Tossing my human mate—who didn’t know shifters existed—over my shoulder and carrying her away might not have been my smartest decision ever, but I didn’t regret it. Not when she was exactly where I wanted her to be— under my roof where nobody else could see her. The mystery of my wolf’s reaction to Allegra’s scent had been solved the moment I stepped out of my house and the sweet aroma with a hint of chocolate hit my nostrils. When my wolf had caught the faint trace of it on Zeke’s mate earlier, he’d wanted to
hunt the source down.
I’d had to force him to stay inside my human skin when I’d left without the information I needed. Nothing but a mating would’ve made me walk out before I got the answers I wanted. Zeke and Allegra were in the early stages of theirs, and privacy was a necessity. The last thing I wanted was for my beta to challenge me because the mating urge whipped him into a jealous rage. Now that I had found the woman who was born to be mine, I wished I had those lost hours back. She, on the other hand, did not seem to be thrilled with me as I set her on her feet after slamming my door shut and flipping the lock.
Her blond hair was disheveled, with one long lock curled around a plump breast. Twin spots of color filled her cheeks, standing out against her fair skin. If she had the power to kill me with the glare from her pretty blue eyes, I would’ve died on the spot. She was a fierce little thing, and both sides of my being heartily approved. Being mated to the alpha was a challenge for shifter females and even more so for a human. Her intensity would serve her well as she took her rightful place at my side. But first, I had to convince her that was where she belonged...before my wolf broke free and clamped his teeth into her shoulder when she didn’t even know what the hell was going on.
Holding my hands up, palms toward my gorgeous mate, I murmured, “Relax. You’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Relax?” she yelled, her eyes narrowing as she pointed her index finger at me. “I don’t know you.” Her middle finger joined the first. “You just carried me out of my best friend’s boyfriend’s house while I was kicking and screaming for you to put me down.” Her ring finger got in on the action before she waved her hand in a small circle. “You brought me to another house, locked the door before putting me down, and you’re standing in front of it to block my exit.” Her hand dropped, and she pressed her fists to her hips. “Don’t you dare tell me to relax after doing your best to scare the crap out of me.”
Knowing she was afraid of me was like an arrow to my heart. I wasn’t about to let her escape until I had the chance to explain who she was to me, but I could at least give her access to the door since I was fast enough to catch her if she somehow got past me. Taking a few steps to the left, I apologized, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Her gaze slid to the door before returning to my face. “You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, right? How else did you expect me to react to the stunt you pulled? You can’t
just go around kidnapping people and then act all surprised when they’re afraid.”
“It worked for Zeke,” I grumbled, wondering how my beta had gotten Allegra to accept him so damn quickly.
“I’m still unclear on exactly what happened between my best friend and Zeke last night, but I’m pretty sure you can’t compare him rescuing her from a car accident to you carting me o in the middle of a conversation you weren’t even a part of.” The cutest little wrinkle formed in the middle of her forehead, and I wanted to brush my lips across it. “He was acting like a hero, but what you did was more along the lines of a villain.”
My wolf almost went berserk at the possibility of my mate preferring Zeke over me. I held still, forcing my beast to remain within my skin until she was ready to meet him. Once he was no longer ready to tear across the street to rip Zeke’s throat out, and I had him back under control, I prowled closer to my mate. My lips curved up in a satisfied smirk when she held her ground, refusing to back down from me. There was only the slightest whi of fear in her delicious scent. No matter how scared my mate thought she should be, she felt the pull between us the same as me, and it was stronger than her uneasiness with the situation. “You can kid yourself all you want, but Zeke would’ve done the same damn thing with Allegra if he’d had to.”
“I find that di cult to believe,” she sco ed with a frown. “He’s the freaking sheri . It’s not like he’s going to run around kidnapping women when his job is all about upholding the law.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and my smile widened. “So what if he’s the sheri ? I’m the mayor of Timber Ridge, and that didn’t stop me from taking you out of his house.”
Her blue eyes widened as her gaze swept down my tall body to take in the flannel shirt and faded jeans I’d put on
after my run earlier. “You’re the mayor? You’ve got to be kidding me. Is this why I never heard much about Timber Ridge even though I moved to Stewart three months ago?” She paced back and forth in front of me, waving her hands in the air. “With you at the helm of this town, there are probably all sorts of illegal things going on that you need to keep quiet.”
I barely held back the chuckle that rumbled up my chest at her rant. Pressing my lips together, I shook my head. “Nope, there’s no illegal shit going on in Timber Ridge that we need to hide.”
We didn’t need to add crime to our collection of secrets. The fact that we were a town full of people who could shift into animals was more than enough to keep on the down low from the human world.
“Oh, really?” She quirked a brow at me and tilted her head to the side. “What do you call kidnapping me then?”
“I wouldn’t call it a kidnapping, that’s for damn sure.” I grinned when she parted those plump lips of hers to argue, hurrying to add, “And based on the lack of reactions from the sheri and your best friend when they saw me carry you away, they didn’t think so either.”
“Thanks for reminding me”—she marched past me —“that I have a bone to pick with Allegra. Just because she’s all loved up doesn’t mean she should let some strange guy haul me away like a sack of potatoes.”
When her hand wrapped around the knob, I came up behind her and crowded her against the door. “There’s a flaw in your logic.”
Her lungs expanded, her back brushing against my chest. She held perfectly still as she asked, “How so?”
“I’m not just some strange guy.” I wound a stray lock of her hair around my finger and let it drop down her back. My wolf wanted to mark her bare neck, and my canines pressed
against my gums as I rasped, “Your best friend already trusts Zeke, and he knows you’re safe with me because I’m his alpha.”
“Alpha?” she echoed, twisting her head to meet my eyes. “Do you guys have a whole di erent vocabulary or something? Zeke wished me luck with his alpha, but I didn’t know what he meant.”
I knew a few shifters besides my beta who’d mated humans, and I’d heard stories about how they’d broken the news to them. Learning from their experiences, I figured it was best to spit it out sooner rather than later. Otherwise, I was running the risk of her discovering my secret when I shifted in front of her without any warning, which was the worst-case scenario when it came to her accepting who and what I was. With no better choice, I said, “It’s fair to say shifters have our own language since we need words for things that don’t exist in the human world.”
Her eyes widened, and the wrinkle popped up on her forehead again. “What in the ever-loving heck do you mean?”
“The residents of Timber Ridge aren’t fully human,” I confessed, my muscles tensing as I waited for her reaction. “We’re able to shift into animal form.”