Of course, that didn’t make him cower like it should have. It made him laugh.
“What the fuck was wrong with her?” Boyd asked. “Should Audrey go see if she needs help?”
I ground my back teeth together. What Natalie had been doing had been private. She hadn’t even meant for me to witness her pleasure. But I had. And because I had, I’d discovered she was my mate. That was completely fucking untrue because if she were outside sipping lemonade in jeans and a t-shirt, I’d still have picked up her scent and known she was mine.
Fate had intervened though. I learned she was passionate. I learned she wasn’t shy about her sexuality. She’d been surprised a stranger had burst in on her, but she’d been more pissed than ashamed. She hadn’t hidden that huge dildo but left it on the bed between us, proof of what she’d been doing.
Her cries of pleasure—which we’d mistaken for sounds of pain—weren’t those of fulfillment. She hadn’t come, which meant she either got busy with her toy again after I left or she was out there, horny and eager for a big dick.
I’d also learned she’d been pleased with what she’d seen in me. Women had said I was handsome, but I hadn’t given a shit. I only wanted my mate to be hot for me. When she caught sight of my hard-on… she’d been eager. Wide eyed, which meant no guy had given it to her like I would.
I was hard now and had to shift in my seat.
“Jesus,” Boyd said. “What the fuck’s going on with our new neighbor?”
I had to tell them. What Clint suspected. What I knew.
“She wasn’t hurt.” I gritted my teeth some more, said the words I wanted to keep private between me and Natalie. “She was on her bed masturbating.”
Boyd grinned. “That must’ve been a sight.”
“He told me he’d kill me if I looked at her,” Clint said, leaning forward and patting Boyd on the shoulder. “All growl.”
Boyd’s brows went up, and he looked my way again.
“Why’s that, Alpha?” Clint prodded.
“Natalie Shefield’s my mate. I knew the second I breathed in her scent.”
Boyd honked the horn, once, then again, then whooped. “Fuck, yeah!”
I slapped my hand on the dash, glared at him. “This isn’t good news, Boyd. I can’t have her.”
He sobered, pulled up in front of the lodge, then turned off the truck. “She’s your mate. You’ve been waiting for her all this time. You can have her.”
I took off my seatbelt. Sighed and looked up at the building where the meeting would begin shortly. “She’s human. I’m pack alpha. Pack members are going to lose their shit if I claim her.”
Boyd looked at me with a serious expression, the first one I’d seen on him in a while. “You’re going to lose your shit if you don’t.”
4
ROB
Boyd and Clint didn’t say anything as we met up with the other guys. Levi, Johnny, Rand and Nash had been the first to arrive. They’d opened the wide doors to let the fresh air in, then we joined them cleaning—sweeping out the month’s worth of dust and setting up chairs. Within a few minutes other vehicles arrived, parking along the narrow dirt road or among the trees on either side. Some—especially those who lived up in the mountains—would arrive in wolf form, shifting and changing into clothes they stored here.
I stood in the doorway and formally greeted the adult pack members, shaking hands and reciting their names much like a human church elder would. The children ran off to play in the woods together, just as I had with Boyd, Colton, Clint and the others when we were young.
After my parents died, I used to dread these meetings. Being thrust into the role of alpha, the one my father had fulfilled in a way I never could, made me think I was less. It had taken me years to realize I was not him and couldn’t lead like him. Even so, some doubted. Sometimes I still did, about myself. Especially lately with the elders pressuring me to mark a female, even one who wasn’t my chosen mate, just to avoid moon madness. Of course, there wasn’t a lot of proof that it worked. I could be mated to a female who I didn’t have the urge to mark and still go mad, or so I’d heard.
And now I’d fucked it up even more, my wolf wanting a human for a mate. No one else had appealed to the wolf. Not one. One scent of Natalie Shefield, and I was fucked.
I wanted what my parents had shared. A connection. A deep bond. Chemistry. Love. I wanted my wolf happy. Hell, I wanted to wake up beside my true mate every morning. Content.
I had a responsibility to the pack to carry on the Wolf line, love or not. I held off, month after month. Year after year. For how much longer? My ranch hands and now Boyd always flanked me, showing they had my back like a king’s guard. They were all brothers to me. We grew up together. Learned to shift and hunt together. Went to school down in the valley together. Two of them knew the truth, the one thing that could strip me from control, could tear our pack apart.