Hungry Like a Wolf (Claws Clause 1)

But what good would it do when she didn’t recognize him?

Because she hadn’t. During his long run when he pushed himself as much as he punished himself, he couldn’t stop remembering how she glanced at him, almost unseeing, then took off.

She ran from him.

Fucking ran.

His mate never would’ve run from him.

No doubt that was Evangeline. But without her scent, without her forest green eyes lighting up with love whenever she looked at him, Maddox was forced to accept the truth.

That was Evangeline, but she wasn’t his mate.

Not anymore.

As Maddox continued to stand in Colt’s doorway, eerily silent and obviously livid and way too naked, Colt sighed, closed up his laptop, and set it on the coffee table. Then, because his brother’s cock glaring at him was all the proof he needed, he said wryly, “I'd ask if you found her, but something tells me you did.”

Considering Maddox’s state, Colt knew it wasn't fair of him to take his rotten mood out on his brother. Then again, Maddox had just broken down his front door. Any other day, Colt would have been all for giving him a hard time. But then he thought about the hard-on Maddox was sporting and he felt a little guilty for not being all that sympathetic.

Not having control of their dicks… that was the true curse of the werewolf. Forget silver—the biological need to produce a generation of cubs that would survive meant that a shifter could only procreate with their fated mate. Foolish romantics, some Ants had gotten it in their heads that shifters mated for life because they wanted to.

Yeah, right.

They had no choice. Female shifters didn't ovulate until they found their mate, and male shifters couldn't even get an erection. Was it any surprise that, once a shifter found the one person they could mate with, they held on as tightly as possible with both paws?

The mating instinct—and, later, the mate bond—was the pull between two people who could best love each other and only screw one another.

It was just one more reason why Colt never wanted to go searching for his mate in the first place. He didn't understand how sex and love went hand in hand like that. And when your mate was a human…

Humans mated who they wanted, when they wanted. Sometimes they did so because they wanted children. Most of the time, it was all about connection, sensation, and pleasure. From what Colt understood, human mating had very little to do with actual mating. It was fucking, plain and simple. Two people coming together to feel good without any lifetime commitment behind it.

Colt knew that changed whenever a paranormal and a human bonded. Just like the Para, the human would want nobody else—but that was with a bond. Colt’s fingers curled into tight fists. Without a bond, human mates could do whatever the fuck they wanted—

Maddox cocked his head to the side. The move was decidedly canine. “Are you growling at me?”

It was one thing to be snarky. It was another to challenge an infuriated, aroused, lonely wolf shifter. Colt would be lucky if Maddox only kicked his ass if he kept on provoking him. His brother was wound so tight, he was almost vibrating in place. One wrong word. That’s all it would take. Maddox would pounce, and not even the fact that they were blood would save him if Maddox’s wolf got control.

Colt let out a rough exhale before dropping his gaze. “No. Just clearing my throat.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. So, you gonna come in and tell me what’s going on? Or was mooning the whole Bumptown the reason behind your unexpected visit?”

“Mooning? Ah, fuck! My clothes!” Maddox finally stepped inside the house, grabbing the doorknob and jerking it roughly until it wasn’t stuck in the drywall. His flashing eyes gleamed dangerously as he slammed the door shut behind him. He stalked toward his brother. “I wasn’t even thinking when I shifted. And after I carried them all the way out of the Cage, too. Jesus, Colt, I’m a fucking moron. I forgot all about my clothes.”

Shifters went through a ton of clothes. Something about the momentum of the shift, the final snap as the body traded one shape for another, made it impossible to keep clothes in one piece if you didn’t strip first. The material burst at the seams, shredding into unwearable tatters.

Colt couldn’t understand why one pair of clothes mattered to Maddox more than another, but recognized that this wasn’t the time to ask about Maddox’s sudden attachment to a particular outfit.

“Here,” he said, leaning over the edge of his couch and pulling a pair of crumpled jeans from an overflowing laundry basket. He'd been meaning to stop by his parents’ house and see if his mom would take pity on her poor son, but after everything that had happened lately, laundry wasn't at the top of his to-do list. Throwing them across the room, he hit Maddox squarely in his heaving chest. “Put those on instead. I'm tired of that thing winking at me. And you can keep the jeans, too.”

Maddox was still breathing heavily as he jammed one leg into the pants. “Jealous, little brother?”

Colt thought of his situation and shook his head firmly. “Not even a little bit. Now tell me what happened. Three days I don't hear from you and suddenly you're back, huffing and puffing and blowing my damn house down.”

Maddox’s expression went dark, his brow furrowed, lips pulling into an angry snarl. “I saw her. I saw Angie.”

The monster hard-on had already clued Colt into that. But the mutinous expression, the fury that had Maddox tied up in knots? Add that to the fact that Maddox was in his house instead of busy claiming his mate again and something was wrong.