Fated

by R. L. Mathewson

  “I don’t feel so good,” she admitted when she normally would have told him that she was fine and when that didn’t work, she would have ever so politely told him to go fuck off and mind his own goddamn business, but at some point over the past week or two, or had it been three? her somewhat delirious mind wondered, they’d built a friendship of sorts.

  Besides she was too tired and way too full to come up with a decent line of bullshit that would make him leave her alone. Her skin and bones were sore, feeling as though it had been years instead of days since her last shift. God, she felt like she was going to explode out of her body if she didn’t shift and get a decent run soon.

  She needed to get out of here, needed the fresh air of the forest and she needed it now, because the longer that she tried to fight it, the worse it was going to get for her. She couldn’t take this for much longer, but she knew that she wouldn’t have a choice, not with how quickly weakness had settled in her body and the fact that Drew couldn’t leave his Pack to help her, especially not right now.

  His position was too vulnerable and she would never ask him to risk it for her, because she knew all too well how quickly a Pack could turn on you.

  *-*-*-*

  “Where are you going?” Ryan asked even as he hurried across the busy club and opened the back door for Drew.

  “New Hampshire,” Drew said, carefully shifting his delirious mate in his arms so that he didn’t accidentally slam her head into the back door.

  “Now?” Ryan asked, cocking his eyebrows in surprise. “Are you out of your fucking mind? The Pack-”

  “Can survive for a few days without me,” he said firmly, letting his Beta know that his decision was final. It was also a warning and they both knew it. If the Pack tried any more bullshit, he was going to personally handle it and they definitely wouldn’t like the results.

  Ryan opened his mouth to argue, but whatever he saw on Drew’s face had him reluctantly closing his mouth and nodding as he stepped out of the way and handed Drew the keys to the black SUV.

  Nodding his thanks as well as giving Ryan a look that told him that there had better not be any fuck ups while they were gone, he took the keys and carried his small mate to the SUV. After carefully loading her into the backseat, double-checking that they had enough fuel and cash, he climbed in the driver’s seat and welcomed the crazy Boston traffic on a Friday night.

  Kara hadn’t said much before she’d passed out, but he’d seen that expression on shifters before. She’d needed to get out of the city and shift as soon as possible or she was going to get sicker and weaker and with all the shit that was going on, that was the last goddamn thing that they needed.

  Plus, if he was going to be honest he’d have to admit that after the bullshit with his Pack he desperately needed to get out of the city before he ended up killing all the selfish little bastards that he’d dedicated his life to protecting. When he came back he would probably have to kill a few of them, just to make his point, but he would also have to do it to punish the assholes who were behind Kara’s attacks.

  There were a few things in life that he could overlook, especially when it came to his Pack, but threats against his mate wasn’t one of them. He would never tolerate anyone disrespecting her again. Not for anything.

  Then again, he’d never really allowed anyone to disrespect her in the first place, because he’d always felt that it was his right and his right alone ever since that first day that she’d showed up at his father’s house. She was grubby, covered in scrapes, dirt, looked like she’d gone through hell and back and filled with so much attitude that he couldn’t help but respect the annoying little brat even after she’d kicked him in the shin and tried to make a run for it.

  Thankfully, she’d been too young to accept a mating mark otherwise they would have had a hell of a situation on their hands. Sometimes he wondered if he should have simply said the fuck with it and let her run out into the busy Boston street so that he wouldn’t have to deal with her, but then he realized that without her pissing him off every day, he never would have had much to look forward to in his life.

  He couldn’t possibly stomach the idea of living his life without Kara driving him out of his fucking mind every day.

  Chapter 24

  “Is something wrong?”

  You could say that, she thought miserably as she looked around the familiar woods and felt her stomach take a dive when Drew grabbed his favorite yellow hiking pack and threw it over his shoulder.

  Instead of telling him just how many things were wrong with this picture, she instead casually asked, “What exactly are we doing here?”

  “You needed to go for a run and to be honest,” he said, pausing long enough to shut the back hatch to the SUV, “so do I.”

  Oh, thank God, she thought, trying not to show her relief. For a minute there she thought that he was going to tell her that they were going camping. She absolutely hated camping and yes, she was aware that made her a very strange shifter. She was also aware of her previous plans of living out the next ten or twenty years in a cave, but in her defense, that cave would have been decked out with all the modern luxuries and anytime that she needed to do anything like hunt or use the potty she’d planned on doing it in shifter form.

  Now, don’t get her wrong. She loved shifting in the forest and the feel of running wild and free through the trees, catching her own prey and devouring it, but that was pretty much the extent of her love of all things to do with nature. She hated bugs, snakes, mice, rats, spiders, basically anything that every other shifter on earth would simply ignore and accepted as part of life.

  If only she could accept a snake slithering its way into her sleeping bag as normal, she thought wistfully. While she was in shifter form, all those lovely creatures that she hated with a passion always made themselves scarce and for that she would always appreciate the little bastards, but once she was in human form, all bets were off.

  That was one of the many reasons why she never camped with the Pack when they came here. Well, that and the Pack had made it perfectly clear that they were willing to tolerate her presence in their woods to keep their existence a secret, but they didn’t want her anywhere near them otherwise. That had always been fine with her since she always thought that Drew’s Pack was filled with assholes, who should only have to be tolerated in small doses.

  She didn’t include Mick or his family in that group of course, but they hadn’t had the choice to allow her to bunk with them. Not that she would have, because honestly she really didn’t need to witness Mick post-shift getting laid. That was definitely not her thing.

