“No, Grandma. I’m not.”
*-*-*-*
This was the last fucking thing that he needed tonight, he thought as he jumped between the two unknown shifters and his Pack members that they’d been attacking. He growled as he shifted, sending the message that they were dealing with the Alpha and that if they made one wrong move than he would tear their fucking throats out.
Before he was finished shifting, the two large werewolves had parted so that-
“Kara?” he asked, blinking away his confusion as he watched Kara, wrapped in a blanket, barefoot, and looking paler than he’d ever seen her before, being herded towards him by a group of twenty large, red wolves and an incredibly beautiful woman wearing one of the coldest smiles that he’d ever had the displeasure of seeing.
“Good evening, Drew,” the woman that he’d immediately decided to nickname the ice bitch said as she came to a stop ten feet away along with the rest of her Pack.
And his mate.
“What the hell is going on here?” he asked the ice bitch, but his focus was on his mate, who couldn’t quite meet his gaze as the first tear spilled down her cheek, letting him known exactly how pissed she was.
That’s all he needed to know.
Keeping his gaze locked on the ice bitch, he walked casually over to his mate, cupped the back of her neck and with a slight tug, pulled her towards him, giving the ice bitch the only warning that she would get if she tried to touch what was his, but to his immense surprise, her smile simply became even colder as she watched him place his seriously pissed off mate behind him.
He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he’d honestly never seen her this pissed before. She was pale, crying, and trembling, the ultimate signs that his mate was going to end up killing someone.
Which normally would have made his balls retract, but something told him that his little mate would give anything in the world to put her hands around the ice bitch’s throat.
Chapter 33
Can’t. Fucking. Say. A. Word, she inwardly screamed at herself as that familiar old bitter taste rose up her throat and threatened to destroy what very possibly might be the last thread of control that she had left.
“Get off my land,” Drew ordered, skipping the pleasantry bullshit and getting right to the point, which of course was one of the things that she really liked about him.
He didn’t play games and when it came to the safety of his Pack, he would do whatever it took to keep them safe. Not that she should be comforted by that fact right now, considering that his obligations to his Pack were most likely going to end up being her downfall.
She closed her eyes in resignation.
She really didn’t want to go back to her Pack, to their way of life, to a life where she’d been forced to fight for every little thing and if she lost, God help her, because no one else would. Refusing to shed one more tear, especially in front of them, she took a deep breath, used the back of her hands to quickly wipe at her wet cheeks before taking another breath, opening her eyes and glared straight ahead like nothing and no one mattered to her.
It had taken her the first five years of her life to perfect this, “I don’t give a fuck attitude,” and it was something that had always kept her safe no matter what they did to her. By the aggressive scents that the males behind her grandmother were giving off, she knew that payback was a bitch that was best served cold and if they had their chance, they were going to shove it down her throat.
She took a deep breath, shook it off and told herself that it didn’t matter. She’d deal with whatever they did to her like old times, wait until they thought they’d destroyed her will to live again and when they’d finally dropped their guard, that’s when she would make her move. Only this time she couldn’t go running to Boston, not now that they knew that everything that meant anything to her was here.
Drew.
God, she felt like crying, but she wouldn’t do that again. She’d already made the mistake of letting her grandmother see her cry one time and she wouldn’t be making that mistake again. It made her grandmother too happy and that was one thing in life that she refused to do.
“I’m afraid that I can’t do that without my property,” her grandmother said in that biting tone, using her favorite pet name that she’d always liked to use for Kara. Before Kara could stop herself, she’d flinched from the intended hit.
She hated when her Grandmother was able to get a reaction out of her, mostly because it meant that she’d given her grandmother something to smile about.
“We don’t have your property,” she vaguely heard Drew say, but it was difficult to make out anything over the pounding of her heart and her shallow breaths.
“Oh, but I’m afraid that you do,” her grandmother said with a crisp sigh as though this pained her when she was probably giddy as hell with the prospect of finally getting her hands on Kara one last time.
Drew’s shoulders tightened while he faced her grandmother down as he drawled, “Get the fuck out of my woods before I rip your throat out.”
“Not without my bitch,” her grandmother said, scoring another direct hit as Kara stood there, praying that this was just a dream, more like a nightmare, but a dream nonetheless.
Drew chuckled without humor as he reached back and gently pushed Kara away. “Start running,” he ordered, his voice more beast than human at the moment as he began to shift and as much as she would love to finally see her grandmother get what she deserved, she couldn’t stand the idea of Drew getting hurt.
As she stepped around Drew on shaky legs, she realized something funny, she actually loved the son of a bitch. Of course she would realize that she loved the annoying bastard right before she was about to die.
*-*-*-*
Barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he reached out with one large clawed hand and wrapped it around his stubborn mate’s waist and pulled her back against his large body, emanating a growl to those around him in warning as well as to the little pain in the ass, because if she so much as moved a toe then he was going to-
“You’ve marked her,” the ice bitch said in a tone that literally sent chills down his spine.
