mother and live in her car, infuriated him. It enraged him all the more that this whole thing could have been prevented if he'd simply been paying more attention.
That was no excuse.
"If I ever find that human, I'm going to kill him."
"We can start looking if you want."
Garret's first thought was to say yes, begin the hunt, but he stopped himself. This thing with his mate's mother was more important. He would see to the care of her mother, and then he would complete the mating.
It was just, apparently, not going to happen until after he'd gotten his reports back from his betas. If it happened at all when Garret explained himself to his mate, and why she'd thought he looked familiar to her when she was still a little girl.
* * *
It wasn't hard for Dane to find the car again. It was still daylight out, and he'd been the one to help throw it in that ditch.
He literally meant throw. He and Jax had picked it up and tossed it in the woods. They couldn't go too deep with it, the trees were thick and packed too close together, and since Jax couldn't fly anymore…
Either way, it should have been enough to keep it hidden for a few years, and considering Garret had no intention of taking Miranda completely off the grid, people would just think it was abandoned.
The license plates were gone. Garret had taken those and buried them on the territory just to be safe, and the doors weren't locked.
Hadn't they locked the doors before leaving?
Dane opened the passenger-side door and began to rummage through all the little papers that had been left behind. He began organizing every receipt into piles. Gas receipts, food receipts, even some from the library discard bin.
He really should have done this sooner; now he was trying to get it all organized to make sure there was nothing that could be traced back to Miranda.
Luckily, she paid for everything in cash or prepaid credit cards.
"Who are you?"
Dane jumped, smacking the rounder side of the back of his skull on the metal doorframe.
"Fuck!" he pulled his head out of the car, hands on the back of his skull, and glared at the woman who'd interrupted him.
She had a flashlight in her hands. Figured. It wasn't dark out yet for him, but for a human, the sun was getting fairly low and the shade of the many trees would make it hard to see, especially if she was searching for something or someone.
"What are you doing?"
Dane couldn't believe what he was looking at. What the hell was a woman doing all the way out here?
Better still, why was she staring at him like that? Her fire-engine-red hair was put up into a high ponytail. She had freckles on a cute button nose, and blue eyes that were pretty even as she glared distrustfully at him.
"What?"
She jerked. "What do you mean, what? What the hell are you doing here?"
Oh, hell no was she going to talk to him like that. He crossed his arms and threw her question right back in her face. "What the hell are you doing here? It's not exactly a place for a lady, you know."
Especially when the shadows were getting longer, blending in with each other, becoming darker.
"Lady?" Her face twisted, as if he'd just said a dirty word to her, but she shook her head. "I'm looking for my friend. That's her car you're rummaging through like some thief in the night."
"Is it? Well, must be my mistake."
He put his arms up on the hood and smiled at her.
"I'm with a search party."
Dane felt an instant of panic, but then properly looked her over and felt it melt away. The boots she wore had heels. They were only two inches or so, but definitely not the sort of thing anyone in search and rescue wore. The flashlight looked like some shitty LED thing she'd picked up from the local dollar store, and nothing at all professional. He didn't smell any dogs in the area sniffing around, or hear any humans shouting out Miranda's name. Not to mention the fact that her jacket wasn't reflective. Dane was pretty sure that real search and rescue teams and the volunteers who worked with them had to wear some reflective gear.
The woman didn't seem to appreciate being observed like this, but that was just too damned bad for her.
"What?" she asked.
"You're lying. You're all alone out here."
Her face flushed. "I am not!"
"Uh-huh, that's why you're wearing those clothes, right?" He pointed out every problem with everything she wore. He seriously doubted she had a real pair of hiking boots in her closet, not with that skirt she wore, and her makeup and hair looking like that.
"Fine, you know what? I'm calling the police."
"No, wait, don't. I'm sorry," Dane said, smiling. "Look, I know this looks a little strange, but your friend is fine. Miranda, right?"
The woman stopped, lowering her phone. The screen was still lit, but he was pretty sure she hadn't dialed the numbers yet.
"Yeah, I know her. I've seen her. She's with my friend. Her…boyfriend." The hesitation was only minor, but he was sure the woman had noticed it. Dane sometimes tripped up when he tried not to say the word mate in front of people who wouldn't know anything about him or a pack of shifters.
The woman smiled at him. "You can talk with that charming tone in your voice all you want, but I can tell you're lying."
Dane blinked. "What? No, I'm not."
"What's the phone number where I can call her?"
He wasn't allowed to give out that information. "Not sure. My friend had his number changed. You know how it can be, right?"
She nodded. "Right. I'm calling the cops."
The second her thumb touched the screen, Dane acted. He rushed her. He was fast.
The woman screamed when he was suddenly before her, his clothes ripped but still covering the fur and the massive muscles that had swelled out from his chest and arms.
The woman screamed and fell back. The phone fell out of her hands as she landed on her ass in the dead leaves and twigs.
He reached for it, and she kicked at the ground beneath her, as though trying to get her body moving just right so she could get to her feet and start running away.
Dane crushed the phone and stared down at her. He got on all fours, standing over her body.
Her heart thumped loudly and faster than a panicking rabbit. He could see his reflection in her eyes and tried to imagine what it must be like to see a monster for the first time ever.
Then he just thought about how much of an inconvenience this whole thing was.
"Next time, don't go out in the woods by yourself."
The woman gasped deep, harsh, panting breaths through her mouth as she frowned, looking him over.
Dane grabbed her. With his ugly, clawed hands gripping her shoulders, he couldn't exactly blame her for screaming again.
Chapter 9
The men Garret sent out to check on her mother didn't come back. They called him and told him they had smelled nothing out of the ordinary around the home where her mother was being cared for.
Miranda wouldn't believe it. She couldn't believe it, until she spoke to those men herself.
"Are you sure? Where are you now?"
The man named Alex was the one on the phone with her, speaking to her. "We're outside the building now. No one's here."
"But how do you know that?" She was desperate for all the news she could get. Miranda had already called the staff and had been informed that her mother wasn't in a good place for a phone conversation at the time, but she needed more information.
There could be people inside that building right now trying to sneak into her mother's room with the sole purpose of hurting her.
"If Dennis or any of his pack were here, we'd smell them. We know these people. Trust us, they're not here," Alex said, and it honestly was difficult to not be soothed by Alex's words.
Then he told her about his plan to keep any of Dennis's pack away from the area.
Apparently, they were going to whip out their dicks and pee all over the surrounding trees like actual dogs in order to keep anyone off the property.
They were going to mark their territory. Miranda honestly didn't know whether or not to laugh at that one.
"Everything all right?" Alex asked.
