A Mate's Denial: (8 page)

He was going to do it. He was going to lay all his cards on the table. Tell her everything. He’d considered all his options in the shower, and this was the only thing that had any hope of working. He was running out of time with the Ravendale threat. He was running out of time before his mate left for Alaska. Fucking time was not on his side. But besides that, Kerrigan deserved to know how he felt about her. Even if she didn’t feel the same about him.

He’d just gotten his jeans buttoned when Kerrigan’s startled scream blasted through the house. For a millisecond, his heart stopped, gripped in
fear-gnarled claws. But then he busted through the door and into the living room. Part of him expected to find a tarantula or something of that sort. What he did not expect to find, and what made his blood boil to a rolling rage, was a
wolf
.

Huge, with multi-colored fur, the animal stood just inside the door of the cabin, snarling at Kerrigan.

Black flickered at Trager’s vision. A wolf threatened his mate. A wolf he would tear to tiny shreds.

“Kerrigan, step back.”
His voice shook with rage. “Go into the bedroom, and don’t come out no matter what you hear.”

“
Trager?”

His words were warbling, almost unrecognizable. “Now, Kerri. Go.”

He didn’t look to see if she went. There was no way he could contain his wolf any longer. His mate was in danger, and wolf would respond.

With a
ferocious growl, his animal sprang forth, lunging at the multi-colored wolf, and rolling with him out the door. Jaws snapped and claws sliced through fur. Trager felt the pain of his wounds but couldn’t find the will to care. He would annihilate this wolf if it was the last fucking thing he did. His teeth clamped on the bastard’s ear and he pulled. A sharp yelp split the air and Trager gloried in the sound.

More growling.
More snarling and yelping. Blood spattered the grass, and coated both animals’ fur.

From out of nowhere,
Trager felt the vice of his opponent’s jaw clamped around his neck. It froze him. If he moved he’d die. If he died, he couldn’t protect his mate.

Wait… wait…
the fucker will ease up, and I’ll kill him. Patience
.

But he didn’t. The two wolves stayed locked like that for what seemed like eternity. The growls subsided, but
Trager’s rage was intact. He inhaled, hoping to appear calmer to his enemy, but that was when Trager smelled the familiar scent. He knew the wolf.

Farrow
.

That motherfucking, shit-eating
, son-of-a-bitch traitor.

Farrow growled low, as if in warning.

After another few seconds, he changed form
, becoming human, and jumped on top of Trager, smashing his snarling nose into the dirt. “Stop it, asshole. You’re hurt. Shift back.”

Trager
couldn’t change if he wanted to. And he definitely didn’t want to. His wolf was in control until Farrow was dead.

Farrow.
Dead.

Something about that didn’t sit right with
Trager.

He tried to breath but all he got was a lungful of gritty dirt.

“Shift back.
Now
. So we can talk. It’s about Gabby.”

Gabby.
Gabby
. His sister. Farrow wanted to talk about his sister.

Trager
warred with his desire to know what the wolf had to say about his sister, and his desire to kill him for threatening Kerrigan. He decided he could kill him later.

It took his wolf several minutes to calm down enough to change, and still he resisted. Which meant
Trager must be hurt worse than he’d thought.

Shifting to his human form, he hacked up blood, spitting in into the dirt while Farrow rolled off him.

“How did you find this place?” Trager always took precautions to mask his scent anytime he’d met with Farrow in the past.

Farrow laughed, and it sounded like the gurgling of a creek over rocks. “I’ve known where you lived for a while now.”

“How dare you,” he spat. “How dare you come to my land, and threaten my mate. You fucking bastard. I’ll kill you for it.”

Trager
rolled to his back, but the motion only made him aware of the blood oozing from a gash in his side.

“You idiot,” Farrow muttered, breathing heavily. “I wasn’t threatening her, I just couldn’t change. I was trying to calm her down.”

“Why couldn’t you change?”

“Think about it,
Tra. I smelled her. Knew who she was right away. A naked wolf, in your house, that close to your mate… you would’ve killed me without blinking. It’s what I would’ve done if someone had gotten that close to Gabby in my space.”

Trager
blinked at the blue sky. Four times, before Farrow’s words sank in.

“Gabby?”

“Yes,” Farrow snapped. “That’s why I’m here.”

“My
sister
?” Trager felt the rage rise again, like water filling a bathtub.

“She’s
mine
, Trager. Now cut the shit.”

Trager
attempted to sit up, but his side revolted. The gash was deep. “You mated my sister?”

“Yes! Now get over it. We have bigger problems, and I’m running out of time.” Farrow managed to sit up. “You need help. I’m going to get your mate.”

“Stay away from her,” Trager growled.

“Don’t be an asshole,
Tra. Your wolf needs her.”

He was gone before
Trager could stop him. He laid there, waiting, breathing shallow.

A loud bang came from the house, followed by Farrow cursing, and then Kerrigan bounded down the porch steps. She stopped short when she saw
Trager, naked and bleeding on the ground.

“Oh my god,
Trager!” she cried. Her hands flew to her mouth. Tears streaked down her face.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” He felt her panic as if it was his own.
Needed to calm her down.

She dropped to her knees beside him. “It’s bad. You need a hospital. We need to call an ambulance.
You’re losing too much blood. You… you… I can’t do this again. You have to live.”

“Baby, listen. I will heal. I just need to get inside. Where’s Farrow?”

She shook her head. “Farrow?”