There was definitely no mistaking that this woman was an Alpha. So, that begged the question, how in the world had Kara hidden her status so fucking well, for so long without any of them figuring it out? It was just one more thing that they needed to discuss, but later, much later, right now he needed to make sure that everyone knew where he stood.
Basically, he was fully prepared to kill every fucking last one of them if they tried to touch her. Then again, he was seriously considering ripping off the ice bitch’s arm and beating her with it if she ever referred to Kara as her bitch again.
That of course brought up another interesting question, but once again, it was something that was going to have to wait until later. Keeping his arm locked around his mate, Drew shifted back to human, making sure to keep his eyes silver and fangs nice and sharp as a reminder of who they were fucking with here.
“Leave,” he growled as he leaned down and absently scented Kara’s neck noting the anger, but there was also fear so much that it had him growling viciously, not liking that some bitch who had no business on his land could scare his mate like this.
He didn’t like it at all.
“Not without her,” the ice bitch said coldly, not looking at Kara as though she was somehow beneath her notice.
“She’s not going anywhere,” he said, keeping his eyes locked on the ice bitch.
One wrong move and he would rip her throat out. Her Pack would probably attack, try to protect her, because they counted on her for their survival, but that didn’t bother him. He’d tear them apart as well and they knew it.
He’d kill more than half of them before he was forced to hunt the other half down while his Pack helped put down the injured. By the time he caught up with the rest of the Pack, he’d make sure that anyone that survived always remembered what happened when you tried to come b
etween him and his mate. It was a necessary evil to keep Kara, his Pack and any children they might have one day safe from future retaliation. It also didn’t hurt that it would probably put a smile on his face for months just thinking about how much fun it had been to tear her apart.
“She’s mine,” the ice bitch snarled, taking a threatening step towards him and earning growls of warning from the rest of his Pack.
Not because they cared about Kara, but because if they didn’t back him up, follow his orders and help protect what was his, he would either tear them apart or leave them on their own. For a regular shifter, that could mean death, slavery or worse, a lot worse.
“I’m his,” Kara bit out, taking him by surprise and apparently pissing off the ice bitch even more.
“No one gave you permission to speak, mutt,” she snarled, using the derogatory name for a Packless Alpha, pissing him off, but also letting him know that the woman knew exactly what Kara was, which begged the question, why was she here for her now?
“She doesn’t need permission to speak in her own woods, bitch,” Drew said, reminding the ice bitch that they were on his lands, unwelcomed and he was within his rights to kill every single last one of them without having to worry about retaliation from other Packs or the Sentinels coming to extinguish them for breaking their laws.
Not that he allowed the Sentinels to dictate his life and Pack, because he didn’t, but if he wiped out an entire Pack off the face of the earth without a damn good reason then they would view him and his Pack as a danger to humans and kill them off one by one.
“These aren’t her woods,” the ice bitch said, leveling that cold glare on him.
Reaching down, he entwined his fingers with Kara’s and held up their hands, making sure that the ice bitch could clearly see that she was his. “This mark says otherwise.”
“She didn’t have permission to mate,” the ice bitch snapped, losing some of that cold composure of hers with every passing second.
“She didn’t need it,” he pointed out, bringing Kara’s cold, trembling hand to his lips so that he could press a kiss against the back of her hand, to comfort her and also to piss the ice bitch off even more, hoping that she would do something incredibly stupid so that he had an excuse to tear her head off and gut her.
“Oh, yes, she did,” the ice bitch said as she finally leveled her glare on Kara.
“Why exactly is that?” he asked, but instead of answering him, the ice bitch simply smiled while the woman trembling in his arms whispered, “Because I’m an impure,” taking him by surprise and destroying his entire world with four simple words.
Chapter 34
“She has no place in our world,” her Grandmother pointed out as she stood there, standing in Drew’s arms and wondering when he was going to start breathing again.
When he continued to stand there, Kara took a deep breath, praying that he was going to prove her wrong, but when she went to step out of his embrace he just let his arms drop by his sides. He didn’t even try to stop her or to grab the blanket wrapped around her body to keep her with him.
He just let her go, because he knew the truth and that was finally enough to destroy this dream cloud that she’d been walking on for the last couple of weeks. She could feel the looks of disgust following her as she forced herself to take a step away, and then another one, pausing only briefly to give Drew one last chance to tell his Pack and her bitch of a grandmother that he didn’t care.
But, he didn’t say anything and she didn’t pretend not to understand.
She walked up to her Grandmother, who’d either come here so that she could kill her in revenge, or try to press her back into the life of a Pack slave. Neither one was happening, at least not without a fight, because now she had a choice thanks to the mark on her wrist.
Narrowing her eyes on her grandmother, she kept hold of the blanket wrapped around her body with one hand so that she could hold up the mark, making sure there was no mistaking what it was and what it meant.