Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Men in suits. With guns. One of them had their hand in my box of Raisin Bran.
They’d made themselves at home.
“Hello, Brooke,” Cereal Man said. “Boss would like to have a word.”
I swallowed hard.
They were waiting for me. To face the mob boss.
I was in big trouble. Again. Like last night, I ran. This time out of my house. I heard their footsteps behind me, and I knew this time, Roy wasn’t going to save me.
As I fell in the grass, my heels making me trip, I realized how ironic it was that I wanted a murderer to save me from murderers.
7
ROY
* * *
My cell woke me. It rang, then stopped, then rang again. I growled, reaching my arm out to shut it off. Instead of the bedside table I expected to be there, there was nothing. My arm dropped, and my hand slapped soft carpeting.
I bolted upright. “What the–”
Hotel. Couch. Naked. Mate.
“Brooke!” I called as my cell rang once again.
The shrill noise came from across the room, so I stood up and stomped over to it. I grabbed it and snarled, “What?” as I went into the bedroom to look for Brooke. Maybe she was in the bathroom.
Her caramel scent was everywhere in the suite. On my fingers. My skin. I tasted her on my tongue.
“Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with the two dead guys in your hotel.” It was Boone, and he sounded alarmed.
Fuck.
I scrubbed a hand across my jaw. “Yeah, it was me.” I walked to the other bedroom. She wasn’t here. I spun in a circle.
Brooke wasn’t in the penthouse.
“Are you serious? Do you want to go back to a jail cell? What the fuck happened?” Boone barked.
Yeah, those two fuckers weren’t the first guys I’d killed. But, like the last time when I was in the military and had killed a senior officer who was raping a local woman, there was no question in my mind that it had to be done. I was a trained killer and a natural predator, and the men in the parking garage were trying to kill my mate.
It’d been a quick snap of the neck for one, and a little hand-to-hand combat fighting before I finished the other guy off, too. They’d stood no chance. No Shifter Council member would convict me of murder when I was protecting my mate.
Fuck! I froze in the bathroom when I realized her clothes weren’t all over the floor. I hadn’t wanted her to get redressed after our shower; instead, she’d put on the hotel robe. Which I’d taken off her once we’d finished dinner.
Which meant she was gone. My wolf was pissed. So was I. The walls were starting to close in on me, and I began to pace. I was stuck in this fucking building while my mate was out there somewhere, probably in danger. I needed to run. To follow her scent. To hunt her down. To save her. Protect her. All the things that–
“It had to be done,” I told Boone.
“What happened, Roy? And Rob’s here with me, so make it good.”
“Tell us what’s going on.” Rob Wolf’s deep voice had me coming to a stop in the middle of the room and baring my throat even though I was seven hundred miles away, and he couldn’t see me. Thankfully so, since I was buck ass naked. Nudity wasn’t an issue for shifters since we were bare before and after shifting–and back–for our full moon runs. But talking to my alpha without clothes felt a tad disrespectful.
Right now, I didn’t give a shit because Brooke was gone.
“Roy, you’re well aware we don’t need any attention brought to our kind, and you certainly don’t need any chance of being put away again.”
He knew my story with the military. The superior officer. The assaults. Me being accused instead and put in jail until trial. He’d put Selena Jenkins, a pack lawyer, on the case, even though she wasn’t a Military JAG Lawyer. She’d put together enough evidence of my innocence plus a hell of a lot of pressure to get my charges dropped and me out of a jail cell quickly. Nobody wanted the story of a serial rapist and murderer who was an officer in the military to get out to the public. And I’d needed out. Being confined to the tiny cell during a full moon had broken me. I couldn’t handle small spaces ever again. That was why I couldn’t handle elevators and was staying in the penthouse suite Boone had reserved for me.
I hadn’t really wanted to go to a home show, let alone in a big city in a different state. My work was taking off though, and I was the one people wanted to meet. Boone and Ace, my other brother, couldn’t represent me. Now I was glad because I came to the big city and found my fucking mate.