“The man… in the house.”

“I… I hit him. He’s down.”

“You hit him?
With what?”

“A skillet,” she screeched. “What does it matter?”

Fuck. A skillet. Cast iron, he’d bet. It kind of made him proud.

“Okay. Okay, baby. Calm down. Come here.”

She leaned over him, her tears falling on his battered chest.

“I need you to touch me.”

“Wh-where? There’s so much blood…” Her voice dropped out.

“Face.”

She laid her shaking hand on his cheek.

“Yes, that’s perfect.”

Already, his wolf was healing his body. But the touch of his mate amplified the process. Wolf was only half. Mate completed him. Together. The magic was in their togetherness.

More proof that he needed her, that his life would be shit without her.

“More,” he pleaded.

She used both hands now, rubbing his cheeks with her thumbs.
Petting his hair. Her forehead pressed against his. “What is happening?” she whispered.

“Don’t stop.”

She kissed his lips, carefully. Gently. Over and over, while he focused on breathing. He felt his wounds patching, healing, pulling together. Ripped blood vessels mending.

Kerrigan gasped.
“Trager. You’re skin. It’s… it’s…”

“I know.”

“What is this?” Her voice was the strangest mixture of happy and terrified.

“I have so much to explain. I promise, I’ll tell you everything.” In another few minutes he’d be able to stand. Then he
’d see to Farrow, and set everything straight with his mate.

***

Kerrigan stared at the faux granite countertop in Trager’s kitchen. She counted the black spots in an area about the size of her fist. There was a hundred and nine, but she wasn’t sure if she’d counted them all, so that number probably wasn’t accurate.

Trager
and his… whatever… were arguing, and although she knew what they were arguing about, all her brain heard was
blah, blah, blah, mate, blah
.

This was the twilight zone.
Had to be. None of this was real. Not the people who shifted into animals, not the threat to the pack, not her responsibility to help them—as Farrow had put it—and most certainly not Trager.

A fist came down hard on the counter. “This is ridiculous. All you have to do is come with
Trager to the camp, so he can talk to the alpha. One night. That’s all it would take, and then we can take it from there.”

“Leave her alone, Farrow.”
Trager’s voice was lethal.

“It’s the only way they’ll take the threat seriously, Tra. You know that. And now that my mate—your
sister
, might I remind you—could be in danger, I’m not willing to wait any longer. Her safety is all I care about.” Farrow flung his arm in her direction. “She needs to grow a spine.”

“I swear,”
Trager snarled, “if you don’t back down, I’m going to rip you to shreds.
Again
.”

Far
row bent over the counter, pushing into Kerrigan’s space bubble. Her gaze broke from the counter to glare at him. “Is it really that much of a sacrifice, pretending to be his mate for a night? Just help us warn the alpha, and then you can leave, okay? I know you don’t want him, but—“

The growl that cut him off was purely animalistic. There was no human sound to it. Before she had a chance to react, Farrow was jerked backwards by his neck. Trager threw a punch to his face so quickly, it was like watching a movie on fast forward. Then another, and another.

No. This was ridiculous.

“Trager, stop.”

He didn’t listen.

“Stop!” she screamed.

He jerked to a halt, Farrow stumbling backwards.

“I’ll go. I’ll do it. Just stop.”

Trager’s
bare chest heaved with ragged breaths. He turned back to Farrow, yanking him by the hair, toward the door. “Never, ever come back here. I’ll kill you if you do, and being my sister’s mate won’t save you.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “Mate comes before sister.
Always
. Remember that.”

With that, he shoved him out the door, and slammed it. The silence after the rattle of the
walls, was deafening. Trager stood stock still, head down, fists clenched.

She waited.
Waited for him to say something. To make this easier to accept. To explain himself. To soothe her fears—fears that she only just realized she had. But he did none of that. Instead, he stalked to his bedroom and slammed that door too.

Wonderful.

Kerrigan opened the fridge and found there was no wine. Only beer. What better time than now, to start drinking. She grabbed a bottle, and just to make sure she fit in, she slammed the refrigerator door when she was finished.

She sank down on the leather couch and reached for the wool blanket that lay over the back.
Trager could have at least started a fire. The jerk.

Tucking the blanket around her legs, she stared at the bottle in her hands. How was she supposed to open it? She twisted the cap, and realized quickly what a mistake that was. Ouch. She used the blanket as a buffer and twisted again. Nope. Glaring at it didn’t help either. Clearly, she needed a bottle opener, but she wasn’t getting back up to find one. Frustrated, she tossed the beer to the other end of the couch, where it landed upside down.

Leaning her head back on the cushion, she stared out the black window. She had no idea what time it was, no clock to check, and her phone was in Trager’s bedroom. It was dark-ass thirty, that’s what time it was.

That wolf, the reddish one that had growled at her from the door… was a man.

The man, the one in the bedroom that had made her tremble with pleasure, that had knotted her stomach with his grin, that had held her carefully and made her feel worth something… was a wolf.

Wolves were men, and men were wolves, and the world was a crazy, crazy place. She’d say sh
e was in a very intense, orgasm-induced dream, but she’d pinched herself too many times for that to be true.

She should be afraid.
Terrified. Perhaps running for her life. But instead, she felt almost numb. Was this what it was like to be in shock?

Seeing
Trager split open on the ground had crushed her. Losing someone she cared about again wasn’t something she could handle.

A tear rolled down her cheek but she ignored it.