Mate (Bride, #2) (4)

An owl hoots in the distance. I hold my breath, waiting for Koen to tell the Vampyre to fuck off, but the silence lingers, and his eyes grow opaque, and after a while he . . .

Koen nods.

My heart plummets.

No. He wouldn’t. He would never.

“Koen?” I say. Half question, half plea.

“In my defense, Serena . . .” Koen lifts his shoulders. “It’s always fucking something with you.”

Ice prickles all over my skin. “No. Don’t. Koen, don’t— ”

“I took the liberty to get started,” the Vampyre says, and before I can wonder what he means, his free hand lowers the torn half of my top down my shoulder.

Koen’s eyes linger on my nearly bare chest like I’m no more than a cut of flesh. An offering to be appraised. Something created for him to use. I watch his pupils do an odd dance, sense a shift in his scent before he murmurs, “See, this is how you make a deal. I knew you had it in you, Bob.”

Once again, I beg my body to shift to its wolf form. Once again, I am ignored. With a furious grunt, I begin thrashing in the Vampyre’s grip, desperately trying to break free. But he’s stronger than me, and Koen’s probably stronger than the two of us put together. I can knock out one of them, and I’d still be screwed.

I clutch the rock in my palm, but folded as he has me, I still cannot use it.

Terror rushes through my body. Thumps against my chest.

“She’s all yours, Alpha. Do what you will with her.” The Vampyre lets out a winded, obnoxious laugh. He lowers his blade and pushes me a few

inches forward without letting go of my wrists. He stinks like he knows that it’s all over for me— that he’s won. “Maybe she’d even enjoy it?”

Koen considers the matter as he steps closer, near enough that I can feel his heat, and I bare my teeth at him as I squirm in the Vampyre’s clutch.

This can’t be for real. Alpha protects, says a calm Were voice that lives inside my bones. Alpha is home. Koen is not like that.

Except, I’m not so sure.

Koen stops in front of me, staring like I’m at his disposal, and yeah. He is exactly like that.

“Would she?” he wonders, voice low and rich, eyes caressing my face and lingering on my bare breast. Closer still, and his presence envelops me like a warm blanket. His scent blooms in my nostrils, safe, grounding, so breathtakingly perfect that for a moment I forget about the Vampyre behind me, the pine needles jabbed into the soles of my feet.

“Please,” I mouth softly, but I don’t think Koen hears me. His hand comes up to my face. Wraps around my cheek, thumb pressing into my lower lip.

“Would you, Serena? Enjoy it?”

Panic bursts anew in my chest. I shake my head violently. No. No.

“Well, then.” His eyes soften, and he lets out a half-resigned, half-amused sigh. “Better make use of that rock in your hand, killer.”

It takes me a beat to understand his meaning, and to realize that the Vampyre’s hold on my wrist has loosened. Twisting my arm free and stabbing the jagged edge of the rock into his stomach takes so little effort, it’s almost anticlimactic.

“What the— ” The Vampyre doubles over. I’m about to hit him again, but he bounces back and slams me to the ground. He lifts his knife above his head, aiming for my throat. “You fucking bitch— ”

He stops with an abrupt gasp, as though in the grip of a sudden illuminating revelation. He stares down at me, eyes bulging, mouth wide open, and I almost expect him to . . . apologize? Then, after coughing up a small rivulet of mulberry-colored blood, he loses his balance. I observe his descent, horrified, as he collapses right by my side, face-first into a patch of moss.

He does not move again.

Neither do I. I don’t know what it says about me, but I’m incapable of not staring as blood gurgles out of the deep claw-shaped parallel wounds on

his back, iron blending with the earthy smell of the soil.

It’s a long while before I’m able to glance down at my body—

miraculously intact, if mostly naked— and then up at Koen— glibly unimpressed. Anyone else would be helping me up, but not the Alpha of the Northwest pack. Instead, he slowly shakes his head, wiping the hand he just used to kill a man across his flannel. The deep-violet strokes create an oddly pretty painting over the black-and-white canvas.

It takes him a while to remember that I exist. “Evening, Serena.” The intensity of a few moments ago has dissolved, and he sounds indifferent.

Maybe he knows that a single ounce of sympathy would knock me over.

Maybe he truly does not, and has never, given a fuck about anything.

“How’s your night been?”

“Uneventful,” I rasp out.

“Yeah? You look like shit.”

“Do I.” Gelid sweat slides down my temple and between my breasts, which I hurry to cover as best as I can. “Is this the way you talk to your beloved mate?”

A single eyebrow lifts. “I said you were my mate. Not that I loved you.”

I gasp out a single, outraged laugh, but at least I’m not crying. It’s nice to keep what little dignity I have left as Koen gives me a cool, appraising look and crouches next to me.

“We have to go,” he tells me.

“Where?”