Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
I do not agree to that. I don’t even pretend to agree with it. I know he thinks I don’t have a choice, but he keeps forgetting that I am rich. Money is something of a super power. It doesn’t make you immune to everything, but it does mean that some of the rules don’t apply. Almost all human laws, and certainly animal ones.
I stand up from the bed and try to sort my clothes out. My shirt is half off and pulled down. I shrug it back up into place, covering my scar. I do not like that being seen. My pants come up next, covering my aching pussy.
I got off lightly really. I did threaten to shoot him. I thought he’d do a lot worse than fuck me, but men get silly around sex. They get so focused on it. Wolf shifters are even more attracted to it, I think.
Turning around, I face Gray.
My stomach flutters as I see the expression on his face. He’s so very serious, incredibly stern, and maybe even a little angry. Fuck. Maybe I haven’t gotten away with everything after all.
CHAPTER 6
Gray
I am going to kill whoever gave her that scar.
I’ve been suppressing my rage since I first saw it, and the flash of it just now only served to reignite my fury. The moment I knew she’d been hurt by another shifter, I felt as though I had failed. I didn’t even know of her existence when it happened, and still I have this sense of having not protected her when I should have.
Now I have shifted in front of her, and mated her a third time. She was in my blood from the beginning, but I will never be free of her now—and she will never be free of me.
“Uhm, Gray? Are you mad at me?”
“No,” I say. “I am not mad at you.”
“Why do you look like that right now? What did I do?”
She’s done plenty. She’s disobeyed me at every turn and put a gun on me, but none of that is the reason for my current expression.
“It’s nothing you’ve done,” I say. “I’m just thinking about how I am going to protect you.”
I don’t want to bring up the scar itself. That would probably hurt her feelings. I know she’s self-conscious about it. But it doesn’t mar her body in my eyes. In my eyes, it’s an explanation, a battle wound. It’s a testament to both fortune and strength. You need both in this world. You can’t just be good. You have to be lucky too.
I am still going to hunt down those who hurt her, and end them. But first, I am going to make damn sure this woman knows who she belongs to. This mating and breeding is not recreational in any way. She’s been claimed by me, and as far as I am concerned, she is what most humans would call my wife. We are bonded physically and mentally and emotionally. We are one.
Our relationship will not be honored by the pack. Relations between shifters and humans are strictly forbidden because there’s no way of being able to keep things quiet about our kind if we start breeding out. People notice when their kids turn into beasts on random full moons as they’re growing up. Most of the time, that’s not what happens anyway. You don’t get shifter kids from outbreeding. Instead you get hairy little humans, or ones who have tails at birth. Genetics are tricky demons to tame.
The modern rules are designed to stop our kind ending up in research labs, imprisoned, enslaved, or simply slaughtered. All of the above have happened at one time or another, and that is why my job exists. Destroying the evidence of our existence is paramount. I know others will try to kill Callie. I am going to have to find a way to stop them.
She seems blissfully unaware of all of this. She’s too consumed with her own questions and curiosities.
“I need to know a few things, Gray. Starting with… what the fuck. Is. This?”
She turns around and gestures at the bank of equipment in the office.
“You were watching me for how long?” I know she knows I’ve been watching her. This is more of an interrogation tactic than it is a real question. She’s trying to get as much information as possible. It’s habit.
“I’ve been watching you since your research started to concern us.”
“Who the fuck is us?”
“Is it common for a journalist to insert the word fuck into every single sentence?”
“It’s not uncommon. Answer me.”
I don’t like that tone of hers. I wouldn’t have thought she’d be able to give me attitude after the way I just had her writhing and coming, but that’s okay. I can always handle her again if she needs it.