  Besides, she didn’t mind bunking down by herself, especially since her definition of bunking was the Marriott Hotel about five miles north from this very spot. She always kept a reservation there for the three nights of the full moon and if she forgot to make a reservation, it was okay because they could usually accommodate her quite nicely.

  Which she was counting on for tonight, because there was no way in hell that she was going to be sleeping outside with only the protection of a nylon tent as her protection from ticks, bugs and all things snakelike. She didn’t care if her phobias and standards made her an outsider since that’s all she’d ever been. Instead, she embraced her need for clean crisp sheets, hot running water, room service and cable television.

  “Why don’t we set up camp so that in the morning we won’t have to worry about anything else but catching some sleep?” Drew suggested, which of course made sense if she was planning on sleeping outside with the bugs.

  Instead of answering him, or letting him on her plans for the morning since it would end with them arguing and her struggling to resist kicking him in the balls, she simply started to take her clothes off and toss them aside. When she caught Drew watching her through silver eyes and licking his lips hungrily, she had to turn around to hide her smile.

  Since nudity wasn’t a big deal between shifters, they barely took notice of each other’s bodies before a s
hift, but the look that Drew was giving her was definitely something that had her blushing and smiling hugely. Deciding that he had definitely earned a reward for all those wonderful sandwiches that he’d been making her, she made a show of taking her pants off.

  She unsnapped her pants, did a little shimmy with her ass and slowly, ever so slowly, pushed her pants and panties down as she leaned over, making sure to give him a view of a lifetime. When he growled hungrily, she let that smile take over, stepped out of her pants and panties and kicked them aside before she started to walk away, shifting as she went and having absolutely no doubt that he would be directly behind her and fully shifted before she had her claws out.

  *-*-*-*

  He couldn’t take this anymore, he realized as he raced through the woods after the little pain in the ass that was having entirely too much fun teasing him and driving him out of his fucking mind. He licked his muzzle as he watched her large, fur covered ass race around another set of trees and then another while fantasies of coming around the corner and finding her leaning over with that beautiful ass up in the air and the tail shifted to the side as she waited for him.

  She was driving him out of his fucking mind and she was barely doing anything. He thought about her all the time when they were apart and when he was with her, he was forced to struggle to hide just how pleased he was to be with her. He bit back smiles, forced himself not to allow his gaze to linger on her for too long and since she was the only female that could get a rise out of him, he was constantly on the look out for props to hold in front of his broken cock that loved to stand up and say hello whenever he so much as thought about her.

  Which as he’d already admitted, was too damn much. He’d been taking cold showers since he realized just how badly he wanted her, but all those cold showers did was leave him freezing his nuts off and his cock even more desperate to slide into her hot, wet sheathe to warm him back up. Nothing helped, absolutely nothing. It didn’t matter where he was, what he was doing or trying to think about since all he could think about was her.

  Speaking of the little pain in the ass…

  Where the hell was she?

  Opening his senses, he searched for her until he found her twenty feet from the road, casually climbing a tree in all her shifter glory and retrieving a camouflage backpack with her teeth. Too curious to do anything more than just sit there, he watched as his mate carefully climbed back down the tree without doing much damage to the bark, which in itself was actually pretty impressive considering how sharp her claws were.

  Finally when she made it to the ground, she released the bag and let it drop, closed her eyes and shifted back to human. He’d admit that it took him a few minutes to get his head in the game once he saw her beautiful large, tear drop breasts and that heavenly spot between her legs that he was becoming a bit obsessed with, but when she pulled on a pair of tennis shoes, he decided that it was time to find out what she was up to.

  Never taking his eyes off her, because he didn’t trust her to be there when he opened his eyes again, he shifted back to human just as she started up the small incline towards the road.

  “See you tomorrow afternoon,” she said cheerfully with a big smile and a wave as she walked across the street, leaving him standing there, naked and wondering where the hell he’d gone wrong.

  Oh, that’s right, he’d caught the little brat instead of letting her fall on that generous ass of hers.

  As she crossed the street, whistling a Justin Bieber song of all things, he went to follow after her only to remember that he was completely naked and in no condition to walk after her right now without some uptight human getting the wrong idea and calling the cops on him.

  Forced to watch her from the shadows of the woods, he followed her every move, watching her as she walked a little ways down the street, stopped at a Krispy Kreme, came out with a smile and a cup of coffee and what looked like a glazed donut that she nibbled on until she took a left and walked up the long driveway that lead to a Marriot Hotel.

  Eyes narrowed dangerously, he watched as she was greeted by every employee, from the gardener to the doorman, who couldn’t seem to open the door fast enough for her. When she thanked him with another one of those huge smiles and the bastard’s gaze lowered to her ass, Drew clenched his jaw

  Oh, this explained so much, he thought to himself as he backed up into the woods. He’d always wondered where she’d gone during the nights that she had to join them. On more than one occasion he’d gone looking for her, searching the woods to see where she was and who she was with, but he could never find her. The only thing that he could find was her scent leading to this tree and now, he knew why.

  Shooting the hotel one last glance, he turned around, shifted and ran back towards his campsite, trying not to smile as he ran, but it was difficult knowing that he finally had his mate right where he wanted her.

  Chapter 25

  “This is the life,” she said with a satisfied smile as she closed her eyes and settled back in the large tub.

  There really was nothing like camping with all the amenities of home, she concluded as she popped one eye open, reached over to grab a fry off the lovely platter that room service had delivered for her only to end up swallowing hard when she realized that her wonderful solitude that she’d cherished for all these years was now over.

  Oh, that and Drew was eating all her damn fries while looking at her in way that she couldn’t quite describe as glaring, but it was definitely hostile. Swallowing nervously, she dropped her hand away and sort of brought her knees up as though that would somehow give her some protection.